Earlier this month, word got out that an Apple employee may have lost a prototype for the upcoming iPhone 5 smartphone in a bar in San Francisco. At the time it was revealed that Apple security personnel searched the home of a local resident in cooperation with police officers. The news put a light on Apple's overall security efforts to keep the company's secrets from being released.
The Associated Press (via Yahoo) reports that soon after the news reports of the lost iPhone 5 hit the Internet, Apple posted new job listings for two "new product security" managers. Jim Stickley, the co-founder of the corporate security company TraceSecurity, says that Apple's efforts in hiring security employees are needed. He says, "Corporate espionage, that's big money. Billion-dollar money. The paranoia is justified. Whatever they're trying to do, their competitors want to know. Everybody wants to know."
While Apple didn't wish to comment to the AP about its security efforts, for obvious reasons, the company has hired ex-FBI agents and others with extensive law enforcement experience for its corporate security efforts. Besides looking for lost iPhone prototypes, Apple is also going after counterfeit versions of its various products. That's especially true in China, which has a history of not enforcing its own copyright laws. Indeed in 2008, a diplomatic cable from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing said, "Early evidence suggests nearly 100 percent of Apple products in unauthorized mainland markets are knockoffs." Security personnel also have to make sure that blueprints for upcoming products don't fall into the wrong hands.
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