Competitive Intelligence

Counter Intelligence

There’s intelligence, and then there’s counter intelligence. Counter intelligence is simply the intelligence agencies attempts to prevent the enemy or hostile intelligence agencies from gathering any intelligence about them. After all, if  they know what you know and you know what they know, even if it’s only what they think you know about them and they know about you – it makes your defences very vulnerable – not to say confused. 

Many governments have two separate intelligence agencies, one for collecting the intelligence, and one for counter intelligence. The mission of the counterintelligence agency can be spread all over the world, well, it’s certainly spread across a few different departments anyway. Governments, in effect, need to protect three separate entities:

• their installations
• their operations
• last but not least – their personnel

The vital information collected by intelligence agencies, and the work performed by the counter intelligence agencies are a massive part of these operations.

Defensive Counter Intelligence starts off by looking at possible weak spots in ones own organization which could be exploited by any foreign intelligence organizations or services. These days, particularly since the atrocities of 9/11 and the ever present threat of more terrorist attacks, counter intelligence services are working hard to make sure that these terrorists don’t know more about our organizations than is safe for all concerned.