Your Own Worst Enemy
No matter how hard they try, companies will never fully stop employees from leaking sensitive information onto the Web, where eager competitors wait for it.
Case in point: Monster.com, one of the richest sources of competitive data on the Web. The job-search site contains thousands of résumés from technology salespeople listing their accounts, sales quotas, territories, total sales, important wins, and other competitive details that are more than worth the effort required to collect them, says Sanjay Poonen, senior vice president of worldwide marketing for Redwood City, California-based Informatica Corp. "It's unstructured data," he says, "but we have a guy who has perfected the art and science of how to slice and dice Monster.com."
Of course, Informatica's own salespeople also post their résumés on the site. "We find them all the time," says Poonen. But, he says, there's not much point in taking action. "People have a right to look for a job," he says, "and we can't sue everyone on Monster.com."
Besides, salespeople aren't alone. Monster.com's technology makes the data accessible and relatively cheap to gather. But, says one security expert, corporate-intelligence firms are known to use headhunters to extract similar information from executives, who often are all too willing to describe their accomplishments in lavish — and high-level — detail. —Tim Reason
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