Espionage.
You would think that it only happens in James Bond or those Tom Cruise-overload ‘Mission Impossible’ movies, but *whisper* <Hey, it’s probably happening at your workplace!>
Yes, right under your very nose.
One of more recent tales brought in by our faithful yellow bird is the suspicion of ‘undercover’ activities that certain foreign call centres seemed to be employed to undertake.
And the ‘undercover’ job entails sussing out the competitor’s confidential information – ranging from sales leads, project progress, key tender sponsors and personnel, right down to pricing strategies.
Your suspicion may be alerted that an actual ‘call centre espionage’ is in action:-
a) Getting a call at the office by an unknown someone, who pretends to encounter hearing problems due to bad phone lines and eventually leads you to disclose your own mobile number, or a departmental name, or project code name, etc
b) The caller enquires about specific project(s) that your organisation is currently working on, in a generic casual manner. When pressed which account they refer to, they will give you a sweeping reply such as ‘Bank XYZ’ that could well cover all logical bases.
c) The caller requests for the contact of a colleague on the specific project with the excuse of having to contact them for an urgent matter.
At this point, you should probably grow suspicious if some things do not add up in the conversation such as:-
a) The caller seems to be in a hurry and pressures you to quickly spit out the information, in hope that you will skip further verification of their identity
b) The caller has access issues to retrieve the required information from the company’s internal directory or systems – thus giving an excuse to ask for your help
c) Is evasive about being contacted back
d) There is the unlikely background sounds of being in a call centre
e) Funny, foreign accents that do not jive with their purported names or where they are calling from.
Hopefully, these should trigger the red flags to confront the caller upfront.
IT BYTES BACK! says: When it comes to protecting your organisation’s IP or competitive information, it’s always better to err on the side of caution. And even if the caller is a genuine, unintroduced colleague, he or she should understand your simply being vigilance in today’s crafty business world.
