This past February, five individuals and five companies were charged with economic espionage and theft of trade secrets for their roles in a long-running effort to obtain information for the benefit of companies controlled by the government of the People’s Republic of China.
According to the superseding indictment, the PRC government was after information on chloride-route titanium dioxide (TiO2) production capabilities. TiO2 is a commercially valuable white pigment with numerous uses, including coloring paints, plastics, and paper. DuPont, a company based in Wilmington, Delaware, invented the chloride-route process for manufacturing TiO2 and invested heavily in research and development to improve the process over the years. In 2011, the company reported that its TiO2 trade secrets had been stolen.
Among the individuals charged in the case? Two long-time DuPont employees…one of whom pled guilty in fairly short order.
Foreign economic espionage against the U.S. is a significant and growing threat to our country’s economic health and security...and so is the threat from corporate insiders willing to carry it out.
And because we’re now in the digital age, insiders—who not so many years ago had to photocopy and smuggle mountains of documents out of their offices—can now share documents via e-mail or download them electronically on easy-to-hide portable devices.
Why do insiders do it? Lots of reasons, including greed or financial need, unhappiness at work, allegiance to another company or another country, vulnerability to blackmail, the promise of a better job, and/or drug or alcohol abuse.
How to stop them? Obviously, a strong organizational emphasis on personnel and computer security is key, and the FBI conducts outreach efforts with industry partners—like InfraGard—that offer a variety of security and counterintelligence training sessions, awareness seminars, and information.
You can help as well. In our experience, those who purloin trade secrets and other sensitive information from their own companies and sell them overseas exhibit certain behaviors that co-workers could have picked up on ahead of time, possibly preventing the information breaches in the first place. Many co-workers came forward only after the criminal was arrested. Had they reported those suspicions earlier, the company’s secrets may have been kept safe.
Here are some warning signs that MAY indicate that employees are spying and/or stealing secrets from their company:
- They work odd hours without authorization.
- Without need or authorization, they take proprietary or other information home in hard copy form and/or on thumb drives, computer disks, or e-mail.
- They unnecessarily copy material, especially if it’s proprietary or classified.
- They disregard company policies about installing personal software or hardware, accessing restricted websites, conducting unauthorized searches, or downloading confidential material.
- They take short trips to foreign countries for unexplained reasons.
- They engage in suspicious personal contacts with competitors, business partners, or other unauthorized individuals.
- They buy things they can’t afford.
- They are overwhelmed by life crises or career disappointments.
- They are concerned about being investigated, leaving traps to detect searches of their home or office or looking for listening devices or cameras.
