So far in this series, I have reviewed methods of industrial espionage and surveys about the dimensions of the problem. Today I look at information about who is attacking us.

The information comes from the National Counterintelligence Center (NACIC), which later became the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive (ONCIX). As I mentioned in my first article, these agencies have been reporting annually to Congress since 1995 about foreign economic collection and industrial espionage. Their reports are freely available as PDF files.

Early reports from NACIC/ONCIX blanked out the names of countries suspected or known to be engaging in foreign industrial espionage against the U.S.; however, later editions began publishing lists. The countries mentioned in early reports were Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, China, Cuba, Georgia, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Libya, Moldova, Pakistan, Russia, Syria, Taiwan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.

In the 2000 Annual Report, respondents to the NACIC survey of a few (about a dozen) Fortune 500 companies reported that the top countries involved in industrial espionage cases against their firms were (in order of importance) China, Japan, Israel, France, Korea, Taiwan, and India.

By 2002, the ONCIX Annual Report commented:

“The laundry list of countries seeking U.S. technologies in 2001 was long and diverse. Some 75 countries were involved in one or more suspicious incidents. The most active countries in economic espionage, according to DSS data, were an interesting mix of rich and poor and ‘friend’ and foe. Many of the richest nations aggressively sought the latest in advanced technologies both to upgrade their already formidable military infrastructures - particularly command, control, and communications - and to make their already sophisticated industries even more competitive with the United States. Most of the poorer countries, however, continued to exhibit a preference for older ‘off the shelf’ hardware and software to renovate their existing defensive systems and to develop countermeasures to provide them battlefield advantage. The search for lower technology goods by these less developed countries probably reflected their desire to bring in technologies that could be more easily integrated into their existing military structures; a number of these countries were probably not capable of utilizing the most sophisticated U.S. technologies.”

M. E. Kabay, PhD, CISSP-ISSMP, is Program Director of the Master of Science in Information Assurance program at Norwich University.