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Overview & Operations Plan

Business Threat Awareness Council
BTAC Operations Plan

OVERVIEW

On November 12th 2004, the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive presented a day-long seminar for business leaders in the NYC region on the subject of Counterintelligence Threat Awareness and Security Issues for Business. This event was hosted by the ARISING Group, a technology solutions company based in New York.

The ONCIX sent experts from Washington D.C. with backgrounds in Intelligence and Law Enforcement to share their experience and insight on Cyber Crime, Foreign Economic Espionage and Terrorism Threats to Business. Also, Tim Powell of The Knowledge Agency spoke about the dangers of counterfeit products and methods of tracking global brand pirates.

Overall, the speakers covered the three classes of Information Warfare: Personal Information Theft; Foreign Economic and Industrial Espionage; and Terrorism.

This seminar was offered as part of the US Government's counterintelligence outreach program and was the first time the ONCIX specifically presented this information to the private sector. It was a rare opportunity to hear experts presenting the collective national level concerns of the FBI, CIA, Defense, and Business community.

After the conference many of the attendees requested follow-up meetings in order to develop personal Counterintelligence action plans for their companies. In order to meet these requests, the ARISING Group is working with the ONCIX to plan some smaller scale round table discussions for this purpose.

It is important to the security of our region and the nation that businesses understand the threats to the infrastructure of commerce, and how to counter them.

To that end, the Business Threat Awareness Council action committee was organized to develop threat awareness action plans for businesses. Although these efforts will undoubtedly result in the mitigation of costly losses of proprietary information, this group will not operate for profit.

PURPOSE

Most major corporations already have robust security systems in place. Hence, it is not the purpose of this working group to duplicate any security function or to reinvent any wheel in corporate security.

The BTAC seeks instead to strengthen the integrity of American business by:

• Identifying threats to business information and systems.
• Developing standards for business document classification.
• Sharing best practices of the public and private sectors.
• Promoting stronger ties between the producers of proprietary information (and systems) and the people charged with protecting that property.
• Disseminating [findings] to businesses outside of the BTAC.
• Facilitating ONCIX Private Sector outreach efforts to inform and develop dialogue between Government and the Private Sector.

Additionally, the BTAC may:

• Collect information on CI issues from a wide variety of sources, including the ONCIX, the media, law enforcement, and regulators.
• Set up a website to responsibly educate, inform and collect the latest CI information.
• Collect and provide a list of contact points in law enforcement and government who can assist CI efforts.
• Provide assistance to members in terms of facilitating contacts, communication, lobbying and investigating.
• Open up channels of communication with regulators and others involved in related efforts.

RESOURCE

Initially all involvement in the BTAC will be strictly voluntary and no dues or fees will be charged. It is likely that funds will be needed for some part of the initiative (e.g., printing, mailing, building/maintaining a website, etc.). When funding is required, the steering committee will determine the best method of procuring those funds, (e.g., grants, corporate donations, etc.).

METHODS

Initially the Business Threat Awareness Council will meet quarterly to develop a counterintelligence action plan for business. It is estimated that a working plan can be developed within the first 2 quarters. Once that has been established, the BTAC will meet to exchange new information on threats, best practices, and national business security.

Subsequent meetings will be larger groups where an invited speaker from government, law enforcement, etc., can address a particular topic for the purpose of improving the counterintelligence efforts of business professionals.

The focus should always be kept on improving threat awareness and counterintelligence practice as well as disseminating this information to American businesses.

PARTICIPATION

All companies and organizations committed to the BTAC initiative are invited to provide support by endorsing BTAC objectives and lending their organizational name to the BTAC list of supporters. All participants will also have the option to be listed/featured as supporters in public outreach, including publications and materials, website, media campaign, etc.

Companies and organizations will be called upon to provide "in-kind" contributions, by, for example, providing meeting space, contributing to the drafting of materials, participating on implementation teams, hosting events and organizing legislative initiatives or educational workshops in a region of interest.

The BTAC will be comprised of elected representatives from the member companies and agencies ideally including participation from:

• ONCIX
• Law Enforcement
• Physical Security
• IT Security
• Business Intelligence
• Intellectual Property
• Anti-Counterfeiting and Piracy
• Business Law
• Human Resource
• Others as need identifies or popular interest arises

GOVERNANCE

The operational responsibilities and accountability of the BTAC initiative will be governed by a Steering Committee.

The Steering Committee sets priorities, provides guidance to the project implementation team and supervises operations.

It will share in the responsibility for resource procurement and will provide intraorganizational liaison between the ONCIX (and other government/law enforcement agencies) and the BTAC membership and the project implementation team.

PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION TEAM

A project implementation team comprised of topic champions (i.e., document classification, systems integrity, counterfeiting/IP, etc.) will research and produce topical sections for the toolkit and will be responsible for the day-to-day implementation of the program.

BTAC PROGRAM TIMELINE

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