Business spy threat is real, former CIA chief says

[William Knowles <wk () C4I ORG>]

http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/00/10/17/001017hnspy.xml

Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2000 2:27 am PT
By Margret Johnston

THREATS TO THE security of business information are numerous and they
come from all directions, including organized crime syndicates,
terrorists and government-sponsored espionage, and most global
high-technology companies have little idea of the array of hostile
forces targeted against them, a former U.S. director of intelligence
said Monday.

U.S. businesses that are increasingly expanding their operations into
foreign lands are finding the situation challenging because the nature
of such threats and how to protect against them is not taught in
business school, said Robert Gates, director of the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 1991 to 1993.

Some of the threats might be obvious, as well as the strategies that
companies can mount against them, but others might not be so cut and
dried, said Gates, who delivered the keynote address to an
international gathering of information security specialists at a
two-day conference in Washington sponsored by the Arlington,
Virginia-based Information Technology Association of America.

In a world in which countries measure themselves in terms of economic
might, many intelligence services around the world are shifting their
emphasis and their targets to business, Gates said.
Government-sponsored intelligence operations against companies seek
information about bids on contracts, information that affects the
price of commodities, financial data and banking information.

"They want technological production and marketing information, and
they usually share what they get with their country's companies. To
get this sensitive information, government intelligence services use
many of the techniques developed during the Cold War," said Gates, who
is now dean of the George Bush School of Government and Public Service
at Texas A&M University.

That includes bugging telephones and rifling through papers left in
hotel rooms by visiting businessmen and businesswomen. In addition
government intelligence services are known to plant moles in companies
and steal or surreptitiously download files from unsecured computers.
Several also have "highly sophisticated signal intelligence
capabilities" to intercept even encrypted company communications.
Messages that are not encrypted with the latest technology are
especially vulnerable. These include both telecommunications and
computer communications, including e-mail, the former CIA director
said.

Though the French intelligence service is "probably the most egregious
offender," it is far from alone, Gates said. Russia, China, South
Korea, India, Pakistan, Germany, Israel and Argentina all have some
type of intelligence-gathering operation for the benefit of companies
in their countries, and Gates said many more countries are doing the
same. The U.S., however, is not among them.

"I can assure you that no American intelligence agency conducts
industrial espionage against foreign companies to advantage U.S.
companies," he said. "What we do is support the efforts of our own
government, and that information is not shared with American
companies."

Reports originating in Europe, especially France, that the U.S. is
using signal intelligence capabilities as part of a program called
Echelon to attack European companies to the economic advantage of U.S.
companies are "simply not true," he said.

Another threat comes from the dozens of intelligence services in
developing countries that have profited from the training they
received from the Soviet Union, Eastern European countries and the CIA
during the Cold War. The result of this history is that "the reservoir
of professionally trained intelligence mercenaries is growing."

Other threats include terrorism, organized crime and inside operations
carried out by disgruntled employees and hackers. Some of these groups
are looking for the greatest amount of destruction, and an attack on
the critical information infrastructure of the U.S. would satisfy that
goal.

"Business needs to understand that the criminal and terrorist threat
worldwide is changing and is now both more sophisticated and more
dangerous than anyone would have thought," Gates said.

Vulnerabilities that all the different types of attackers exploit
include open systems, plug-and-play systems, centralized remote
maintenance of systems, remote dial-in and weak encryption. But he
said companies can provide substantial information security protection
for relatively low cost.

He suggested companies review security measures in sensitives areas of
their operations such as research and development, talk to traveling
executives who carry company laptops about using precautions to
prevent theft and examine communications with overseas facilities with
an eye toward installing commercially available encryption that is all
but impossible to crack. The new algorithm recently approved by the
U.S. Commerce Department, for example, is so strong that it would take
an estimated 149 trillion years to unscramble, he said.

Gates also said company executives should limit physical access to
sensitive data and programs and regularly change computer passwords.

"It's all obvious, but every one of you knows how many companies are
lax in their actual implementation," Gates said.

A basic rule is to take time to identify company critical information,
whether it is technology, a production technique, basic research and
development, financial information or marketing strategy, and take
steps to protect it.

"What is required first is simply awareness by CEOs and boards of
directors that there is a threat and then respond using a common-sense
way to protect themselves," Gates said. "These are measures that make
good business sense even if you are not a target of a government
intelligence service, a competitor, a criminal organization, a
terrorist or a hacker."


*==============================================================*
"Communications without intelligence is noise;  Intelligence
without communications is irrelevant." Gen Alfred. M. Gray, USMC
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