We’ve discussed how treating our company compound as a coherent whole was a good way to evaluate its internal security. Consider now the outside. This is not only the ‘supply chain’, but also how your components arrive at your plant. It includes everything: your supplies, as well as your power, physical needs such as water and food, and your personnel. Everything that comes and goes should be evaluated for potential threats. Moreover, your activities within your compound can also be monitored by adversaries, allowing them to give you a warning about your possible future actions. You need to be aware of who is watching you. Why not? Your adversary does this constantly.
When Outsiders Are Watching
Recently, Ukraine arrested two Hungarians who were accused of espionage. They resided in Ukraine, but were believed to be working for the nation of Hungary. It is not known whether they were spying on behalf of the Russians. The key takeaway is that someone outside a military base is believed to be collecting information, presumably about Ukrainian air defenses. This happened often during the Cold War. The Soviets recruited a spy who rented houses to Americans who worked in sensitive bases in Western Europe. They also recruited spies from the upper social strata who could tell them if activities occurred among US military units where they lived. No one would suspect a retired doctor was a spy.
How do you get energy into your compound? Can it be cut off? Can something be smuggled onto your base? Even in America, there are still facilities run on coal power. How easy it would be to slip an explosive into a coal car entering your base. Of course, modern electricity can be attacked from miles away. Where are your energy facilities located? Do you have control over them? Who does?
Consider your food and water supplies. Can you account for their security? Too often, we forget that in a crisis, we are shut off from outside communications. Can we be assured that, despite this self-imposed restriction, we can continue to function? Can we continue providing food and water for our employees? But what if the threat is not physical, bringing something foreign onto your facility? What if it is only an observation?
Seeing Without Being Seen
Spies appear interested across Europe in learning where, with what, and by whom the Ukrainians are receiving training. How hard this is to determine is readily discernible. Watching trains pull into bases can reveal what sort of armament is being trained upon. Why can’t you protect against this using a technique that has been known in the private automobile world for years? Make ‘boxes’ around the tanks or personnel carriers. This way, no one can guess just what is happening. What kind of vehicle, such as a ‘boxed’ mystery, can be made just that much harder to identify? Modern test vehicles for the new sales year were well protected over the years by this method. Why not for national security as well?
Working With Local and Allied Partners
Why not coordinate with your local host nation’s security support and investigative agencies to identify who is renting homes to your personnel off-base? This can be readily done, and the results might make you aware of what you can ask your allied investigators to do. Their authority to conduct investigations may be greater or lesser than in America, but you will find that they are thorough and provide good information for the most part. Further, regular visits with your host nation government authorities pay off in other ways. They can keep you informed about where your employees should and should not go for safety reasons. The American forces overseas were often kept away from places where illegal activities were known to occur. Their failure to abide by these restrictions found them on the way home as soon as they were caught in bars, clubs, and even restaurants.
Staying Ahead of the Threat
Companies pay people well to work overseas, and losing such a position is not something easily parted with. Ensure your employees understand that you take these practices seriously during their private time. Worthwhile as well are briefings for family members. Why not provide unclassified security briefings to spouses, as well as to the children of your employees? They are often the source of information about what parents are doing over the long weekend, as they remain at the office or in the training fields.
All told, the threats we need to be aware of are constant, as they are constantly evolving once identified. We need to stay one step ahead of our adversaries to protect our classified programs better.
