COSC 511 Questions for February 15, 1999


1.  What are the main threats to trade secrets?

2.  When does competitive intelligence conducted by one corporation
against another become illegal or unethical?  Was the competitive
ambush by Tactical Marketing Associates (Denning, p. 147) legal?
ethical?

3.  If you leave a job, what information can you legally take with you
and use?

4.  If someone gives you stolen proprietary information, is it legal to
publish it?

5.  When the U.S. government discovered the unfair trading practices on
the part of the French (Denning, pp. 120-121), what should they have
done with the information?

6.  Should your government actively seek to collect the trade secrets of
foreign companies, i.e., engage in economic espionage?

7.  Consider a job you currently hold or held in the past for some
organization.  It need not be a paying job.  In what ways could you
exploit your role as an insider in order to damage the organization
using information warfare techniques?

8.  Referring to the same job, how could an outsider exploit your role
as an insider in order to cause damage without your realization?

9.  Could an adversary exploit the vulnerability of organizations to
insider attack in a strategic attack against your country and, if so,
how?