- Experts have warned not to list all their online experience
- This could open them to attacks and scams
- Linkedin can be a good place to make you know – but have some limits
A first security expert warned the defense employees that the listing of their work on employment sites such as Linkedin has created a “cumulative and complete set of information, people and possibilities for foreign powers to target and exploit”.
Mike Burgees, the Director General of Security of Australian Security Intelligence Organization (Asio), said that he had seen the nation states to use, “even more sophisticated and difficult to detect methods” in their attempts to illegally obtain sensitive information.
Although it may seem common sense, Asio has identified more than 100 people using job sites such as Linkedin to talk about the projects on which they worked, and certain specifications and features on “open discussion forums”.
The real cost
This has direct consequences for national security, and errors add up. A report quoted by Burgees identifies an overall cost of more than $ 12 billion in one year lost against espionage – highlighting its impact.
These are also conservative estimates, underlines the burgees, and the “most serious costs, significant and in cascade of espionage are not included in the figure of $ 12.5 billion”.
This means that something without a direct calculated financial impact, such as the potential loss of “strategic advantage, sovereign decision -making and the capacity to combat war”, which all hold “immense value” are not included in the calculation.
Of course, foreign opponents have always targeted anyone who has precious information on almost all kinds and has used much more conventional methods in the past.
That said, the social media sites in which colleagues follow and interact with each other while speaking openly about their current professional projects offer spoors a target information cheat sheet.
These may have serious consequences for governments and businesses, warned burgees, noted how “UST last year, an Australian technology company entered the voluntary administration after one of its investors made a series of decisions that had no commercial sense. These included the sale of the intellectual property of the company – which had commercial and military applications – to a foreign company, to terms highly lower than the Australian society ”. “”
“Asio has not yet confirmed whether a national service or a foreign intelligence service has managed this activity, but we are aware of similar cases where sensitive information on the vulnerabilities of a company – such as its cybersecurity circles – have been transmitted to hostile intelligence services by an initiate.”
