Confessions of a corporate spy

A Computerworld story discusses the ease with which sensitive information can be winkled out of companies.

"A former National Security Agency analyst who is now an expert on corporate espionage offered chilling accounts yesterday of his easy penetration into a variety of U.S. companies. In one case, in just a few hours he was able to make off with product plans and specifications worth billions of dollars. Ira Winkler, global security strategist at CSC Consulting, spoke at Computerworld's Premier 100 IT Leaders Conference here and punctured several popular misconceptions about information security. Notably, he said that information security is not the same thing as computer security. Most of his success in penetrating companies, which had hired him to do just that, came from 'social engineering' -- not from hacking into corporate networks."