Business Protection

One could agonize, whine, and wring their hands, while more and more companies start utilizing unfair methods as means of gaining an advantage over its competitors.  Instead of agonizing, whining, and wringing your hands, it is simply better to resist it.

Amidst the unfair methods of competitive struggle is, among others, setting up wiretaps to gain as much knowledge as possible about the plans of competing companies, learn their market strategy, directions of planned expansion...

While unfortunate, such activates are becoming more common I the world of Polish business. Although the awareness of this is systematically growing, many Polish businessmen still disregard it. And the effects can be deplorable – argues Wiesław Modrakowski, representative of the firm Expertus® (Law Office & Investigators).

Not only agents, waiters will also do

It is hard to understand this level of disregard. Poland has had a gigantic wiretapping scandal, in which politicians of the ruling party were recorded, thus contributing to its defeat in the elections. Yet the world of Polish business is still turning a blind eye to security of its offices, as well as meeting places of the most important managers, with those being chief targets for such activates.

Meanwhile, planting wiretaps is easier than ever. Professional wiretapping equipment can now be purchased in every major Polish city, and it is even easier to simply buy them on the internet. Planting them is so simple and easy that you do not have to hire ex-intelligence agents, much less so beautiful and cunning super agents.  It is enough to recall the aforementioned wiretapping scandal – in the "Owl and Friends" restaurant, the wiretaps were installed not by the successors of James Bond, but by ordinary waiters.

Incidentally, which is often forgotten today, these waiters recorded not only politicians, but also the then governors of two large Polish banks... 

Well-equipped agencies will help

Counteracting such extremely dangerous practices is not at all that difficult.  There are many professional, well-prepared, and equipped detective agencies in Poland.

- While there are a lot of listening devices on the market, it is much worse with wiretapping detection equipment, because the demand for these devices is much smaller. But of course, among other things, there are very good scanners that will immediately detect even the best eavesdropping devices – explains Wiesław Modrakowski of Expertus, honorary president of the Polish Federation of Detectives and lecturer at the Institute of Police Sciences.

Regularity is essential.

Experienced detectives warn that you cannot rely on electronics alone to protect company secrets. It is equally important that professionally prepared security personnel physically inspect the rooms. These include, for example, cabinets of CEOs, rooms holding meetings of boards of directors and supervisory boards, places where the strategy of action is usually discussed.

However, for such measures of prevention to be effective, they must be conducted regularly. It is important to remember that small, easily plantable listening devices could be discovered, for example, in the office of the president of the company at any time, so measures to prevent the leakage of sensitive information must be taken regularly, preferably every few weeks and before particularly sensitive meetings.