The Canary Trap, or, how to plug an information leak

This is possibly, actually almost certainly, my favorite story of 2014. It involves basketball, information security, organizational intrigue, and espionage tactics. And it just might be a helpful example for you if you are faced with a 'leaker', i.e., someone on the team who can't seem to keep private and proprietary information private.

So here is the story, recounted in this piece from Business Insider: The NBA Used an Espionage Trick Known as 'Canary Trap' to Catch Teams Leaking to the Media

The National Basketball Association fined Detroit Pistons President of Basketball Operations Joe Dumars $500,000 in 2010 for leaking information to Yahoo! Sports reporter Adrian Wojnarowski, according to Kevin Draper of The New Republic.

In order to catch the person responsible for the leak, the NBA set up a months long sting operation based on a common espionage method made popular in the Tom Clancy novel "Patriot Games." In that book, the protagonist Jack Ryan uses what he calls a "canary trap."

According to Draper, when the NBA sent memos to teams, each team would get a slightly different version in which a few words or numbers would be changed. So when the memo, or information from the memo, was leaked to the media, the NBA would look for the small changes it had made to determine which team the leaks came from.

Dumars was one of two executives caught "red-handed," according to Draper.

Fantastic story. And probably useful as well, (at least for the more devious among us).

But seriously, who has not run into this kind of a situation at least once or twice? You are working on a new and 'secret' project and somehow, some way news and information about the project manages to reach someone who you did not want to have such information. Or maybe it is a set of financials or headcount data projections that somehow end up in the hands of a manager from another group - before you were ready to release them.

It may not seem like a big deal, especially in the modern era of transparency, aka 'oversharing', but I think sometimes it is a big deal.

If you can't trust the people and the team to keep confidential information, well, confidential, then you can't really trust them with anything. And sometimes as a leader you have to root out the source of the leak, and The Canary Trap, while sounding straight out of a Bond movie, just might help you to do that.

Try it sometime, even as an experiment. Give person 'A' one set of details, and a slightly different set to person 'B' and see which version, (if any), somehow gets leaked. Trust me, it will be fun.

Ok, that is it for the week I am out - Have a great weekend!

Can you text Hollywood Henderson and ask him?

This post probably is silly and doesn't have a relevant point or connection back to anything, but I don't really care, it was interesting to me.

Here's the backstory. On a cross-country flight recently I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, the Adam Carolla show.  Adam had on as a guest the sports and entertainment broadcaster Pat O'Brien, who has had a long career hosting various sports telecasts and entertainment-themed shows. As Adam's show generally bounces around seemingly at random from topic to topic, at one point in the conversation with O'Brien, Adam wondered aloud whether or not the former Dallas Cowboys football player Hollywood Henderson had actually won the Texas State lottery on two separate occasions. The general consensus was that Henderson had definitely won the jackpot once, but Adam was sure he had heard at some point that Henderson has won twice.Do you have his number?

It probably would have just ended there, maybe someone off mic would have Googled for the answer, and that would have been that. But after a minute O'Brien asked 'Do you want me to text Hollywood and ask him?'

Adam was kind of dumb struck at that point - 'You actually have Hollywood Henderson's number?'

Note: for non-sports fans, Hollywood Henderson is not really a household name. He had a brief run of success in the NFL, but then burned out quickly, and all that was at least 30 years ago.

O'Brien replied kind of matter-of-factly - 'Sure, why not? I hosted sports shows all over the country for years. It's my job to know people and to be able to find information.' O'Brien then did text Henderson, and Hollywood even responded. It was all pretty funny and then the show and conversation moved on.

But I couldn't stop thinking about the entire exchange between the two. About the really obscure nature of the question - 'You have Hollywood Henderson's number?' and the assuredness of the reply.

I wonder if that kind of situation, or a version or variation thereof, would make sense in more traditional interview scenarios. Mostly when interviewees are asked to solve a problem, they usually just talk about solving it, or describe a time when they actually did attempt to solve a similar problem. Sometimes in technical interviews, candidates do have to demonstrate a 'live' problem solve, but for most of the rest of us, it is not usually done that way. I mean, if you were interviewing for an HR job, the CHRO generally doesn't make you do a live employee intervention to see how you handle it.

Well, I suppose I am meandering on about nothing (shocking) but something about the story resonated. I think the next time I find myself interviewing someone I am going to try and pull a 'Henderson'. I'm going to think of a person that the interviewee really should know, that would be a valuable resource to them, and that is just famous or well-known enough to be a little bit of a reach, but not so famous as to be unreachable, if that makes sense.

Then I will ask them flat-out, 'Can you text Tim Sackett and ask him?'

Networking and Numbers - Does Size Really Matter?

Over the weekend I tipped a milestone of sorts - 1,000 first-level connections on LinkedIn -   . I know connection numbers and social network graphs are relative; 1,000 connections may seem paltry to some of the folks reading this post, (particularly the well-connected recruiters out there). To other folks, even ones that are really successful and accomplished, one thousand so-called 'professional' contacts may seem like a huge amount. We all know from personal experience executives that might not even have a LinkedIn profile, much less a large, cultvated online network spanning organizations, industries, and backgrounds. The last VP of Human Resources that I worked for reached her position, (at a Fortune 1000 company), without ever having a LinkedIn profile.

It seems clear that while 'networking' has always mattered, for some, at least up until very recently, online professional networking has not necessarily been a pre-requisite for career advancement and success. But most of us 'professionals' these days are on LinkedIn, might be doing at least some work or career related connecting on Facebook, (check my piece on BranchOut from last week), and many have even dived into the Twittersphere, (where at least for me, a tremendous amount of 'work' is going on). It is kind of hard to imagine a young professional today that would rise to the most senior level of a large organization in the next 20 years without having developed an effective online network and presence to supplement or complement their close, personal, and real-world connections.

But as to the idea about whether sheer size of one's professional network is really important or not, while many would reflexively respond that it doesn't matter that much, that quality, diversity, engagement, etc. is what matters; no one I know has completely stopped accepting connection requests on LinkedIn, or decided they have 'enough' online contacts. If you are someone that actually has done this, please drop a comment and let us know.

I was thinking about these ideas around importance of social network size in my incredibly shallow self-absorbed run-up to 1,000 LinkedIn connections because I knew I wanted to write about the topic. In doing some research, I found a recent piece in the July/August 2011 Harvard Business Review, titled 'A Smarter Way to Network', by Rob Cross and Robert Thomas. 

In the piece the authors recommend some practical network-building and cultivating strategies that they feel lead to the development of the most effective networks. Several of the recommendations, (culling redundancies, eliminating energy-sapping contacts), have at least the short-term effect of reducing absolute network size in favor of building a more balanced, strategic, and opportunistic kind of collection of 'trusted advisors', rather that a massive throng of online connections. In the entire piece, Cross and Thomas do not mention LinkedIn, (or any other online networking site), at all, and only very casually refer to online networking in a general sense. In fact, the article's focus on the 'network' as really consisting of those dozen or so close, personal, and trusted confidants, allies, and mentors makes one sense that for true benefit, chasing the next thousand LinkedIn connections at the expense of assessing and developing these personal relationships would be a colossal waste of time.

So I will end by simply asking the question. Or really a few questions.

Does 'size' of network really matter?

Is growing your online set of connections important to you? What benefits have you personally accrued?

How do you personally balance the need for rich, deep connections with trusted advisors with maintaining your thousands of friends in your social graph?

One last comment - that VP of HR I worked for? She is now on LinkedIn as well.

I'm not in today, but my Twitter followers can help you

As the popularity of Twitter grows by leaps and bounds, and as folks increasingly turn to their Twitter networks for information, perspective, advice, and great ideas, I wonder if there will come a time when the standard 'Out of the Office' message - 'Hi, I'm not in, leave a message and I'll get back to you on Thursday', will be replaced by 'I'm not in today, but my Twitter followers can help you, just send me a Tweet with your question'.

Think about it, many folks who have spent the time networking and connecting on Twitter have developed robust, rich networks of hundreds if not thousands of 'followers', many of whom are more than willing to offer assistance, resources, and expert information on almost any question you are likely to throw at them.

A few nights ago I was preparing material for my HR Tech class on the use of Web 2.0 and related technologies in recruiting, and I tweeted a question to my network about what technologies aside from LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter were important to mention. Within five minutes I received a wide range of responses from five or six professional, successful recruiters.  The responses were insightful, helpful, innovative, and I incorporated some of the suggestions in class the next night.  My 'work product' was directly influenced and improved by the use of my network.

So, what's the big deal you ask? Hasn't leveraging your professional network always been a hallmark of successful employees?  In the past the most valuable employees often boasted the largest rolodex.Flickr - rutibegga

All true, but today's social sites like Twitter and Facebook enable more 'super-charged' networking, that is more accessible to every employee.  But unlike the old-timer's rolodexes, these networks are sometimes viewed as 'time-wasters', 'distractions', and even banned or blocked by some short-sighted organizations.

Would any organization force a new employee to erase all the numbers in their contact list? Then why would they try and block Twitter?

Follow me on Twitter - I promise I won't block you!