Until, with hindsight, they realised they already had.”With the ending of the Cold War, state secret services are turning their attentions to industrial espionage to give their own companies an edge on foreign competitors,” says Ms Upton. “We tell travellers to assume their hotel rooms are bugged or their fax messages are being intercepted whenever they’re on business. Certainly they should make that assumption whenever they travel in America, France, Russia, China or Korea.”Control Risks, a respected security analysis firm, issues advice to clients on the pitfalls of trading in the former Soviet Union. They appeared totally uninterested in paying for plans of the system and the businessmen felt they couldn’t give them away. At the end of the day, the businessmen were invited to dinner and advised to leave their possessions – including a laptop – with their driver.The following day, the Chinese had completely changed their stance. During the first day of negotiations, their Chinese hosts appeared desperate to buy the system.

They need to be made aware of the fact that many countries routinely have agents in hotels. That innocent-looking maid could be working for the secret service and she’ll copy your files as soon as you leave your room.”Ms Upton tells executives of the case of the two French businessmen who travelled to China to sell a top-secret multi-million dollar missile guidance system. More alarmingly, security companies talk of cases in which thieves have demanded ransoms of up to $500,000 for the return of computers.”Not many business people are aware of just how vulnerable they are,” says Gill Upton, editor-in-chief of Business Traveller magazine. “Many executives don’t have a password on their machine, they don’t use encryption [scrambling] programs and they often leave laptops unattended in their hotel rooms. They are likely to cost in the region of pounds 4,500 each – about three times the value of the actual computer – but the commercially sensitive information contained in the laptop is often worth far more.There are reports from the United States of executives offering rewards of up to $80,000 for the return of stolen laptops. “But the biggest concern seems to be over the loss of information from travelling businessmen whose laptops are stolen or accessed in hotel rooms while they’re having dinner in the restaurant.”Mr Hewitt’s firm is negotiating with six of Britain’s biggest companies over the sale of tracker devices that can be implanted in laptops. Today, business executives are routinely bugged, tapped, recorded, filmed and conned into leaving laptop computers unguarded long enough for spies to download their contents.

No one can say how prevalent industrial espionage is, but security companies report anecdotal evidence of a huge rise in concern over the loss of commercial secrets.”We do regular electronic sweeps to find intercepts on fax machines and bugs in boardrooms all over the country,” says Peter Hewitt, European marketing director for the London-based Communication Control Systems. This is the world of corporate security as seen by some of Britain’s biggest blue-chip companies.The days when the most serious threat to travelling executives was a drunken evening during which trade secrets were indiscreetly shared are over. Closing in, they corner their prey, surround him and retrieve the computer. The thief may be handed over to the police or, to spare embarrassment, allowed to leave.
No, this is not a script for the next James Bond movie. Taking to the air in a helicopter, the team switches on a radio receiver to pick up signals from a transmitter hidden inside the computer. One of the worst films ever made (so bad it’s compulsory) featured Jamie Lee Curtis as a health club instructress and John Travolta as a probing reporter exposing the sexual overtones of the joint The point is it was made donkey’s years ago. Princess Di probably remembers watching Sue Ellen working out in Dallas: all lycra and lip gloss.But is it Britain? Can you see Terry or Bob of the Likely Lads discussing world affairs over an aerobics session rather than over a few pints at the Black Horse? The time and place for exercise was in the school but nobody wanted to know about the gym.