Businesses Failing to Perceive Threat from 'Guerrilla-Style Protestors, warns ex-War Correspondent

Many businesses today are failing to identify and respond to the new threats posed to their commercial activity by politically-motivated 'networks, according to former Middle East war correspondent and Global Profile founder Giles Trendle who will be speaking at the Internet Integrity 'Annual Intelligence Briefing on May 21st.

Many businesses today are failing to identify and respond to the new threats posed to their commercial activity by politically-motivated 'networks, according to former Middle East war correspondent and Global Profile founder Giles Trendle who will be speaking at the Internet Integrity 'Annual Intelligence Briefing on May 21st.

The briefing will give examples of companies which are disenfranchising existing or potential customers and which are not fully appreciating the extent to which popular disaffection is turning into direct action against their commercial interests.

The information revolution has enabled new forms of networks to emerge," says Trendle, who spent over ten years in Lebanon reporting for British and American media. These grass-roots movements apply the classic guerrilla tactics of diffusion and agility to disrupt businesses who they regard as valid targets. In some cases, companies are inadvertently putting themselves in the firing line through damaging informational presentation and response."

The briefing will give one highly topical case study of a 'network and will explain its growing 'swarm potential and how it is targeting specific businesses, many of them well-known high-street stores. The briefing will identify the perpetrators, their strategies, their primary and secondary corporate targets, and will suggest ways in which businesses can respond to this new type of threat.

Trendle has set up Global Profile, a new information and consultancy service to provide businesses with a clearer understanding of how these networks have the potential to disrupt or even destroy commercial activity by employing a range of techniques that can include propaganda warfare, direct action, hacking attacks and, in some cases, even terrorist attacks.

Theres a fundamental failure of intelligence here," says Trendle. Even if businesses have the information about these new networks, theyre failing to understand their strategies. So theyre not getting an accurate picture from all the pieces of the intelligence puzzle. That could be extremely costly to their commercial bottom-line."

Trendle is a recognised expert on 'asymmetric warfare. He has written extensively on the Hezballah guerrillas in the Middle East and has cultivated extensive and exclusive contacts with a range of extremist groups, radical advocacy movements and hackers. He is the originator of the 'Guerrilla Matrix approach to personal and organisational agility in todays business world.

One thing I learnt from being in a war zone is that survival is often about anticipating whats coming down the track, and then preparing for it before the impact," says Trendle. The new market condition for business today is one of fast change, increased risk and volatility. Businesses must know how to adapt to operating in such a state of flux."

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