The UK is a priority target for a number of countries looking to steal information and technologies to help advance their own interests. These countries attempt to obtain details on, for example, new manufacturing processes, research programmes, intellectual property, negotiating positions, investment plans and financial transactions.
Economic espionage costs the UK billions every year. It can have a major impact on business and jobs through lost contracts, company failures and redundancies.
A film from the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI) illustrates how easy it is to collect information about people and companies given global interconnectivity, the increasing dependency of companies on IT, the routine use of social networking sites and a general lack of good security practice.
Falling victim to economic espionage is not inevitable, the centre adds. There are ways to protect your organisations and businesses – and every person in an organisation has a role to play – it’s not just the responsibility of the security department or the guards on the gate.
You can view the films ‘Piece of Cake’ and ‘Full Picture’ on theCPNI YouTube channel – http://www.youtube.com/user/UKCPNI.
