Foreign Economic Espionage in Cyberspace/Annex

by the National Counterintelligence and Security Center

Annex – Decreasing the Prevalence of Economic or
Industrial Espionage in Cyberspace

The U.S. Government (USG) continues to undertake numerous actions to counter economic espionage in cyberspace. Perhaps most evident are current USG efforts to protect critical infrastructure and other sensitive computer networks from malicious cyber activities. The USG also continues to work with the private sector to address science and technology gaps through cyber research and development as a way of mitigating the malicious activities of threat actors in cyberspace. The USG will continue to improve its efforts to disrupt, deny, exploit, or increase the costs of foreign cyber operations that are targeting the nation’s most critical economic assets.

Examples of USG actions include the following:

• Sharing information about cyber threats, vulnerabilities, and other risks;
• Promoting best practices, risk assessments, and capability development;
• Improving our responses to cyber incidents;
• Building and driving the market towards a more secure cyber ecosystem; and
• Partnering with allies to address cyber issues.

The USG has the capability to impose costs on adversaries who engage in economic cyber espionage through various actions, including diplomatic, informational, military, law enforcement, and economic response. The details of many of these actions are too sensitive to discuss in this publication; however, we have provided a few general examples that illustrate the USG's response, such as:

• Public statements and attribution;
• Diplomatic demarches;
• Economic sanctions; and
• Law enforcement actions.