Espionage and the Insider

Human espionage is an ancient art; in fact, it has even been called the oldest profession.2 Unfortunately, espionage is still alive and well in today's post Cold War environment. If anything, it is even more rampant. Events in the news remind us of this, such as the recent arrests of two Lucent Technologies employees, and a catering employee of MasterCard International for the theft of trade secrets. Throughout history and in current times efforts to identify indicators of espionage have been made. Unfortunately these efforts have met with limited success. In every instance of espionage, the person involved had access to information. Understanding this, and the fact we have the ability to control access to computer file systems, is critical to protecting information.