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ShareScammers Face 150 Years For Photos Of Secret Gear
Posted by Bob Evans on Mar 18, 2009 03:08 PM
How rigorously do you guard against the risk of visitors surreptitiously photographing confidential assets? Two engineers whose employer had a $1.2M contract with a Chinese tire maker are facing 150 years in the slammer for allegedly scamming their way into a Goodyear plant in Kansas and secretly photographing proprietary equipment. So maybe it's time to review that security plan.
A news story on our excellent security site, Dark Reading, reported that just after U.S.-based Wyko Tire Technology landed the contract in 2007, two of its engineers visited the Goodyear plant under false pretenses. Quoting a Justice Department document, Dark Reading said the two engineers then "used a cell phone to surreptitiously photograph proprietary [off-the-road] tire manufacturing equipment."
The photos of the proprietary equipment were then allegedly sent to a Wyko subsidiary in England, where they were used to make replicas of that equipment for the Chinese tire maker, Justice said.
This cloak-and-dagger tale from Dark Reading serves as a good reminder that while cutting-edge cybersecurity threats continue to represent significant dangers for businesses and deserve unwavering attention, vulnerabilities also exist in the more-pedestrian physical world and need to be addressed as well.
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