Spies Among Us? Corporate Espionage Is Big Biz

Sept. 20, 2006 — -- Just how far will your company go to protect information it considers vital? The latest development in the Hewlett-Packard Co. spying scandal indicates that HP apparently considered planting spies in the offices of two news organizations to locate, identify and plug corporate leakers.

According to The New York Times, a senior HP executive was briefed on the possibility that investigators could pose as clerical or custodial employees in the San Francisco newsrooms of CNET Networks and The Wall Street Journal. It's still not clear whether the plan was carried out.

"We are not commenting on today's media reports," Hewlett Packard spokesman Ryan Donovan told ABC News. He went on to say that the company is "in the middle of an ongoing inquiry by the state of California."

Corporate spying to protect information crucial to a product's development or marketing is not new in America. It's sometimes called "competitive intelligence" and is practiced by no fewer than 5,000 corporate spies, according to Business Week magazine.

Many large companies spend more than $1 million a year tracking their competitors, building the program right into their sales strategies, according to the magazine. The result? Companies avoid unnecessary costs by knowing their competitors' strategies and marketing plans.

"You snooze you lose" is the familiar mantra heard in corporate boardrooms. Anyone who believes the HP scandal is a "one-off case" is either "stupid or naive," said a former banking executive.

"This practice is highly, highly common. Though the HP case is on the relatively heinous side," Ira Winkler, a security expert and author of "Spies Among Us," told ABC News.

Winkler, once employed as HP's chief security strategist, said companies have resorted to all sorts of unethical -- if not illegal -- activities to try to get a leg up on the competition.

"Companies hire data brokers to lie, steal and cheat," he said. "In order to get corporate secrets, they will even break into cars or hang out at bars, get an executive drunk, and try to get information from them."