by JM Addison
Chapter 10
Sequitus Technologies was on the verge of a real breakthrough. The key lay in the discovery of the Pico Timer. In fact several other companies including the Government Labs at Lawrence Livermore were racing to develop new products and technologies based on the discovery.
Sequitus had been “burned” not too long ago by one of the competitors getting secret information from within. The source of the leak was never really discovered, so all sorts of measures were taken to tighten corporate security.
The company was relatively small with no real production capabilities as of yet. The promise of what developments were possible kept the investors circling looking for potential delicious payout of rich opportunities. A few provided a good source of investment capital to keep the little band of engineers well-funded.
The Pico timer was the heart of the next generation of radio transmission devices, as well as other possibilities. However, better radios were not the real goal, but more exotic ‘demonstrations’ were in development. An extremely high resolution and highly accurate sort of Radar was one possibility. It would allow a person to literally ‘see’ through solid objects. The police could see into buildings where dangerous suspects might be evading capture. Rescuers could search the debris after an earthquake for survivors. The was not like the fuzzy green images that the current military grade radar imaging units provided. This was a very good definition image of what lay beyond solid objects.
Cellular phones would have much more capability – more reliable and higher speed data transmission, lower cost, better sound quality. Digital Television could expand it’s horizons by providing real time user interaction along with improved quality transmission at a fraction of the cost of what digital Television broadcast was producing now.
So, much was at stake and it was a risky business. Risky from the standpoint of potential failure and risky due to the almost combative relationship among the competition. There were spies. There were e-mail and network traffic snoops. In fact, the recent security policy change implemented at the company dictated that all e-mail had to be encrypted to reduce interception by hackers or other uninvited intruders.
Among the many jobs he did for Sequitus, Mike Ludwik was appointed the chief of corporate security. This meant he had to oversee not only the physical access portion of the security risks, but also the risks associated with the transmittal of data. Especially data that might need to go across some portion of the internet. He was baffled over the apparent security leaks of the past. He did not want to risk interception or theft of sensitive and lucrative information to occur during his appointment of security oversight. He was determined to do all that he could to prevent it. His only problem was that he didn’t really know how the information was getting out.
The engineering department had a working demonstration of a portable, high resolution, close range radar imaging device – code named “Voyeur”, that would allow the user to clearly see what was going on in another room. Right now, the early prototype set up of the device was a little complex. The user had to arrange a trio of small transmitting antennae arrays. The received radio reflection was picked up by a fourth antenna and fed into a digital signal processing unit. The resulting output was displayed on a small, hand-held tablet. The user had full control over penetration depth, zoom and object density control through a set of soft controls right on the touch sensitive display tablet.
Eventually, the goal would be to miniaturize the entire unit into a lightweight head mounted visor or “glasses” which would provide binocular vision. The potential for such a device was enormous. The military was very interested as was law enforcement and rescue agencies. Throw on a pair of glasses and look through rock for earthquake victims, drug lords or war criminals. Also, the government was closely watching the developments from a regulatory perspective since the technology could be abused or exploited if made available to the wrong hands.
Mike himself was one of the engineers working on the project along with his expanded role of corporate security enforcer. It was necessary for information to be passed among several parties: The US patent office, updates to investors, materials requests to parts contractors and such. With so much information flowing, it was a real challenge to tightly control what information was going where, especially once it left Sequitus. The contractors who wanted to communicate electronically, were only allowed to if they agreed to follow the strong data transmission encryption rules. What actually went in any communication (electronically or otherwise) was also strictly controlled so no proprietary information could be given away.
Mike constantly checked to see if there was any possibility that the computer systems or information flow could be suffering any sort of break in or being “hacked” by outsiders. The threatening environment made the possibility of such an attempt very real. In fact, the competition was just as technically adept and completely familiar with security and encryption as he was, so he had to monitor any suspicious activity scrupulously. This made for fairly inconvenient, perhaps even difficult communication processes for all involved, but they were necessary. It also made for constant review of the data logs looking for signs of any sort of unscrupulous activity.
Mike, as well as most of the others in the organization, were fairly certain that the past information leaks were the result of some form of information “theft” and probably not caused intentionally by anyone inside Sequitus. There was too much at stake with huge potential for anyone to be that dumb to cause a compromise. Thus, if only Mike could determine how the information was getting out in spite of all the security measures, he would feel much better. Then he could make sure that “hole” was closed and probably take serious legal action against the guilty parties.
So how could they doing it?