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Sent 1: Even though electronic espionage may cost U.S. firms billions of dollars a year, most aren't yet taking precautions, the experts said.
Sent 2: By contrast, European firms will spend $150 million this year on electronic security, and are expected to spend $1 billion by 1992.
Sent 3: Already many foreign firms, especially banks, have their own cryptographers, conference speakers reported.
Sent 4: Still, encrypting corporate communications is only a partial remedy.
Sent 5: One expert, whose job is so politically sensitive that he spoke on condition that he wouldn't be named or quoted, said the expected influx of East European refugees over the next few years will greatly increase the chances of computer-maintenance workers, for example, doubling as foreign spies.
Sent 6: Moreover, he said, technology now exists for stealing corporate secrets after they've been "erased" from a computer's memory.
Sent 7: He said that Oliver North of Iran-Contra notoriety thought he had erased his computer but that the information was later retrieved for congressional committees to read.
Sent 8: No personal computer, not even the one on a chief executive's desk, is safe, this speaker noted.
Sent 9: W. Mark Goode, president of Micronyx Inc., a Richardson, Texas, firm that makes computer-security products, provided a new definition for Mikhail Gorbachev's campaign for greater openness, known commonly as glasnost.
Sent 10: Under Mr. Gorbachev, Mr. Goode said, the Soviets are openly stealing Western corporate communications.
Sent 11: He cited the case of a Swiss oil trader who recently put out bids via telex for an oil tanker to pick up a cargo of crude in the Middle East.
Sent 12: Among the responses the Swiss trader got was one from the Soviet national shipping company, which hadn't been invited to submit a bid.
Sent 13: The Soviets' eavesdropping paid off, however, because they got the contract.