Industrial Espionage & Social Media

Most companies are concerned with cyber threats such as hacks, viruses, malware and denial of service attacks. Yet a new threat to industry comes from social media or social networking services. That is industrial espionage by a) recruitment of employees to buy secrets or b) monitoring of employees engaged in social media to gain insights into what is happening and c) moles as employees using social media to engage employees or transmit intelligence. We take a quick look at these threats;

1. Employee Recruitment: Sounds like cold war style stuff doesn’t it? Fact is, it happens and is happening. Someone makes “friends” via a social networking connection and over time builds a trust relationship with that person. The end-goal being to get key information from that employee. The agent doing the recruiting may be a State employee working for an intelligence department or it may be a competitor who has staff that do this (usually former police or intelligence officers) or retain a third party.

2. Monitoring for Social Network Intelligence: Using data mining tools, social media monitoring services or through manual research and assessment, a competitive company or government looks for keywords and small bits of information. This is intelligence that can be used to assess corporate activities like moving into a new market, taking over another company or product information. Employees who use services like Twitter, blogs or Facebook may not even realize the damage they can cause through sharing information – what they think is an innocent comment, connected by a trained analyst can draw a bigger picture for a competitor.

3. Employee Moles: A government or competitor may insert an employee into a company in a department where they may be able to steal corporate secrets such as software, product plans, financial information etc. This is a challenge for companies and depends on their security procedures and perceived level of threat. This is a fairly common practice however and companies can have difficulty in Canada, US, EU and UK with regards to how much they can dig into a persons background or ask for information. Nor can a company dictate what a person does outside work hours, such as being on Facebook or using Twitter.

Influence Competitors: The New Corporate Threat

A whole new scale of threat has evolved for corporations, and governments as well, in the court of public opinion. We call them Influence Competitors, some have called them Irregular Competitors. Regardless, these competitors are looking to influence the views and opinions of the same market businesses and governments may be looking to influence. Only they’re opposed to your views.

The way citizens and consumers receive, consume and share information today is highly complex, fast and easily spread to their own networks. Every person has a network of people that they have influence over, just as companies, governments and other organisations do, from markets to the general public. Today, it is very easy to influence people. It is also very hard to influence people. The biggest Influence Competitors that pose a threat to corporations and sometimes governments are activist groups. Non-Government Organisations and Non-Profits who target the practices of corporations they disagree with and government policy attempts or legislative moves they feel threaten their agenda or audience. Sometimes, competing companies will align with Influence Competitors as well, providing an entirely new dynamic to a company’s competitive landscape. At other times, activist groups will work with opposing political parties to the one in power, again adding a new dynamic.

Influence Competitors leverage social media as their primary tools with industrial news media used mainly to drive the message to social media where the battle for influence really begins. In industrial news media, an NGO may only get 3 minutes tops in the news cycle and then for only limited periods. Once they have eyeballs online, compelling content is used through video, images, text and sound to deliver sophisticated messaging and even encourages dialogue.

The Confidence Factor
Once an Influence Competitor has developed online dialogue through social media services and an audience has grown, it’s influence grows and they may then become an Authority Competitor. When citizens or consumers see others engaged in dialogue, actively contributing and adding content, this provides individuals with a sense of confidence – that others are committed to the cause. This creates the authority of the organisation (you might call it crowdsourcing your citizen activists) and it becomes increasingly difficult to unseat an Authority Competitor. Corporations or governments that don’t respond, or offer very little response, quickly lose influence share and citizens then take action.

So What? Why Does Citizens Shouting On Facebook Even Matter?
It’s easy to think they don’t. It’s easy to shrug off people venting on Twitter or blog posts and Facebook group pages. The reality is, it does matter and it has a very tangible, measurable and direct impact. The real-world results are phone calls, emails and letters to Senators, Members of Parliament, Congressional Representatives, industrial news media. Petitions go round. Protests happen. Sometimes, employees are attacked or facilities burned down or otherwise damaged. Or in the case of London, riots occur. Social media tools go from driving the idea to then being used for organising direct real-world activities.

Understanding Influence Competitor Threats
No social media monitoring tool will help. They may tell only part of the story and they’re not good warning indicators. What’s needed is a deep analysis into the lead Influence Competitor social graph, their connections, size of community, past campaigns and outcomes, current activities and more. Monitoring tools play a part, but analysis and insight from industry specialists, anthropologists, sociologists and law enforcement adds an unparalleled level of insight. Once this is known, then a strategy can be used.

Mobile Will Increase The Threat Level
As more and more citizens use SmartPhones and tablets like the iPad to participate in social media services, the threat from Influence Competitors will only increase. With the ability to live-stream video and instantly upload photo’s integrated with real-time services like Twitter, the challenge to monitor and then dig deep into the issues will become increasingly difficult. This will present a new challenge for public and investor relations teams, marketers, corporate legal counsel and the C-suite. CEO’s if they are the spokesperson, will face some interesting challenges. These are issues well beyond simple reputation management of a brand.

What Kind of Threats?
This is where influence and authority trump reputation management. The types of threats coming from Influence Competitors are those that can cause significant economic damage or bring down a government (such as Egypt, but that’s okay, it was a dictatorship) or potentially cause catastrophic damage to a company. These threats include;

- Derailing legislative efforts

- Destroying lobbying efforts

- Changes in legislation that derails a corporate plan

- Causing damage to physical assets

- Threatening employees or causing harm

- Cause a stock price to plummet or a competitors to rise

- Balance the influence in favor of a competitor

- Create petitions and enable an opposition government to cause collapse of a government in power

Fortunately we provide analysis and monitoring of Influence Competitors. Look for our White Paper coming soon. In a world of Big Data, companies and governments need to be able to quickly sift through vast amounts of information to find the intelligence that matters.

What’s Your Competitor Twitting About?

Microblogging – Twitter, Identi.ca, Plurk etc., all started with Twitter well over a year ago. Most pundits (myself included) wondered what the use of Twitter was. Now, 2 years later, so many people are on Twitter and others that one wonders why wouldn’t someone be involved? But as a source for competitive intelligence? Certainly. It’s just “how” it’s used.

There is now however, potentially valuable business intelligence in Microblogs. One has to know what they are looking for however. We also speculate that as it is a young service and people tend to speak very freely,  there is the chance someone may reveal confidential information for a public company. So in what ways can you gather insights for business intelligence via Microblogs?

People Indicators: People may Twit (write) about job openings or lay-offs. Valuable indicators to competitors, including the ability to anticipate upcoming financial results for public companies. You might also find potential new hires.

Positioning: With TwitUps and PlurkShops (a type of real-time conference) taking place, you can gain valuable insights into how and where your competitor is positioning themselves. Additionally, you can gather leads of attendees for your marketing database.

Market Moves: Perhaps employees from your competition are traveling to trade shows or new markets pursuing business. Their Twits about this can tip you off to what they’re up to.

Brand Strategy: You can gather a trend in a branding strategy over a period of time, understand the thought leadership plan quicker than other methods and monitor the markets response to a company brand.

Product Feedback: You can monitor the reception of your competitors product/service through Microblogging posts. You’ll also gather your own.

There are other uses, but these outline what we feel are the main ones. Perhaps you can think of others? It is important to remember though, that it’s harder to lurk in Microblogs, especially one like Purk where participation is key to learning more.

Like Social Media monitoring as a whole, you want to have a strategy in place and someone who can sift through the information to pull out the useful nuggets and direct them to the appropriate place. Giving a Business Analyst on your team access to such tools is an advantage.