Bloomberg has created a short video about a serious espionage case. Huawei launched an extensive espionage program against Danish telecom firm TDC. Bidders for a new 5G program had been Huawei and Erissson, somehow, Huawei knew about Ericsson’s bid.
The tactics included a variety of surveillance techniques that included hidden microphones and drone surveillance.
This should make you want to close your window shades and have your meeting rooms professionally swept regularly.
A few critical take-aways from this investigation:
- Technical surveillance was used- hidden microphones were found (regular inspections of key areas are critical to maintaining security).
- Visual surveillance included drones to view into office windows (keep a clean desk, do not have white boards face the windows, draw the shades during important meetings).
- Human surveillance was used following and monitoring executives’ activities.
- An executive was compromised and leaked the info to Huawei (most of our finds get traced back to an executive or other insider).
- A leak also occurred within the company security department alerting the executive to the investigation (a good reason for considering using vetted, independent TSCM providers).
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A more in-depth article is presented at BusinessWeek.com with a few excerpts below.
When a Huawei Bid Turned Into a Hunt for a Corporate Mole
ByJordan Robertson and Drake Bennett
June 15, 2023 at 7:00 PM EDT
At a hastily scheduled meeting on March 5, 2019, the bidding to upgrade Denmark’s cellular network crossed over into something strange. Negotiations for telecommunications infrastructure are high-stakes affairs; the deals, worked out in private, determine which companies are entrusted to embed their equipment and staff at the deepest levels of a country’s phone and internet systems. But the talks over the Danish contract, which had stretched through the winter, had been particularly fraught.
As it prepared to make the leap to a 5G wireless network, Denmark’s telecom sector had become the object of a backroom economic proxy conflict. Relations between the United States and China were growing worse, and officials from the US National Security Agency were making the rounds in Europe, warning companies to avoid working closely with companies tied to Beijing. The decision by TDC Holding A/S, Denmark’s dominant telecommunications company, would carry symbolic value beyond the contract’s roughly $200 million price tag…