Organizational Privacy
Michael Schrenk's keynote on Organizational Privacy2014 Secure Computing Forum, Dublin Ireland
The press has done an excellent job of warning individuals to guard their online privacy, but little has been done to inform organizations about the value of organizational privacy on the Internet.
Personal v. Organizational Privacy
While individuals lose identity online, organizations forfeit trade secrets when privacy is lost. This is a real problem because advanced knowledge of secrets adversely affects competitiveness.
The scale of the problem
The problem for organizations is huge. Just imagine the exposure individuals pose, and then multiply that by the number of employees (and, for that matter, former employees), contractors, and vendors, and you can start to gauge the problem.
Michael Schrenk, DEF CON 22 Presentation"You're Leaking Trade Secrets", 2014, Las Vegas, NV
The answer is OPSEC
If organizations are serious about maintaining privacy, and not losing trade secrets to their competitor's Competitive Intelligence campaigns, they need to pay attention to OPSEC or Operations Security. OPSEC is a military term that asks the question, "What could our adversaries learn from watching our day-to-day activity?". When your activity is online, the answer to that question is often your strategic plans.
There's more going on than people realize
Signing books at the Black Hat Security Conference, Mandalay Bay Resort, Las Vegas, NV
As someone, who has been in this business for nearly 20 years, I can tell you that the Internet has become a prime location to conduct Competitive Intelligence, which is why Organization Privacy and Counterintelligence have become so important. Most of the traffic on the Internet is not human, and a lot of it is directed toward your online content.
Are you prepared?