CW
Competitors to British companies are receiving help from foreign intelligence services to hack into corporate databases to steal new product plans and win business, a former director of the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI) says. Former CPNI director Steve Cummings, now a special advisor on security and privacy for the Deloittes management consultancy, said corporate espionage was on the rise, aided and abetted by foreign state intelligence services. Deloittes is currently advising a client which believes its "very expensive R&D" was stolen by foreign agents, he said. Cummings added that the nature of the internet made it hard to identify the actual perpetrators, but it looks like they are getting help from state intelligence agencies, if indeed the agencies are not acting directly, he said. Corporate espionage is not new, he said. The director general of MI5 wrote a letter to 300 leading UK firms to warn of the threat in November 2007. But it is now a "hot button".
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