Counterinelligence

Trending: Defense firms form counterintelligence units

The U.S. defense industry is increasingly turning to its own corporate counterintelligence units to uncover and prevent foreign espionage campaigns targeting sensitive military data and technologies.The Defense Security Service, which is responsible for overseeing and protecting classified information in the hands of cleared industry contractors, receives tens of thousands of suspicious contact reports every year. But those reports are declining in number and in their counterintelligence value, according to DSS. Since 2009, the proportion of cleared industry suspicious contact reporting has fluctuated between 15 and 22 percent. The most recent data, however, shows that only 6 percent of cleared industry provides reports with counterintelligence value.