Compliance Perspectives

By Adam Turteltaub Economic espionage sounds more like the stuff of a spy thriller than a day-to-day concern for business. Not so, as it turns out. To learn more we sat down with the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division Unit Chief Matthew Charles and Cyber Division Supervisory Special Agent Michelle Liu. Economic espionage generally refers to stealing trade secrets for the benefit of an overseas competitor, often one aligned with a foreign government. An employee at your organization working on a sensitive project may be leveraged, frequently with the lure of cash and other payments. Typical targets include technology with potential military use and, of late, pharmaceuticals. To counter this threat, the FBI Cyber Division maintains partnerships with many private sector companies to identify nefarious conduct on their networks. Meantime the Counterintelligence Division looks upstream for actors coming into the US seeking access to US technology. So what should companies do? First, protect yourself. Encrypti