THE corporate spy trade is booming. One-quarter of Australia's largest companies admit they are involved in "competitive intelligence gathering", according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers survey. The information-gathering techniques are almost always legal and carried out by trained professionals - often former government intelligence operatives highly trained in obtaining military and economic secrets. . . .
THE corporate spy trade is booming. One-quarter of Australia's largest companies admit they are involved in "competitive intelligence gathering", according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers survey. The information-gathering techniques are almost always legal and carried out by trained professionals - often former government intelligence operatives highly trained in obtaining military and economic secrets.

But the operatives were spying on competing companies rather than foreign governments, and many companies were easy targets, PwC dispute analysis and investigations director Richard Batten said.

"Corporations have people trained to obtain raw data from a wide range of sources and apply traditional intelligence analysis techniques to produce usable information," he said.

"It's worrying to find 62 per cent of companies have no protection in place to stop the loss or theft of intellectual property -- even though 30 per cent admit already experiencing at least one incident."

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