| Vol.2 | No.4 |
September 2003
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September 2003
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| Book Review | |
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The Quiet Threat: Fighting Industrial Espionage in America, by Ronald
L. Mendell, Charles C. Thomas, Springfield, Illinois, 2003, 208 pages,
indexed, hardcover $49.95, paper $29.95. REVIEWED BY: Mayer Nudell, CSC, is an independent consultant on crisis management, contingency planning, and related issues. In the age of globalization, the already significant threat of industrial-or corporate-espionage has assumed increased dimensions. Overshadowed by the new emphasis on terrorism, the more-likely threat of such espionage must be a priority concern for security professionals and corporate officials, although frequently the latter pay only lip service to dealing with it until it is too late. Countering industrial espionage is a challenge requiring expertise, knowledge, and education. The Quiet Threat: Fighting Industrial Espionage in America can help to provide all three. Written by ASIS International member and Certified Legal Investigator Ronald L. Mendell, this book does an excellent job of putting industrial espionage into its historical and practical perspective. Using scenarios of various types, Mendell looks at this problem from the vantage points of both the spy and the protector, illustrating how the former identifies targets and attempts to circumvent defenses, and how the latter tries to anticipate the spy's approaches and thwart them. Of particular interest and value is his discussion of the paradoxes related to this challenge for security professionals, noting how changes in the way businesses acquire, process, and use information require security professionals to adapt their defensive techniques-especially in the private sector. The new virtual reality of business imposes a fluid and, in some sense, unpredictable operating environment in which security and information professionals must operate. Frequent personnel changes, mission revisions, and other operational constraints "reflect the angst of trying to protect an organization with ever evolving frontiers," in Mendell's words. After covering the development of industrial espionage from as far back as Francis Walsingham, Christopher Marlowe, and Francis Bacon in the Tudor England of the 1500s, and bringing the reader to the present with discussions of tactics, targets, countermeasures, and resources, Mendell provides a final tough that security professionals will find extremely valuable-a 17-page "Master Checklist" that covers everything one can imagine related to industrial espionage, from a "spy's shopping list" to resources for knowledge-based attacks to point of vulnerability and from tactics such as electronic eavesdropping to disinformation to indicators and suspicious activities. The checklist also includes a range of possible countermeasures and policies that security and information professionals should consider. All-in-all, it is clear that Mendell knows his field and has been able to distill his many years of experience into a well-written, focused, and supleratively useful guidebook. The Quiet Threat: Fighting Industrial Espionage in America is a bit pricey, but belongs on your reading list. |