Industrial and economic espionage has now grown in sophistication and international dimension, adopting approaches previously reserved for “traditional” espionage driven by national security motivations. The goal is stealing trade secrets by removing, copying, or recording confidential and valuable information in order to gain competitive advantage.

With this publication, Androulidakis and Kioupakis present an overview of the technical aspects of industrial espionage and of related countermeasures. In the first chapter, after introducing some statistics on the financial relevance of industrial espionage, the authors provide an overview of different techniques to intercept third-party communications. The following chapters detail how interception can actually be performed in the case of ambient communications (microphones, exotic tools), or when the target consists of computer data (hardware, software, man-in-the-middle attacks, advanced persistent threats, global surveillance), fixed line telephony (wiretaps, private branch exchanges, digital lines, call metadata, voice over IP), or mobile phones.

The book is completed by a closing chapter on protection against industrial espionage, introducing the equipment used for detection of electronic tapping, as well as methodologies for the detection of electronic interception, preventative measures and area protection, and advice on choosing the right contractor for the delivery of a technical countermeasures program.

This is a small book that can be read quickly, written in very simple terms and enriched by plenty of illustrations. Its elementary approach to technical matters makes it approachable to a vast audience of nontechnical readers whose business activities could be affected by the phenomenon of industrial espionage. The book is a good instrument to increase awareness within the user community, but will be less interesting to security practitioners, who are already conversant with the concepts exposed, and might benefit by consulting other titles [1,2].