D R O N E S
Commercial espionage is a pervasive threat. Drones now make it easy for anyone to
point a 4K camera into any window in your building, to see and record whatever is left on desks or displayed on screens. It’s as if your access control systems have suddenly been weakened because intruders can now, virtually, walk in through the window.
Similarly, your cybersecurity measures can be targeted. It’s now all so easy to land a drone on the exterior of your premises – a roof, a ledge, a tucked-away service area – and to leave it there sending signals undetected.
Backdoor into networks
Hackers can use this as platform to attempt to open a backdoor into your networks, or to fool visitors to your premises with Wi-Fi spoofing.
Criminals who favour traditional methods of eavesdropping and bugging can now use drones as a powerful new delivery method, a way to target microphones close to sensitive meeting rooms.
Senior executives and those close to commercial negotiations need to be aware of this fast-growing risk. We’ve seen plausible reports of drones being used to follow executives onto golf courses and attempts to spy on high-value assets, as rogue traders try
to second-guess companies’ likely share price movements. And one firm of solicitors specialising in mergers and acquisitions has reported a major spike in drone activity in periods running up to major deals being finalised.
The unwanted drone threat needs to be taken seriously, which is why the CPNI has issued guidance on countermeasures for the first time and included counter-drone (C-UAS) solutions in its Catalogue of Security Equipment. This guidance focuses particularly on measures to detect, track and identify drones.
You should now be thinking of counter-drone DTI systems as integral to your company’s existing threat detection infrastructure – i.e. a default technology that sits alongside all the other systems that your 24/7 security operation monitors: access systems, alarms and, most obviously, CCTV.
Alerted to approaches
Counter-drone technologies are easily integrated and are designed to be operated by the same teams, using the same interfaces. In practice, at any location where you have security staff checking cameras, you should make sure that they are also now alerted to drone approaches. The capability exists. For security planners the first requirement is iintelligence. Only with accurate data can you assess the scale of the problem, develop a risk
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mitigation strategy – or take immediate action if the threat is imminent – and persuade the board that the issue needs to be taken seriously, long term.
You shouldn’t wait until a major incident hits the headlines – as it surely will – to get a handle on this issue. Assess the threat, develop proportionate mitigation policies and be prepared to answer questions.
There’s a memorable moment at the start of George Orwell’s 1984 where a government helicopter is described darting around like a bluebottle “snooping into people’s windows”.
Back in 1949 this seemed like one of the book’s more far-fetched predictions. But these days, like so much that Orwell warned about, it seems suddenly less fantastical.
Who needs helicopters though, with drones getting smaller, lighter and quieter? And it may not be Big Brother who wants to snoop on you but plenty of others do, and they have the means.
Amit Samani Vice President of Sales for The Americas & UK
Dedrone
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