The workshop is an introduction to business counterintelligence concepts and principals. Counterintelligence is necessary in an organised manner to protect a company's information and secrets. The workshop is aimed at those who deal with confidential and sensitive information on a regular basis as well as for those who are responsible for protecting their departments and themselves against the threat of business espionage and information leakage.

When companies are not protecting their critical information they will definitely loose market share, loose valuable know how, suffer damage to their good name which usually results in loss of confidence by investors, business associates and even their own staff.

The days are long gone when firewalls, access controls, guards, and other detection systems can constitute an adequate defence. More and more companies are now making their staff on all levels aware of the threats against information and how to become knowledgeable on measures to protect it. These skills, a strong information protection strategy and compliance with regulation will become necessary for companies to achieve their information protection goals.

CBIA is offering a specialised workshop to help those responsible for risk management, security and IT security understand how they may improve business performance by using a practical but thorough process to protect confidential information.

Many companies will and can go to extraordinary lengths to obtain information about their competitors. They can make use of legal/ethical, unethical and illegal information gathering techniques or a combination of these techniques to gather business secrets. Competitors do not all abide by an ethics code and many misrepresent them or break laws to get information about their competitors. The danger of business espionage is often underestimated as most of the time there are no overt signs or indications of the attack against a company, making it difficult to spot.

The following topics are covered:

• The scope of the commercial intelligence and espionage problems
• Common misconceptions that staff and management have regarding the value of information
• The Legal Situation (Position in SA)
• Possible indicators of business espionage
• Espionage tradecraft
• Passive and Active Counterintelligence
• Integrating counterintelligence with CI and Security
• Policies and Procedures