Asset (intelligence)
Encyclopedia
In intelligence
, assets are persons within organizations or countries that are being spied upon who provide information for an outside spy.
There are different categories of assets, including people
Intelligence (information gathering)
Intelligence assessment is the development of forecasts of behaviour or recommended courses of action to the leadership of an organization, based on a wide range of available information sources both overt and covert. Assessments are developed in response to requirements declared by the leadership...
, assets are persons within organizations or countries that are being spied upon who provide information for an outside spy.
There are different categories of assets, including people
- that willingly work for a foreign government for ideological reasons such as being against their government, but live in a country that doesn't allow political opposition. They may elect to work with a foreign power to change their own country because there are few other ways available.
- that work for monetary gain. Intelligence services often pay good wages to people in important positions that are willing to betray secrets.
- that have been blackmailed and are forced into their role.
- that do not even know they are being used. Assets can be loyal to their country, but may still provide a foreign agent with information through failures in information safety such as using insecure computers or not following proper OPSECOperations security (OPSEC)Operations security is a process that identifies critical information to determine if friendly actions can be observed by adversary intelligence systems, determines if information obtained by adversaries could be interpreted to be useful to them, and then executes selected measures that eliminate...
procedures during day-to-day chatting.