Corporate Espionage: What It Is, Why It's Happening in Your Company, What You Must Do about It

According to Winkler, a consultant and former analyst with the U.S. National Security Agency, the FBI has reported that industrial espionage costs American businesses anywhere from $24 billion to $100 billion annually. The theft of corporate secrets comes not just from a company's competitors but from foreign nations. With the end of the Cold War, a number of countries have been using their intelligence-gathering capabilities to obtain proprietary information from many of America's major corporations. Winkler notes that while computer hackers infiltrating companies' databases draw the lion's share of attention, most corporate espionage is carried on at a much more mundane level in which ""spies"" gather information through such methods as consulting public records or talking to employees after work. The ""case studies"" that Winkler includes provide a lively and informative look at the way actual companies have been ""attacked"" by outside parties. He devotes some space to the sort of hacker ""who can find new vulnerabilities like a water witch with a divining rod"" and closes by advocating numerous countermeasures that companies can take to protect their information, from simply having enough paper shredders on hand to acquiring sophisticated intrusion detection software that alerts overseers to computer break-ins. In his introduction, Winkler describes his book as ""a safety manual for the information age""; in fact it is an admirable one, with lessons to be heeded within the corporate world. First serial to Inc. magazine; author tour. (June)