Counter-Espionage

Workshop 9

Task: To describe my Role in the company and finding the spy

Scenario: The House of Beauty Ltd. is a leading health and beauty care organization in the Australian market, The Company launched an online shopping portal which helps in reaching the market easily, and the online portal also accesses the comparison with the similar products of a different organization. The company also provides weekly subscription packages which permit the consumer to buy the items according to the requirement. At the same time, Jacqueline Beauty Ltd. knocked at the door of the market and became the leading producer and seller in the market. It has been noticed that the company Jacqueline Beauty Ltd. is focusing on the marketing strategies and trying to gain the trust of the audiences. Later, while hacked into their server of Jacqueline Beauty Ltd., it is managed to recover several aspects of information that explained how they managed to get ahead of our company in terms of higher selling products. Their information regarding e-mail found from the head of the research department detailing the technical information regarding the health and beauty care products that The House of Beauty Ltd. is developing. Large cash withdrawal and any payment receipt dated several days have also been recorded, as the payment was in cash, so it was difficult to trace whom the payment was made. Further, after researching it is found that pre-release product of Jacqueline Beauty Ltd. is likely identical to the prototype of the House of Beauty Ltd. The legal actions cannot be taken against the Jacqueline Beauty Ltd. for violating the trade secrets, copyright and patents, as the information was obtained illegally and their final product is no longer resembles the product of The House of Beauty Ltd (Masnun et al., 2020) It is suspected that there might be somebody in the company who is selling the information to the competitor and helping them in developing a better marketing method and product.

Analyzing solutions: As per the report and scenario, Jacqueline Beauty Ltd. is receiving a huge amount of demand from the market. Later after hacking their system, we came to know that there is a spy among us, who is selling our strategies and planning to them. They are using our strategies and planning against us, and doing wonderful in the market. After analyzing all these scenarios, I will call a meeting with Head of Department of the marketing and other members of the management team, to make them understand what is going on and why the competitor company is running ahead of us. I will make them aware that there is a spy among us and try to make them realize that somebody in our company is selling information to the competitor or helping them to develop better marketing strategies. We will try to talk about the situation and the possibilities that someone is doing this intentionally or someone is there whose computer is hacked and disclosed the confidential information of the company. We will try to converse the changes we need to make and the industrial espionage that is occurring with our company. I will convince them by showing the information on cash withdrawal and the e-mail regarding the technical information and pre-developed sample of the products. After analyzing the scenario and the case, I will further assign a group of people to work only to find out who is spy or victim and collect the legal evidence against the spy or the competitor company.  

Finding out Spy/Victim: Secondly, we will try to find out the victim or spy in the company with the help of the management team. I will try to notice the behaviour of the employee of the company and try to figure out any suspicious activity from their sides. I along with the management team, try to figure out any deposit or withdrawal of a huge amount of cash from any of the employee by seeking into their bank account. We will also try to get inside the computers of the employees by the help of hacking the system and try to find out the information shared from the competitor company (Zukin et al., 2017). We will try to spread the rumour that our company is trying to develop a new product with the new specification and then we will keep a keen eye on the activities of every individual, try to trace the information shared with company by the computer. We will also try to trace out the phones of every employee; we would not let anyone know the operation which is under the process of finding the spy or victim. We will also try to figure out if there is any system or computer is hacked within the company or any source of information which is hacked so that we can come to a conclusion that there is spy or victim among us (Lu & X, 2017). After finding the spy or victim who is sharing or selling any confidential information to the competitor company, then we will try to figure out what kind of information he has shared until now. After that, we will try to find out the shreds of evidence against him and the competitor company. When we gather all the evidence and the information, then we can file a case against the spy and the competitor company, which will further help us in growing as a leading company (Lundberg & V, 2017).

Protecting Intellectual property: Intellectual property can be defined as the creation of the mind, such as poetry, novel, design, names, images and painting (Wexler & R, 2018). There are four types of intellectual property namely; Trade secret can be defined as the detailed, private information which is important to a business because it provides a viable advantage in the market (Mansfield & I, 2019). While Patent is defined as the form of property which provides its owner with the legal rights to prohibits others from using or making for a limited period of time. At the same time Copyrights refers to the intellectual property which gives the owner exclusive right to make copies of its creative work and prohibits others from using for a limited period of time (Jamali& R, 201). Lastly, trademarks can be defined as a kind of intellectual property which consists of sign, design or expression which is used to identify work and service. There are several ways to protect intellectual property such as; by registering copyrights, trademarks, and patents, by registering business or domain name, by creating confidentially or licensing contracts for employees and partners, by implementing security measures and avoiding the joint ownership of organization or company (Pahkpovet al., 2016). It is important to protect intellectual property because it is significant to encouragement. Without protecting ideas, business and individuals would not gather the full benefits of their innovation and would be focusing less on research and development.

Counter-Espionage, Legal and Ethical methods: It is the activity which is concerned with detecting and standing in the way of doing espionage (Oxnevad & I, 2019). Counter-espionage can be defined as the method of collecting information and performing activities to prevent espionage, damage or other intelligence activities conducted for or behalf of foreign powers, company or an individual (Phillips et al., 2020). The methods by which counter-espionage can be implemented are; avoid the sharing of confidential information with every individual of company, by taking proper care of e-mail records of every individual, by gathering evidence about the leakage of information from the company (Gaspard & J’ 2018).

Companies have some legal rights by which it can counter the espionage in the organization, for example; a company can monitor the internet use for business-related issues as suggested by Nolo law (Simpson & R, 2018). To monitor ethics in the workplace there are five ways to monitor the actions of the employees; watching employees' works to monitor the performance of an individual, helping an employee with self-monitoring tools, reviewing work in progress on a regular basis and keeping eyes on the performance of an individual (Monga et al., 2016). An organization has legal authorization to monitor almost everything an employee does at work as long as observing is important from the business aspect. An organization has every legal authority to find out the spy or victim within, so there are several ways by which employers can keep an eye on the activity of every employee such as; installing video cameras, monitoring phones and computers, regular checking of e-mail (Cantu & R, 2019). The workplace ethics which helpful for an employee in performing better and everyone should have is honesty and integrity, self- motivated, strong self, dependability and responsibility.

Conclusion: While concluding the topic, we have come to know about the spy in our organization, and with the help of management team, we came to establish a strong example in front of the market that the competitor company Jacqueline Beauty Ltd. was using unethical and illegal way to compete. After evaluating the scenario, we came to know about the loophole in our system, which was helpful for the spy in selling the information the competitor company. At last, from the above scenario, it can be stated that a company should always have counter-espionage to prevent the unethical and illegal sharing of information, and it is mandatory for everyone to stop using unethical and illegal way of behaviour at the workplace, and everyone should be aware in protecting the intellectual property as it is significant to encouragement.