In Depth

5 Ways to Find Security Leaks Without Ever Leaving Your Desk

Stop competitors from gleaning valuable information about your business strategy via job boards and other online sources

By Leonard Fuld, Fuld & Company

December 01, 2006 — CSO —

1. Look up your company on Vault.com. Job gossip boards are powerful places. At Vault.com, current, former and prospective employees of large companies share hiring tips and tales from the trenches. The discussions are frank and sometimes laced with very specific insights. "Looking for opinions on Lazard versus Morgan Stanley in terms of overall exit options and prestige," one author recently wrote about the two investment banks. "I know Morgan Stanley guys place very well, but how about all the other analysts in industry groups, etc.? Which firm overall has a better brand?"

To get started, just type your company's name into the search engine at the Vault.com home page. You may have to pay a few dollars a month for a subscription—and it may just be worth it.

2. Check out the résumés at

target="_blank">Hotjobs.yahoo.com (or Monster.com, or Dice.com or Brassring.com...). No other single "business transaction" will likely reveal more about your company than someone from your firm looking for a job at another. Recently, for instance, one of our clients wanted to find out how information on its warehouse distribution network was being leaked. We went to a résumé board and ran a search for "warehouse," "square feet," "per," and "day."

Sure enough, we found this listing (some details were changed to protect the company): "30 percent outsourcing from the Pacific Rim. 2.2 million square feet of warehouse in seven locations. $32 million in finished product inventories and $28 million in raw materials. Private fleet operations include 33 pieces of equipment, $4 million in annual revenue and over $300,000 in bottom line profit....

Production forecasting, scheduling and raw material acquisition/supply for more than 100 molding machines with 3,000 different SKUs, resulting in more than 1,900 pallets daily and 25 million units annually." This list of operational details went on for many hundreds of words and exposed much of the company's supply chain.

3. Check the job listings at those same sites. Conversely, sometimes your human resources department reveals too much about your own company. True, if you make a job description too broad, you'll fail to find the right people. But if you make it too narrow, you may very well reveal too much too soon about your company—like your R&D plans, for instance.

4. See if YourCompanySucks.com. Follow the anger trail. Individuals have built websites to rail against major retailers, pharmaceutical firms and many other large companies. Layoffs, lawsuits and various social violations (such as using child labor) have given cause for people to yell and scream. Just add the word "sucks" (pardon our French) onto your company's name, and you may be surprised at what you find. Wal-Mart Sucks (www.walmartsucks.org) and Best Buy Sucks (www.bestbuysux.org) are examples of websites that contain lots of bile and occasional insights into corporate infrastructure. One employee (or soon-to-be ex-employee) recently penned this diatribe, after identifying his store by number and city: "To say the store needs improvement is an understatement.... Staffing is so short that some departments don't have any closers.... OpenBox laptops get a hefty 27 percent off the price tag instead of the nominal 50 bucks off or so."