Simple

By Rick Nason, PhD, CFA
Partner, RSD Solutions Inc.

In my previous blog I wrote about the Canadian military intelligence staffer who was caught selling military secrets to the Russians.   It is an embarrassing case for the Canadian military as the person involved had high level clearance, and it was the FBI and not any of the Canadian agencies who picked up on the very suspicious activity of the person involved.

You might think that in this day and age of high tech spying that the person was a mastermind using the most sophisticated of equipment.  The irony is that if they were they would have likely been caught much earlier.  It seems that the Canadian military was so concerned about high tech electronic cyber spying that they totally forgot about the lowly USB key.  Yup – that’s right – the staffer sneaked the information out using a plain old USB key that could be bought at any office supply store.

Sometimes in our focus on being up to date and sophisticated, we forget about the simple risks in front of us.