Business counterintelligence : sustainable practice or passing fad?

[摘要] Traditional information protection mechanisms are no longer adequately placed to effectivelydeal with the adversarial threats that have arisen as a result of the rise in importance ofknowledge for today's organisations. Business counterintelligence appears to be a protectiveentity, which in principle can effectively engage with and mitigate many of these newlymanifested threats. Yet, business counterintelligence is also an entity that is accompanied bya great deal of haze and confusion as to its use, implementation and integration withindifferent organisations. This is evident from the literature where there currently exist multiplefragmented definitions of what business counterintelligence is. Organisations may as a resultadopt a particular business counterintelligence definition that may not be effective for theircontext. This can result in the ineffective protection of critical information assets and themisappropriation of organisational resources; something which is not sustainable.This thesis proposes that in order to allay the confusion caused by these differing fragmenteddefinitions, one needs to be able to arrive at a consolidated definition of what constitutesbusiness counterintelligence; this thesis's primary objective. This has been examined byfirstly contextualising business counterintelligence in order to better understand the topic; theinformation society was used as a backdrop for this purpose. Secondly, an examination of theprevailing views of business counterintelligence and its role within organisations is offered inorder to build clarity. Thirdly, a consolidated definition of business counterintelligence isproposed and its implications for different organisations examined. Finally, the implicationsof this consolidated definition for the sustainability of business counterintelligence arediscussed and conclusions based on the evidence presented within the thesis drawn. Based onthe arguments presented, this thesis postulates that a consolidated definition of businesscounterintelligence is more effective and is thus more sustainable.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University