Sleuths In Suits: Mission: Intelligence

The field of competitive intelligence, in particular, stands to change dramatically as a result of the attacks of Sept. 11. Businesses are hunkering down, focusing less on acquiring competitors' proprietary information and more on keeping their competitors out of their own. Sept. 11 may not have been a failure of corporate intelligence, but its impact has rippled throughout the business world. "People have begun to recognize that our trust needs to be balanced with some healthy paranoia. We have seen that what is possible is more horrific than we could have imagined," says Naomi Fine, president and CEO of PRO-TEC DATA, a leader in the field of information security. "We see now the potential is that everything can be lost. Literally, everything is at stake."

To some businesses whose products or proprietary information could be, in a sense, hijacked and used to commit acts of terror, the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon came as a dark revelation. "Sept. 11 got a lot of people thinking, What is our industry's version of the $300 impenetrable cockpit door that could prevent billions in liabilities?" says John Nolan III, a former SCIP president and the chairman of PHOENIX CONSULTING GROUP. Nolan points to information and technology about dangerous chemicals as a potential target for terrorists. "Liability or embarrassment--those are the forces driving people."

Before the attacks, Nolan estimates, his consulting business was split equally between training companies to collect information on competitors and preventing rivals from collecting information on them. Today, he estimates, for every company that wants help digging up proprietary information, seven come to him for assistance in protecting their data. And, notes Nolan, there's a new kind of adversary: terrorists who want to use Western technology against the West. Pharmaceutical and biotech companies in particular should raise their level of awareness, says Jan Herring. "There's a very strong business objective [in] staying on top of these terrorism threats, particularly in bioterrorism," he says. "For instance, someone could come into a company and begin buying products or technology that could be applied to the dispersal of some form of gas, like the [1995] sarin-gas attack in Japan." If CI professionals stay on their toes, Herring says, "they could serve as a trip wire for government."

Indeed, many CI professionals suggest that business intelligence can play a major role in the effort to prevent terrorist attacks, especially in tracking businesses or financial transactions that support terrorist groups. "A CI person might have the financial and analytical capabilities to say to the CIA, 'Have you thought about looking here?' or 'Are you looking at bank accounts in this way?'" says Ken Sawka, a former CIA analyst and a vice president of FULD & CO., a CI consultancy based in Cambridge, Mass. "When I was in the government, the guy sitting next to me didn't know how to do that. He knew about Soviet helicopters. I think CI has matured to the point that there are things that the government can learn from us, such as how to dissect a corporate strategy." Oddly, however, none of the CI professionals interviewed for this article have been approached by the government for help.