O ex-patrão da IC francesa em entrevista

Para melhor se perceber como a Competitive Intelligence pode e deve ter lugar estratégico enquanto política pública vale a pena recuperar esta entrevista de A. Juillet que explica, neste video de 2008, ao France 24 as suas funções no cargo de alto responsável pela Inteligência Económica junto do primeiro-ministro, posto que ocupou até Maio deste ano.

A. Juillet on Competitive Intelligence
Enviado por france24. - Videos de noticias alternativas

Guerra Económica no New York Times

Recupero aqui um texto do The New York Times, publicado em Agosto, que, a propósito do escândalo de espionagem electrónica, por parte de um alto responsável da empresa estatal de energia francesa EDF, que afectou o Greenpeace, fala sobre a prática da espionagem em França, aproveitando a experiência de Christian Harbulot e da École de Guerre Économique no campo da inteligência económica e estratégica.

In French Inquiry, a Glimpse at Corporate Spying

por David Jolly, August 1, 2009, The New York Times
link artigo original

PARIS — The story has the elements of a corporate thriller : a cast of characters that includes former French spies and military men, an American cycling champion, Greenpeace activists and a dogged judge whose investigation takes him from a sports doping laboratory outside Paris to a Moroccan jail and to some of the top corporations in France.

Like installments in a serial novel, new revelations have been dripping out since March. And while the climax is still probably many months away, the story is providing a rare glimpse into the shadowy and potentially lucrative business of gathering what corporations refer to as “strategic intelligence.”

“For most companies, on a daily basis there are many more things going on than can possibly be handed off to the police,” said Christian Harbulot, director of the École de Guerre Économique, or School of Economic Warfare, in Paris.

The companies they turn to for “extra help,” Mr. Harbulot said, include everything from corporate security giants like Kroll to what he terms “small operators,” ranging from ex-intelligence agents to computer hackers.

The sprawling case unfolding in France involves a mix of the latter and some of the biggest French companies, including Électricité de France, the world’s largest operator of nuclear power plants, and Vivendi, the media and telecommunications conglomerate.

According to a case file compiled by the investigating judge, Thomas Cassuto, and reviewed by the International Herald Tribune, investigators stumbled on to the case almost by accident, in the wake of a doping scandal at the Tour de France in 2006.

The American cyclist Floyd Landis was stripped of his victory that summer after testing positive for elevated levels of testosterone. Not long afterward, in November 2006, the French anti-doping agency filed a criminal complaint charging that confidential documents related to Mr. Landis’s drug tests had been stolen and sent to the news media and other labs. The documents had been altered in what lab officials said appeared to have been an effort to discredit or embarrass them by casting doubt on the handling of test samples. Investigators concluded that one such e-mail message was sent from a computer using the same Internet protocol address used by Arnie Baker, then Mr. Landis’s coach.

A search of computers in the lab in Châtenay-Malabry, a suburb of Paris, turned up a Trojan horse program that allowed an outsider to remotely download files.

No evidence has surfaced to connect Mr. Landis or Mr. Baker to the hacking, and both have vigorously denied any involvement. They did, however, make use of the pilfered documents in their unsuccessful campaign to overturn Mr. Landis’s cycling ban, on the grounds that the documents had entered the public domain.

The trail, picked up by a special cybercrime unit of the French Interior Ministry, led to a French computer specialist, Alain Quiros. He was caught in Mohammedia, Morocco, and questioned by French and Moroccan officials there (It is not clear from the case file exactly when).

Mr. Quiros initially denied any knowledge of the lab hacking, but when presented with incriminating evidence found on his computer, he confessed, telling investigators he had been paid €2,000 to €3,000, or $2,800 to $4,000, for hacking into the lab. He identified Thierry Lorho, head of Kargus Consultants, a corporate intelligence company in Paris, as having instigated the computer attack.

Then things got complicated. As the French authorities delved more deeply into Mr. Quiros’s computer, they found a copy of the hard drive of Yannick Jadot, the former campaign director of Greenpeace France, as well as that of Frédérik-Karel Canoy, a French lawyer and shareholder rights activist who has battled some of the country’s largest companies, including Vivendi and European Aeronautic Defense & Space, the parent of the aircraft manufacturer Airbus.

Mr. Lorho, a former French intelligence agent, acknowledged his role to the French officials. He told them that he had handed off the lab data to another man, Jean-François Dominguez, who had paid him for it. Both men are being formally investigated. Mr. Lorho also admitted that he had collected data on Greenpeace. His client that time, he said, was Électricité de France, which had paid him for “strategic intelligence” on anti-nuclear campaigners.

Mr. Lorho has said his contacts at E.D.F. were “perfectly aware” of the hacking and that such activities were understood to be included under the two one-year contracts he signed with the company.

One, signed in April 2004, paid Mr. Lorho’s company €12,000 a month; a second, signed in November 2006, provided for €3,900 a month.

The investigation found that in addition to information on Greenpeace in France, E.D.F. obtained data on the environmental organization’s activities in Spain, Belgium and Britain, where E.D.F. last year agreed to buy the largest nuclear power company there, British Energy.

E.D.F. has denied any knowledge of the cybertheft and has portrayed itself as a victim of illegal acts by Kargus Consultants.

But Judge Cassuto, who took over the three-pronged investigation in April 2008, has declined to grant E.D.F. civil party status in the case. The decision was upheld on appeal. Instead, the judge has declared E.D.F. an “assisted witness,” one step short of being placed under formal investigation, and the chief executive of E.D.F., Pierre Gadonneix, has been called in for questioning.

Alexis Gublin, the attorney who is representing E.D.F. in the case, said the company was cooperating “totally” with the inquiry.

Through their lawyers, Mr. Quiros, Mr. Dominguez and Mr. Lorho declined to comment. Astrid Granoux, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office, said Judge Cassuto and the prosecutor, Philippe Courroye, would not discuss the case while the investigation was under way.

Spying by corporations on their perceived enemies is not new. In the mid-1960s, General Motors sent private detectives to dig up dirt on the consumer activist Ralph Nader when he began to criticize the auto industry’s safety record.

In 2006, top executives of Hewlett-Packard, infuriated by damaging leaks from corporate insiders, hired investigators to spy on journalists in an effort to learn their sources.

And over the past two years, some of the biggest companies in Germany, including Deutsche Telekom, Deutsche Bank and the national rail operator, Deutsche Bahn, have been caught overstepping the line regarding surveillance of critics and their own employees.

People in the field of corporate intelligence say information in the public domain is considered fair game. Theft of a computer hard drive would normally be understood as a step too far, they said. But it might not even be necessary as the technology advances: Experts say the Trojan horse attack is giving way to automated targeting of the “cloud” of information that people and organizations generate through their online activities.

In the Cassuto investigation, the connection to E.D.F., which is 85 percent owned by the French government, has touched a nerve in France, whose intelligence agents bombed and sank the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in 1985 in Auckland, killing a photographer on board.

However, there has been no evidence to suggest that the French government was aware of or involved in the hacking.

In an interview with an intelligence Web site, Lerenseignement.com, Mr. Lorho said he assumed “full responsibility” for hacking into the Greenpeace computer, but he added that “I would like to see E.D.F., which sponsored the operation, take responsibility for its part.”

On April 10, E.D.F. said that, after an internal investigation, it had terminated its relationship with Kargus Consultants and, as a “precautionary measure,” temporarily removed from their posts two corporate security employees who had been dealing with the firm.

The two — Pierre-Paul François, an site protection engineer and former police officer, and his superior, Pascal Durieux, a security manager and former French Navy admiral — have been placed under formal investigation by Judge Cassuto. They have been transferred to other duties but continue to work at E.D.F. and to draw their salaries, their lawyers said. Both maintain their innocence.

E.D.F. also said it had terminated a contract with another corporate intelligence company, Securewyse, based in Lausanne, Switzerland.

The French newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné reported that Securewyse had been retained to monitor the French anti-nuclear group Sortir du Nucléaire, whose spokesman, Stéphane Lhomme, has been under investigation in France since 2006, when he passed confidential company documents to the media.

Securewyse did not reply to numerous requests for comment, but a company official told Le Canard Enchaîné that it had done nothing illegal.

Mr. Jadot, who has since left Greenpeace and was elected June 6 to represent western France in the European Parliament, said the case showed “a systematic policy of spying by E.D.F.”

But E.D.F. defends its need to keep an eye on activist groups.

“We have a duty to be vigilant,” Jean-Marc Sabathé, the company’s security director, said in an April interview with Le Monde. “It’s important to know, for example, if this or that group is in the radical extreme or if it is above board. But we have no need to pay hackers to find out!”

Meanwhile, the investigation goes on, with Judge Cassuto alternating among the threads as resources and scheduling allows.

In the doping lab case, Mr. Dominguez, who has been described in the French media as a photographer with links to French intelligence, told investigators that he had acted only as a middleman, passing on the data he received from Kargus to another man, who has not been located.

Judge Cassuto summoned Mr. Landis and Mr. Baker to Paris in May for questioning, but neither appeared for the hearing.

The judge has the power to issue international arrest warrants for both men, although he has not indicated yet whether he intends to do so.

Mr. Landis did not respond to requests for comment through Team Ouch, his new cycle-racing squad.

But he told Cycling News in November 2006, when rumors of the computer hacking first surfaced, that “any claims attributing these actions to me or my defense team are baseless, untrue, irresponsible and another example of the character assassination that I have faced since the initial allegations surfaced.”

In an e-mail message, Mr. Baker denied any involvement in hacking into the drug lab’s computer, or in hiring anyone to hack into it. “If the L.N.D.D. computer system was hacked, I do not know who did this,” he wrote, referring to the drug-testing lab, Le Laboratoire National de Dépistage du Dopage.

In the case of Mr. Canoy, the shareholder activist, investigators raided the office of Jean-François Dubos, Vivendi’s general counsel, in June. Antoine Lefort, a spokesman for Vivendi, confirmed that Mr. Dubos “has been heard as a witness and his office was searched.” But he said that neither Mr. Dubos, who has not been placed under formal investigation, nor the company had sought to hack into Mr. Canoy’s computer.

Since 2002, Vivendi has fought 13 different lawsuits brought by Mr. Canoy, and filed two countersuits against him, Mr. Lefort said.

Mr. Canoy said the hackers stole data about his finances and even his family. “My son has a rock band, and everything including his songs and poems was stolen,” he said. “It is a complete violation of my personal and professional privacy.”

Mr. Harbulot, the expert on economic intelligence, said the most curious thing about the whole case to him was why a company like E.D.F. would get involved with “these kinds of people” in the first place.

“All of E.D.F.’s security needs should be taken care of by the state, because it’s strategically important,” he said.

Still, hackers like Mr. Quiros seem to be proliferating, he said, estimating there were “a few dozen” in France alone. “Not that he was very expert,” Mr. Harbulot said. “Like most hackers, he was undone by some really stupid blunders.”

À procura de inteligência nas Feiras e Congressos

As Feiras e Congressos são uma importante fonte de inteligência competitiva. Sítios ideais para ter uma perspectiva de conjunto e particular do que a concorrência anda a fazer... sobretudo porque a concorrência cai na tentação de expor demasiado aquilo que faz e aquilo que sabe . Como diz Leonard Fuld, um especialista incontornável para quem se interessa por IC, três dias num evento destes valem por 1,000 horas ao telefone...

Trade Shows and Congresses: A 20-to-1 Return on your CI Time

By Leonard Fuld

As we approach the holidays and trade show season winds down, I thought it a good time to reflect on the immense value of attending a scientific congress or trade show for vital intelligence. I would argue that attending such a show over three days (or about 45 hours of “on” time, is worth 1,000 hours of phone calling from your desk. Just imagine, more than a 20 times return on your intelligence time.

Too many firms attend these congresses ad hoc, with little preparation. Add to this the fact that the competitive intelligence effort is often divorced from the scientists, marketers and others also attending from the same company. What a shame!

Some of our consultants are on the road for weeks at a time, attending just such congresses and we often do so in concert with our clients. We take a team approach at covering football field-sized events as economically yet as thoroughly as possible. Just consider the competitive value of such an intense meeting, where the critical thinkers, market makers, producers, customers are present – in a sense all of Porter’s five forces are there.

Anyone that has responsibility for developing competitive insights knows how useful these meetings can be but too frequently cannot marshal their own colleagues to work the conference floor as a single coordinated unit, fanning out with particular goals in mind, visiting certain booths, knowing what questions are critical, and so on.

Speaking with one of our senior project managers about this topic, she presented some very convincing arguments for attending these shows. She strongly believes that conferences provide you terrific opportunity to

 Do a reality check on what messages your rivals send out to their target market. Messaging strategy is a particularly important when pharmaceutical and biotech firms try to position their drugs in the marketplace.
 Catch the scientific subtleties by listening directly to the scientists and engineers who directly design the studies, or create the technology.
 Understand the importance of a rival’s future investment in promoting a particular drug or new product – often way in advance of any formal announcement.
 Glimpse the future by hearing market gurus, managers from trend-setting companies discuss their view of market trends and rumors of competitive activity.

Next time you know a trade show or scientific congress is about to take place prepare for it, and build a team to fan out at the show. Just when your feet begin to ache on the third day of the event console yourself by remembering those nearly 1,000 hours of phone time you saved because you assessed your competition on the ground, in real time.

IC Vídeo: Ciber War!

Inauguro hoje uma rubrica de documentários sobre IC e Infoguerra com este vídeo de 2003, do programa "Frontline" da PBS.



Cyber War

Cyber War In the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, as most U.S. intelligence shifted to finding Al Qaeda cells around the world, one group at the White House decided to investigate a new threat -- attacks from cyberspace. "In the past, you would count the number of bombers and the number of tanks your enemy had. In the case of cyber war, you really can't tell whether the enemy has good weapons until the enemy uses them," says Richard Clarke, former chairman of the White House Critical Infrastructure Protection Board. In "Cyber War!" Clarke and other insiders talk about a new set of warriors fighting on the new battlefield of cyberspace, and they evaluate just how vulnerable the Internet may be to both virtual and physical attack.

In course of the documentary the team explores the possibility of ulterior motives behind the release of worms such asCode Red, Blaster and Nimda. They also confess that the power grid controllers and other important infrastructure equipment are wide open to hacker attacks as companies have invested very little in securing their own networks.

Gestão Dinâmica do Ambiente Competitivo (Tabuleiro Informacional)

Introduzo neste post um conceito criado durante a elaboração da meu trabalho de investigação “Inteligência Competitiva em Portugal – Práticas nas Empresas do PSI-20”, onde faço uma primeira abordagem àquilo que designei como Gestão Dinâmica do Ambiente Competitivo, com a Inteligência Competitiva a surgir como a ferramenta da gestão dinâmica (e interactiva) do espaço competitivo dominado pela informação.
Esta é uma ideia que se desenvolve em torno da imagem de um "Tabuleiro Informacional".

Ao contrário da ideia neo-clássica – defendo o postulado de que os mercados (os espaços competitivos) são imperfeitos, quer por imperfeições nas informações, quer porque os actores não possuem as mesmas condições de processar, interpretar e utilizar informações.

Deste modo, a Inteligência Competitiva, pela acção conjunta das suas três funções (Intelligence, Protecção e Influência), visa traduzir em vantagem competitiva a relação informacional interactiva (porque recolhe e difunde informação) da empresa com o seu espaço competitivo, concretizada por uma assimetria informacional positiva, relativamente aos demais actores.

A empresa relaciona-se com o ambiente competitivo através da informação e o meio é um espaço informacional – um tabuleiro informacional com um muito reduzido ponto de equilíbrio, dada a crescente competitividade. Assim, as três funções da Inteligência Competitiva, traduzidas em trocas de informações, entre a empresa e o espaço competitivo (onde se incluem os demais actores), permitem balancear o tabuleiro a favor da empresa – embora sob a ameaça de este ser balanceado contra a empresa, em virtude da aplicação mais eficiente da Inteligência Competitiva por outros actores.

O maior peso de um actor no Tabuleiro Informacional permite uma gestão mais eficaz dos recursos informativos à disposição, com a informação pertinente a convergir mais facilmente para a empresa mais capaz de a processar e utilizar.

A Intelligence confere a vantagem à empresa, pela antecipação de ameaças e oportunidades e consequente redução das incertezas. Esta função permite tornar positiva a assimetria informacional que poderá existir entre a empresa que a pratica e os seus concorrentes, ao dotá-la uma maior conhecimento do espaço competitivo, da informação disponível, dos seus actores, pela recolha e posterior tratamento da informação para torná-la intelligence, e ao contribuir para uma menor dependência, ou seja, uma maior autonomia informacional.

A Protecção visa resguardar as informações detidas e emitidas pela empresa. Permite preservar a assimetria informacional em proveito da empresa.

A Influência permite modificar o meio por pressões informacionais, age de modo a conferir uma maior vantagem, em termos de assimetria informacional, por um maior domínio do tabuleiro informacional

Nas imagens que se seguem é possível perceber como esta relação assimétrica entre actores se traduz num jogo informacional onde, pela sistemática e eficiente utilização das funções da Inteligência Competitiva, um determinado actor pode fazer pender o tabuleiro para o seu lado e ganhar vantagem.