Over an extended period of time, perhaps starting as early as 2000, hackers engaged in corporate espionage, and seemingly based in China, cracked passwords and accounts of executives, and were able to access everything from technical papers to research and development reports to business plans and emails.
Once in, they installed software that was so deeply embedded it was very hard to ferret out.
A key question that has arisen is whether the hacking hastened Nortel’s demise. A possible scenario suggested that if a competitor had access to Nortel solutions, IP and bids, it would not be hard to bid more aggressively or find a different winning strategy. If Nortel was suddenly less successful at selling products partly as a result of compromised intellectual property that could easily have hastened the company’s financial woes.
Technology risks, especially as technology is evolving, may not be well understood, even by companies assumed to be quite technologically sophisticated.
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