Industrial Espionage Research Articles

Academic Community – the Target of the KGB of the Lithuanian SSR

Starting from the very beginning of the Soviet occupation, the academic community became the target of the Soviet government. The government aimed to break the elite of society because of its potential and real resistance against the system and to subject it to its policies. Education and science institutions, therefore, were very important in the fight of the Soviet regime for human consciousness. Education was to be used for Communist indoctrination and instilling the values of the worldview important to the Soviet regime both in the country and outside the country. In addition, science institutions had an important role to play in the Cold War race with the West in the areas of science, technology and industry. With their discoveries, scientists had to help create the superiority of the Soviet system against the West. Furthermore, in the guise of scientific relations with the West, there was an opportunity for “intelligence activities”. The KGB, using its resources, helped the Communist Party implement its objectives in conjunction with the academic community. The KGB paid great attention to the behaviour of the representatives of the academic community, their attitudes towards government policies and other issues, monitored their relationships, analysed anti-Soviet manifestations among students and lecturers, and sought to identify and eliminate people who according to the authorities were unreliable. A network of agents was established for the implementation of these tasks, but it was not as broad as the KGB desired. Lithuanian scholars and scholars of the Lithuanian diaspora served both as the tool and the target of the implementation of the Communist Party propaganda campaigns. Achievements demonstrated by Lithuanian scientists in the West had to declare the progress of the Soviet system and also to discredit political campaigns by the diaspora. Scholars recruited by the KGB had a none-the-less important role to play in carrying out the KGB tasks of technical and industrial espionage in the West and thus helping create the image of superiority of the Soviet Union. Conferences and internships both in the West and in Lithuania were the perfect medium for collecting a variety of scientific and technical information. KGB agent reports show that achievements in medicine and in particular in the laser area, dominated in the records obtained by the agents.

AI security in different industries: A comprehensive review of vulnerabilities and mitigation strategies

Artificial intelligence has quickly and gradually spread across all sectors and fields, achieving exceptional performance in operations and decision-making. Yet, as industries process their tasks with the help of AI systems, new threats appear that require proper solutions. In the following section of this paper, the use of security solutions involving AI in various industries, which are finance, health, manufacturing, and government, as well as a discussion of risks involving artificial intelligence in particular fields and the corresponding measures to be taken against them will be discussed. AI is often applied to detect fraud and credit scoring in the financial sector but has potential risks, such as adversarial attacks and data manipulation. Similarly, the healthcare industry uses AI for predictive healthcare diagnostics and patient information protection; threats are data theft and adversarial examples attacking diagnostic models. In manufacturing, AI individuals contain predictive servicing and excellent control, though they are constantly exposed to industrial espionage and the sabotage of AI models. In retail, however, AI is used to improve marketing and predict consumer behavior. While these benefits exist, questions about using Algorithms that could be biased and privacy infringements continue to raise their ugly head. Defensive and governmental organizations that apply AI for surveillance or automatic operating systems are most vulnerable to adversarial intervention with key control systems and innate security systems. To counter such threats, this paper provides details of industry-specific measures, including adversarial training data sanitization, AI model audit, and privacy-preserving approaches. We illustrate examples linked to every one of these methods to show how they can be deployed in a variety of industries and to guard AI systems. To this end, the following review of the relationship between AI and cybersecurity demonstrates that security measures that rely on artificial intelligence must be regularly checked and updated. This reveals the call for proper, protective, and industry-specific measures to manage the risks and protect AI applications to ensure that the world’s modern, interconnected world is safe for AI.

We need to aim at the top: Factors associated with cybersecurity awareness of cyber and information security decision-makers.

Cyberattacks pose a significant business risk to organizations. Although there is ample literature focusing on why people pose a major risk to organizational cybersecurity and how to deal with it, there is surprisingly little we know about cyber and information security decision-makers who are essentially the people in charge of setting up and maintaining organizational cybersecurity. In this paper, we study cybersecurity awareness of cyber and information security decision-makers, and investigate factors associated with it. We conducted an online survey among Slovenian cyber and information security decision-makers (N = 283) to (1) determine whether their cybersecurity awareness is associated with adoption of antimalware solutions in their organizations, and (2) explore which organizational factors and personal characteristics are associated with their cybersecurity awareness. Our findings indicate that awareness of well-known threats and solutions seems to be quite low for individuals in decision-making roles. They also provide insights into which threats (e.g., distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, botnets, industrial espionage, and phishing) and solutions (e.g., security operation center (SOC), advanced antimalware solutions with endpoint detection and response (EDR)/extended detection and response (XDR) capabilities, organizational critical infrastructure access control, centralized device management, multi-factor authentication, centralized management of software updates, and remote data deletion on lost or stolen devices) are cyber and information security decision-makers the least aware of. We uncovered that awareness of certain threats and solutions is positively associated with either adoption of advanced antimalware solutions with EDR/XDR capabilities or adoption of SOC. Additionally, we identified significant organizational factors (organizational role type) and personal characteristics (gender, age, experience with information security and experience with information technology (IT)) related to cybersecurity awareness of cyber and information security decision-makers. Organization size and formal education were not significant. These results offer insights that can be leveraged in targeted cybersecurity training tailored to the needs of groups of cyber and information security decision-makers based on these key factors.

Detecting Indoor Tiny Autonomous Malicious Drones within Critical Infrastructures: An Innovative Algorithm based on Harmonic Radar-Equipped Mini-Drones

Critical infrastructures play a central role in the welfare of contemporary societies and they should properly function 24/7. Since their role is so important, they regularly become targets of malicious parties, terrorists, industrial spies, and even hostile governments. In this paper, the scenario of cyber or physical attacks to CIs from tiny autonomous malicious drones is analyzed. In particular, this work focuses on indoor spaces, protected by mini-drones. The mini-drones are equipped with harmonic radar and run a novel algorithm, which guides them to scan the whole area. Assuming that the malicious drones behave as non-linear systems, the mini-drones transmit signals and analyze the received signals, creating a non-linear system 3D location map for the whole space. In the consecutive scans, any changes on the 3D location map indicate that the malicious drone has changed location. Simulated results and comparisons to state-of-the-art approaches exhibit the cost-effectiveness and time efficiency of the proposed scheme as well as its limitations.

ІНФОРМАЦІЙНІ РЕСУРСИ СИСТЕМИ ЗАБЕЗПЕЧЕННЯ КОРПОРАТИВНОЇ БЕЗПЕКИ БІЗНЕСУ

The study revealed the relevance of the issue of managing corporate business security, namely from the standpoint of forming information and analytical support for the management of these processes. The research method was the improvement of the formation of theoretical-methodical and applied principles using information resources of the system for ensuring corporate business security. It has been proven that information resources provide a number of important functions and tasks in the management system of corporate business security. In general, the system of such support is formed in the following directions: (1) analysis of the business security system; (2) identification of risks and threats from the external business environment; (3) identification of internal risks and threats; (4) management and protection of information, ensuring information security; (5) business intelligence and countering economic espionage. It was concluded that for each of the identified areas, appropriate information is needed, which corresponds to the following nature of the need. Thus, within the framework of the analysis of the business security system, information is needed that includes financial and economic indicators, production indicators, labor indicators and which includes marketing aspects of the enterprise; within the scope of identification of challenges, risks and threats that come from the external business environment - analytical reviews of markets, data on competitors; reviews of the business environment, analytics, trends, expert opinions on expected changes in legislation and their consequences for business; to identify internal risks and threats - data from internal structural divisions on expected risks and threats, personnel characteristics, socionics results, reports on the rhythm of production and sales of products; within the framework of effective activity in the field of data and information protection - the level of protection of commercial information, the level of security of document circulation, the quality of information and analytical support; for the implementation of effective business intelligence - innovative and technological activities of leading competitors, objects of their intellectual property, as well as all internal information security parameters. It is argued that the collection and use of such data - information resources allows to effectively solve a whole set of tasks in the corporate security management system of business, namely, the formation of full-fledged information and analytical support for the analysis of the state, level, and structural characteristics of security; identification of existing and existing threats by directions: competitors, counterparties, decisions of authorities, factors of the external environment; temporary identification and prejudice of factors of decrease in efficiency, deliberate destructive actions of personnel, intra-company entrepreneurship, spread of low-quality, "wrong" business processes, business technologies; achieving a high level of information hygiene, cyber security, an appropriate level of information protection, preventing its leakage in any form and manifestation; Collection of the latest data for timely response to the actions of competitors, getting ahead of them by strengthening business competitiveness, protection against economic espionage.

Beyond the Radar: Understanding Wardriving?s Impact on Corporate Espionage and Prevention Strategies

Beyond the Radar: Understanding Wardriving?s Impact on Corporate Espionage and Prevention Strategies

Practice of international relations: potential for transfer to other spheres

In today's world, there is a close intertwining of academic disciplines and spheres of practical interaction. To identify a potential for transfer of international practices, the authors of this study attempt to elicit cases of successful transfer of practical experience from International Relations and world politics to other fields, as well as provide illustrative examples of parallel development of similar practices. As one of the most extensive practices in the realm of International Relations, diplomacy appears to contain a large number of relevant cases. Transfer and parallel development of negotiation techniques and mediation technologies manifest themselves both in the related sphere of domestic politics and in corporate culture. Another example of business borrowing international practices is the institution of industrial espionage, which nowadays might be compared to the institution of political-military espionage in terms of its scale and organization. The study also focuses on the phenomena of parallel development of social practices, namely emancipation. While it is regarded as a process of gaining legal independence in the sphere of law, in International Relations it denotes a rejection of the idea of domination of a certain order or ideological stance. The final part of the study is dedicated to the consideration of typologies of behavior, as well as analogies and metaphors, in various social spheres. Metaphors and analogies unite such seemingly distant disciplines as International Relations and folklore studies. In addition to allusions to foreign policy events, which appear with a certain frequency in mass culture, the authors also present possible parallels between the structure of fairy tales and that of political conflict. On the grounds of the case studies, the paper highlights the diversity of areas of international engagement that have directly or indirectly contributed, or could contribute, to the emergence and/or development of other practice areas.

Інтелектуальний капітал і його значення для забезпечення економічної стабільності та національної безпеки

In today’s context of globalization and rapid technological development, intellectual capital has become a crucial resource for ensuring economic stability and national security. Unlike traditional factors of production such as land and labor, modern economic models are based on knowledge, innovation, and technology, which drive countries’ competitiveness in the international arena. Intellectual capital encompasses all intangible assets that create added value, including knowledge, skills, patents, technologies, organizational culture, and more. Its importance to national security is underscored by the necessity to foster innovation, cybersecurity, and effective management of information resources in the face of modern threats. It has been demonstrated that the introduction of new technologies and product development significantly boosts economic activity, which in turn stimulates the creation of new jobs. Employment levels increase, and the overall well-being of the population improves. Intellectual capital provides the foundation for the development of new defense systems, cybersecurity, the protection of intellectual property, and strategic risk management. Economic stability is a critical indicator for any country, as it determines the population’s standard of living, the competitiveness of enterprises, and resilience to global crises. It has been established that the weighted distribution of each element’s contribution to national security is based on various factors: cybersecurity (25%), protection of information resources (20%), the role of science (20%), defense capability (15%), and strategic risk management (20%). Protecting intellectual property, including patents, copyrights, and trademarks, becomes a key factor in preserving scientific and technological achievements and preventing industrial espionage. Keywords: intellectual capital, economic stability, national security, innovation, human capital, information security, structural capital, enterprises.

In the Land of Marvels: Science, Fabricated Realities, and Industrial Espionage in the Age of the Grand Tour by Paola Bertucci (review)

In the Land of Marvels: Science, Fabricated Realities, and Industrial Espionage in the Age of the Grand Tour by Paola Bertucci (review)

Факторы, влияющие на обеспечение корпоративной безопасности компаний

Corporate security is a comprehensive system of measures designed to protect an organization's assets, data, employees, and reputation from potential threats. This article discusses various factors that can increase an organization's vulnerability to security threats. The independent and combined effects of internal controls, such as training programs and data protection protocols, as well as external threats such as cyber-attacks, physical intrusions and economic espionage, are being investigated. A key aspect of the analysis is the idea of synergy in the field of security. The article argues that a well-coordinated approach combining various security measures into a single whole creates a more effective protection strategy. The analysis of the interdependencies between the various controls highlights the importance of implementing a strategic threat management program that goes beyond individual solutions. By contributing to a comprehensive understanding of vulnerabilities and the effectiveness of synergistic security measures, the article aims to equip organizations with the knowledge and tools to develop and implement effective threat management programs that protect their critical assets and contribute to long-term success.

Addressing Criminal Liability for Misuse of Trade Secrets Under Australian Law: Is the Current Legal Framework Adequate to Protect the Interests of Owners of Trade Secrets?

The emergence and dominance of knowledge-based economies have heightened the importance of trade secrets as a “currency” for attaining competitiveness in the market and driving innovation. Yet espousing policies to govern trade secret protection, especially in the criminal law sphere, was not something on which legislative and regulatory policymakers traditionally focused. Recent legislative incentives at a global level have caused the tide to shift and, after decades of being somewhat neglected, the questions pertaining to criminal liability for trade secret misuse are finally gaining attention. The Australian response to recent initiatives ensued in 2018 with the enactment of the National Security Legislation Amendment (Espionage and Foreign Interference) Act 2018 (Cth) (“EFI Act”) which introduced the first statutory provisions dedicated to criminalisation of state-sponsored theft (economic espionage) of trade secrets. This Act, however, does not provide a comprehensive legal framework to address criminal liability for trade secret misuse, as it leaves outside the scope of its regulation the criminalisation of the theft of trade secrets by individuals for their own benefit. This paper analyses the adequacy of the Australian legal regime concerning criminal liability for trade secret misuse. The analysis is informed by a comparison of the legal provisions of the Australian trade secret regime with that adopted in the United States (“U.S.”) which currently offers a comprehensive framework of protection and criminalises economic espionage as well as the theft of trade secrets. This comparative analysis serves to determine: first, whether the “one way” avenue of statutory protection under Australian law suffices to protect the interests of the owners of trade secrets; and, second, whether a potential reform of the regime designed to include dedicated statutory provisions to criminalise the theft of trade secrets, as is the case in the U.S., could potentially afford a more adequate protection of the interests of trade secret owners.

A Review on Detection of Cybersecurity Threats in Banking Sectors Using Ai Based Risk Assessment

The continued rise of cybercrime in the current era has frightened not only off-users but also violating financial institutions. The recent studies have shown that most financial institutions lose the credibility of their clients and their investments as a result of these attacks. The cyber-hackers involved in these types of cybercrime are now using more advanced technology. Its vigour surpasses the firewall system currently in use our network. Hence, the security needs for financial institutions are increased. So, the server management and cyber security systems getting higher end security. The cyber security aspects are is always shifting based on the attacks, but the cyber security threats are increased and create the serious discussion about the financial institutions. In General, the cyberspace describes the combination of all types of communication networks, databases, embedded processors, Internet and controllers for exchanging electronic documents. The global network environment is created by telephone wires, coaxial cables, electromagnetic waves and fiber-optic lines. Although the terms cyberspace and the Internet can be used interchangeably, it is still part of cyberspace. In simple terms, cyberspace is a connected web environment. Now, cyber-security is the process of protecting cyberspace from attack, misuse, damage and economic espionage. Cyberspace can sometimes be blocked by intrinsic vulnerabilities that cannot be eliminated. In this study, different types of cyber cards are explained in detail. And the escape processes from certain subtle attack methods are clearly stated.

Induced alterations driven compromised structural properties in additively manufactured products

PurposeAdditive manufacturing also known as 3D printing is an evolving advanced manufacturing technology critical for the new era of complex machinery and operating systems. Manufacturing systems are increasingly faced with risk of attacks not only by traditional malicious actors such as hackers and cyber-criminals but also by some competitors and organizations engaged in corporate espionage. This paper aims to elaborate a plausible risk practice of designing and demonstrate a case study for the compromised-based malicious for polymer 3D printing system.Design/methodology/approachThis study assumes conditions when a machine was compromised and evaluates the effect of post compromised attack by studying its effects on tensile dog bone specimens as the printed object. The designed algorithm removed predetermined specific number of layers from the tensile samples. The samples were visually identical in terms of external physical dimensions even after removal of the layers. Samples were examined nondestructively for density. Additionally, destructive uniaxial tensile tests were carried out on the modified samples and compared to the unmodified sample as a control for various mechanical properties. It is worth noting that the current approach was adapted for illustrating the impact of cyber altercations on properties of additively produced parts in a quantitative manner. It concurrently pointed towards the vulnerabilities of advanced manufacturing systems and a need for designing robust mitigation/defense mechanism against the cyber altercations.FindingsDensity, Young’s modulus and maximum strength steadily decreased with an increase in the number of missing layers, whereas a no clear trend was observed in the case of % elongation. Post tensile test observations of the sample cross-sections confirmed the successful removal of the layers from the samples by the designed method. As a result, the current work presented a cyber-attack model and its quantitative implications on the mechanical properties of 3D printed objects.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the original work from the team. It is currently not under consideration for publication in any other avenue. The paper provides quantitative approach of realizing impact of cyber intrusions on deteriorated performance of additively manufactured products. It also enlists important intrusion mechanisms relevant to additive manufacturing.

Intellectual Property Rights and Economical Development: A Brief Overview

A "strong" IPRs regime, in the sense of providing robust protection of private intellectual property rights, was not a necessary prerequisite for their economic growth, according to the historical experiences of the now-developed nations while they were growing themselves, which we reviewed. Most of them did not provide PIPRs with any real protection until quite late in their development related to life science and especially biotechnology. Even the most developed nations, like the UK and the US, didn't create robust PIPRs regimes until the middle of the 19th century (with the exception of copyright protection in the US's instance), while the less developed nations didn't establish such regimes until much later. The legal framework governing the ownership and protection of intangible works of human intelligence, such as inventions, literary and creative creations, designs, symbols, names, and pictures used in commerce, is known as the Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) regime. This system consists of international agreements, rules, and laws that provide owners or inventors of intellectual property the exclusive right to profit from their creations or investments in them. For the purposes of this paper, it is more important to note that all of these nations were quite willing to v30isolate the intellectual property rights (IPRs) of other nations, even when they had put in place laws protecting the IPRs. Examples include hiring illegal foreign labor, smuggling machinery, industrial espionage, violating trademark laws, allowing the patenting of imported inventions, and outright refusing to adopt the patent system (in the case of the Netherlands and Switzerland) related to life science and especially biotechnology. Some nations approached this issue in ways that can only be described. The best examples include the routine infringement of British trademarks by German producers in the late 19th century, when the nation was pressuring Switzerland to enact a patent law, and the US pressing other nations for the "improvement" of their patent laws in the lead-up to the adoption of the Paris Convention while flatly refusing to protect foreign copyrights related to life science and especially biotechnology. We talked about the issues with the dominant IPR regime that is now in place, which is centered on the patent system, and the TRIPS agreement that represents its apex. Contrary to popular belief, a "good" IPRs regime need not provide the strongest protection for private IPRs. Next, we looked at whether developing nations would likely gain from a stronger PIPRs system, particularly the one required under the TRIPS. Given that most developing nations do minimal R&D and that much of the new information they produce is not patentable, the "domestic" advantages of a stronger IPRs system—that is, an increase in knowledge production by the citizens—are probably relatively minor related to life science.

The Useful Cinema of State Secrecy. On Some Socialist Romanian Spy Films

A decree passed by the socialist Romanian state at the beginning of the 1970s stipulated the need to defend state secrets as a condition for the country’s economic and social progress in the context of its growing participation in world commerce. While the law operated with a wide notion of state secrecy, referring to any piece of information which, if disclosed, could jeopardize the Romanian state’s interests, it included harsh regulations with regard to personal contacts with foreign citizens and served primarily for establishing a heightened operative control over the local economic life. Following the Romanian State Security Council’s encouragement of campaigns for popular education, which should help prevent any trespassing of this decree, the early 1970s saw the commissioning of several instruction films made by the newly founded Film Service of the Ministry of the Interior as a form of ‘counterintelligence training of the working class’. The present paper contextualizes and closely analyzes some of these films staging fictional cases of industrial espionage and their subsequent investigation by State Security as a form of useful cinema, arguing that, aside from their main educational mission of raising awareness about the legal responsibilities ensuing from the decrees concerning state secrecy, these films also acted as an instrument of national, geopolitical and institutional self-representation.

An Ethical Framework for Economic Intelligence

It can be argued that intelligence activity has ethical value through its important role in detecting, preventing, and countering threats that would cause harm to the political community and its members. What has been relatively overlooked, however, is the potentially (un)ethical role of intelligence in the economic sphere—that is, whether secret intelligence acts of economic espionage and economic covert action can be used against another (potentially aggressive) state’s economy or economic actors as a means of protecting one’s own economic, social, and military security. Economic intelligence works to create a competitive economic or political advantage, but this can cause harm that is more likely to be disproportionate and inflicted on those who have done nothing to warrant it. The harms caused by economic intelligence can be widely spread across society and against those who are unjustified targets. To account for this, additional care needs to be given to questions of proportionality and discrimination.

Internal and external threats to enterprise security: essence and diagnostics

The paper studies the essence and diagnostics of internal and external threats to enterprise security. External threats to the enterprise are identified, in particular, unfavorable changes in the political and economic situation in the country, the use of unfair competition methods, unreliability of suppliers, partners and contractors, natural and technical emergencies, unauthorized access of competitors to confidential information of the enterprise, imperfection of the regulatory framework, industrial and economic espionage, changes in consumer tastes and preferences. The author identifies internal threats to the enterprise, in particular, low professional level of the top management of the enterprise, violation of labor discipline, outflow of qualified personnel, decrease in the professional qualification level of personnel, violation of the regime of commercial secrecy, low level of innovation activity of the enterprise, lack of an effective planning system at all levels, low technical and technological levels of production. The author analyzes what negative consequences can result from threats to the security of an enterprise from its administrative and managerial staff and personnel in general, suppliers and other contractors and consumers. The author identifies the tools whose implementation can preventively influence key business processes and minimize negative consequences in the event of threats. As for the tool that has effectively proven itself among enterprises in developed countries and is used to support the internal environment in terms of developing managerial and human resources, it is worth noting the corporate entrepreneurship assessment tool (CEAI). As for the tool that is actively used, including by domestic entrepreneurs, to collect and analyze customer data, which allows storing information about the history of interaction with customers and increasing their loyalty, it is worth mentioning a CRM system.

ПРОМИСЛОВЕ ШПИГУНСТВО: ТЕРМІНОЛОГІЧНИЙ АСПЕКТ

The article examines the theoretical aspects of industrial espionage in the terminological context. It substantiates the importance of protecting trade secrets from industrial espionage against the background of an increase in their share in the structure of the intellectual property portfolio and strengthening their contribution to the competitiveness of innovative companies in the global economic space. The paper also examines the essence of industrial espionage through the prism of comparison with other categories, namely, economic espionage, corporate espionage, and competitive intelligence. It explores different approaches to the interpretation of these categories. The analysis reveals the existence of variants of their identification, synonymous use, and a certain intersection of essential features. Based on the results of the comparison of industrial espionage, economic espionage, corporate espionage, and competitive intelligence, it is established that these categories are independent and non-identical, with certain common features, which is a manifestation of the dialectical combination of the general and the particular for various forms of gaining access to commercially valuable information. The publication highlights important features of industrial espionage that reveal its essential characteristics, including: systematic, planned nature of implementation; typically, a high level of organisation and preparation; targeted focus on gaining competitive advantage/ income; unauthorised access to information that constitutes a trade secret; violation of legal and ethical standards by individuals and legal entities for private purposes; hidden nature; a wide range of types and tools; no sectoral restrictions on the scope of the activity; a significant range and duration of negative consequences; difficulty in assessing actual losses, etc. The identification of the main features of industrial espionage is the basis for its understanding as a distinct category, which will help to strengthen the theoretical and methodological basis for innovative companies to make effective management decisions on building an effective system of protection against industrial espionage.

КІБЕРПРОМИСЛОВЕ ШПИГУНСТВО: СУТНІСТЬ ТА НАСЛІДКИ

The article highlights the theoretical aspects of cyber-industrial espionage. The importance of ensuring the protection of trade secrets of companies from cyber intrusions is substantiated, which is confirmed by the amount of damage caused by successful cyber attacks on the scale of the global economic space. The paper examines the essence of cyber industrial espionage through the prism of its comparison with cyber espionage and industrial espionage. It is established that cyber-industrial espionage is a type of cyber-espionage and industrial espionage. Its key features are illegality, unethicality, and unauthorised access by an unauthorised user to a company's trade secret in cyberspace, which is carried out in favour of private entities in order to gain competitive advantages and economic benefits. By the logic of the dialectical combination of the general and the particular, the author identifies the features inherent in cyber-industrial espionage (in particular, its covert, highly organised, planned, systematic nature; wide arsenal of possible technologies, methods of implementation, their combined use; a significant scope and list of negative consequences, difficulties in assessing losses from cyber intrusions, etc.), and reveals the peculiarities of their manifestation in cyberspace. Considerable attention is paid to identifying and clarifying the content of possible negative consequences of successful cyberattacks for companies, including financial losses associated with the theft of confidential information; reputational losses due to loss of trust in the company; theft of intellectual property, R&D results kept as commercial secrets; disruption of critical business processes of companies; forced changes in business practices to improve security, legal, regulatory, psychological and emotional consequences. Determination of the essential characteristics of cyber-industrial espionage and the range of possible negative consequences of its implementation is of theoretical and methodological importance for the development of an effective system of trade secret protection in companies and will help to increase the efficiency of its use.

Who spies on whom? Unravelling the puzzle of state-sponsored cyber economic espionage

Traditional conceptions of state-sponsored cyber economic espionage suggest that countries with different product profiles should experience high levels of espionage between them. However, this is not what we observe empirically. Incidence of economic espionage tends to be prevalent between countries with similar product and manufacturing profiles. This suggests that we may be missing critical parts of what drives state-sponsored cyber economic espionage. To help unravel this puzzle, I develop a novel theoretical framework that proposes that because attackers seek to maximize the expected utility of stolen information, they target countries that possess similar productive capabilities as themselves. Consequently, countries with dissimilar product profiles should avoid targeting each other for espionage. I test this argument using data on states’ product complexities and cyber economic espionage for a global sample of countries in a dyadic analytical framework. The results robustly show that for any pair of countries, as the complexities of their products diverge, they become significantly less likely to aim espionage attempts at each other. This study thus contributes new insights to explain why cyber economic espionage appears restricted to only a small number of advanced economies. It also illustrates the utility of large-N dyadic approaches in studying state-sponsored cyber espionage.