Recording device found in county commissioner’s office.

A recording device was recently discovered hidden in the Ray County, MO commissioners’ office. The device was found late Friday morning, May 19, just before a meeting among the commissioner, the prosecuting attorney, and sheriff. The secretary discovered it lying on the chair when she was arranging chairs for the meeting.

USB Eavesdropping device

The small, thin, black recorder – the size of a thumb drive – was found on one of the chairs at a table near the entrance to the office. On the device was a piece of clear tape, rolled sticky side out. County officials suspected that it had been stuck to the bottom of the table.

Now they have to wonder how long was it there? Was it already used previously, retrieved and replaced?

If they had been doing regular sweeps of their offices they wouldn’t have to wonder. When a device has been found, one of the first questions will be “What information may have been compromised?” If a TSCM inspection was recently done, they would know the device had only been there a short time.

Another value of regular sweeps is a deterrent factor. The majority of eavesdropping and corporate spying is done internally by employees or staff, so when they will realize that management takes information seriously and has regular inspections performed, they may be discouraged from attempting eavesdropping or electronic surveillance.

Scheduling regular, proactive inspections is an important part of information security. Often people may think “we’ll wait until we have a problem before we start worrying about sweeps”. That will be too late. That can be compared to thinking “let’s wait until we have a fire before we worry about fire sensors”. It is also important to hire a professional TSCM provider, you do not want to leave confidential information or communications exposed or vulnerable. Let us know if you would like to get the jump on information security. We can help.

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