Great concerns have been raised about the dramatically growing threat of cyber espionage. Adding to the concern John Brennan, Director of the CIA, admitted that his agency has been slow to respond to the challenge of cyber (digital) espionage. Multiple subject matter experts in this area have concerns about the speed of transition from traditional espionage techniques and activities to activities in the digital domain.
This is not a problem that is limited to the defense and intelligence organizations, it impacts corporate America as well. Recently after speaking on this subject, an individual approached me and talked about how a few organizations have their board rooms swept for listening devices before each board meeting. Not product development or engineering or the finance department, just the board room. That was a concern because product development, engineering and finance departments are high value targets for espionage activities.
More concerning is the lack of integration of the cyber component into the protective sweeps. In fact, the sweeps did not address cyber at all. Cyber espionage is very hot. What is more dangerous for the spy – to somehow gain physical access to the board room, physically plant a listening device, create the ability to be within range of the device so that the conversations can be monitored? Or to gain access to a computer via the Internet and use the built in microphone to eavesdrop on the board’s conversation?
It was not that long ago that cyber espionage software was discovered that used the internal microphone in computers to capture sensitive conversations. The software used voice activation to trigger recording and then compressed the file and forwarded it to a compromised server in a foreign country for retrieval at a later date. When you think about it, all you had to do is to run down to your local Radio Shack and buy a plug for the external microphone connection on every computer that will be in the meeting and insert the plug that physically breaks the connection to the internal microphone. How hard is that to do? They were less than $5 for 2 plugs the last time I did this.
Given we live in an intellectual property driven competitive environment that operates in a digital world these concerns must quickly be addressed before we lose the next greatest innovation. Integration of physical espionage defense with digital defenses has to happen now in order to defend the competitive position of our companies and our nation.
