Industrial espionage

Industrial espionage or corporate espionage is espionage conducted for commercial purposes instead of national security purposes. Industrial espionage describes activities such as theft of trade secrets, bribery, blackmail, and technological surveillance. As well as spying on commercial organizations, governments can also be targets of commercial espionage &mdash; for example, to determine the terms of a tender for a government contract so that another tenderer can underbid. Industrial espionage is most commonly associated with technology-heavy industries, particularly the computer and automobile sectors.