Mr Jun Essay example

Submitted By skybluejl
Words: 1642
Pages: 7

Industrial Espionage
First of all, the first potential electronic crime threat will be industrial espionage. With almost every information store in a computer network, mobile phone or even cloud storing, it is possible to steal almost anything from corporation with the right computer hacking skills.

Today, industrial espionage possess the biggest threat toward organization, whose livelihood depends on information and it is all store inside PC. With businesses storing intellectual property and confidential information within networked systems, spying operations are much easier to implement and can be much more rewarding for the perpetrators. All information kept in computer storage are highly confidential which consist of client data, supplier invoice, contract, research and development documents and prototype data developing latest product or service. All this information is a potentially a rich intellectual asset to a diligent individual or competitor. Once this information are stolen, eventually it will cause a devastating financial effect on a business.

All works are mostly computerize today and may be perform outside of orgaization. Some employee will carry their task at home or occasionally work in anywhere that has Internet access. Employee will use their own thumbdrive or with today online storage convenience like Dropbox to save their data and open it anywhere.
When work are urgently to be sent out via email, employee will search for places that has Wi-Fi availability to perform their work. Any employee may be corporate key figure in researching and developing a new product and has all prototype data. Vulnerability exist that bring to industrial espionage is when some employee may not be aware that open network hotspot could be a fake hotspot created by espionage for them to gain access into computer.
Espionage will then relied on this open wireless network to gain access into employee computer network. Technique use by espionage is to put a ‘fake hotspot' in order to trick employee to connect the hotspot. This has gave espionage the access and spying employee activity while he is using the PC. Espionage would have gain password access to any website storage like Dropbox and ultimately stealing corporate confidential prototype plan and research result.

Affect small business profitabilty:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2046300/hackers-put-a-bulls-eye-on-small-business.html

The first impact causes from Industrial espionage will be affect a small business profitability. Once a company pricing information is stolen, competitor will use this information as benchmark and counter attack company by lower their price of bidding. This sort of incident may always happen in a construction industry especially when bidding for a government project. This will affect company business opportunity. When espionage happen, company has lost competitive edge to win the bid whereby their pricing idea has been stolen and has further adjusted at mark down by competitor.
When company lost the contract, it means it has lost it revenue and further it will affect company profit.

(http://faculty.usfsp.edu/gkearns/Articles_Fraud/corporate%20espionage.pdf)

For example, by referring to above case, assume it is a small business where it has only one project to bid. If espionage case does not happen, company will have a revenue of $900million. However due to espionage, company who is a victim has straightaway lost the whole contract and will have zero revenue to sustain any fix cost of business.
This incident will also impact all its business partner such as suppliers and bank. Supplier and bank will starts to get worry once they have found out company stop securing contract and may start to make loss. In short term, if company still unable to bid for new project, it may goes in to loss making situation and face liquidity issue. Company may start delaying paying debt to supplier and bank. Any debt due to supplier