In Saturday’s New York Times Nicole Perlroth wrote an article on Cyber-Terror called “Traveling Light in a Time of Digital Thievery.” The article discusses the great lengths companies are going to, including banning their employees from taking sensitive forms of information to certain countries due to cyber-espionage concerns, as well as requiring employees to carry loaner laptops and other measures that at first blush seem extreme.
This behavior is well-justified, as the article points out, because there is some strong evidence of coordinated cyber and other asymmetric threats, and a quote at the end of the article highlights the issue:
In the meantime, companies are leaking critical information, often without realizing it.
“The Chinese are very good at covering their tracks,” said Scott Aken, a former F.B.I. agent who specialized in counterintelligence and computer intrusion. “In most cases, companies don’t realize they’ve been burned until years later when a foreign competitor puts out their very same product — only they’re making it 30 percent cheaper.”
“We’ve already lost our manufacturing base,” he said. “Now we’re losing our R. & D. base. If we lose that, what do we fall back on?”
The example from Mr. Aken makes the point well—if you fail to protect your company’s critical information you may be dooming your business to failure. Protecting your company requires strategic planning and attention from top-level executives, because losing your businesses’ competitive edge to espionage is truly a “bet-the-company” concern that needs to be addressed at the C-Level.
The Lares Institute, through its work with the Center for Asymmetric Warfare, or CAW, has developed a working group on cyber-terrorism and national security that can serve as a resource on these issues. The CAW is an operational research and field test and evaluation center aligned under the Department of Defense Naval Postgraduate School. The CAW facilitates the improvement of preparedness and capabilities of agencies and organizations to prevent, defend and mitigate the effects of asymmetric threats and more information regarding the CAW can be found here.
This example also highlights an often overlooked issue–and an opportunity for businesses—many businesses do not focus on how they can utilize information within their own organization to achieve competitive advantage. While information that results in protectable intellectual property, the focus of the comments above, is often a critical asset for business, there are many other ways that business can, and should, use information to gain competitive advantages, and one main way is aiding executive decision-making.
As every executive knows, one of the keys to executive decision-making is making sure your company’s executive leadership team has the right information, at the right time, so that they can increase profits, drive progress, and gain the competitive advantages that the superior use of information can create. While this is a goal all businesses strive for, it is much easier to talk about than to achieve.
At the Lares Institute we use the term “Information Superiority” for the approaches we take to help businesses achieve this important goal, including through the creation and implementation of a sound information-based strategy. This approach focuses on creating structures and programs to horizontally share information in ways that help your business and aid executive decision-making. This structure also can help your company fashion strategies to guide decision-making about the protection of information from security threats, such as those highlighted in Ms. Perlroth’s article.
Both in order to manage risks, and improve your business, your company should consider implementing strategies to protect information, and also to gain value through the use of information.
In short, opportunity awaits you, but waiting is no longer an option.