For 45 days, officials from a California bank paid to keep a blackmailer quiet.

     The blackmailer had information on confidential accounts and passwords, and officials had no idea how those records were obtained.

     What had happened, recalled Ron Moritz – chief technical officer with Cupertino, Calif.-based Symantec Corp. – was a bank vice president had accidentally downloaded a Trojan horse virus, maybe by opening something as common as an online greeting card. The virus gave the sender a view of everything that popped up on the screen.

     “Basically, it was a window into his computer,” Moritz said. The bank eventually detected the Trojan intruder by running an anti-virus program. Since then, the company has installed increased safety nets so a similar situation doesn’t occur.

     Moritz – whose company develops Internet security technology – was unsure what eventually happened with the case, but he said such incidents are becoming more common as companies try to keep their secrets safe. In this electronic age, companies need to secure access not only physically but also over data lines as well.

     A security breach through which new product information leaks out could cost companies millions of dollars. Corporate spying, illegal and legal, is thriving as companies seek an edge over rivals. To deal with it, many businesses have set aside staff to monitor physical access to their facilities and virtual access over the Internet. Companies are requiring employees to sign confidentiality agreements and making workers aware of the risks of leaks.

     “There’s some really good information that’s happening at corporations,” Moritz said. “If I were going to do espionage, it wouldn’t be against the Department of State. It would be against a really interesting company that I would want to compete against.”

     Steve Ackerman, director of research and analysis at CTC International Group, said, “The increase in spying is due to the end of the Cold War and the fact that there’s so many more countries now we can do business with. We’re so much more interconnected.”

     His West Palm Beach firm works with companies to get information about rivals and their products. He said more companies are fighting for a competitive advantage.

     High-tech firms, financial institutions and energy and telecommunications businesses are probably the largest targets for hackers, foreign governments and competitors. That’s because those businesses make money based on how innovative their new products are and how quickly they can market them.

     Competition is so fierce that those wanting information will do almost everything to obtain secrets. Companies have been known to send spies to mingle with workers at bars, buying rounds of drinks to loosen tongues. Other businesses have rifled through discarded trash.

     Those methods are legal.

     But other methods aren’t, such as bugging devices, tapping into landline and cellular phone lines to listen into meetings, and hacking into computers.

     Governments have even been known to bug overseas flights or hotel rooms frequented by business travelers. They try to gain information on companies trying to compete with state-run businesses.

     Corporate espionage has been around for decades. And as much as businesses like to keep attacks against them or the methods they use a secret, sometimes their tactics fall under the public spotlight.

     That’s what happened in the early 1990s when Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. hired Palm Beach Gardens-based Wackenhut Corp. to find the source of an information leak. The tactics used by Wackenhut were the subject of a congressional hearing.

     But Wayne Black, a local investigator and former Wackenhut employee who headed the Alyeska investigation, said no laws were broken. Investigators went through trash and videotaped and recorded certain meetings – legal methods in Virginia – to find out who had the leaked information.

     “Our investigative techniques, although aggressive, were perfectly legal and widely accepted,” Black wrote in a letter.

     That case was one of the first to shed light on the previously veiled world of corporate espionage.

     Now, Wackenhut has cut back on the number of investigations it does, mainly focusing on background checks on its clients' new employees.

     With businesses and individuals becoming more aware of security issues, the high-tech gadgets business is booming as well – including sales of equipment for spying and detecting spies.

     Nancy Demeter, a vice president at Spy Shops International Inc. in Fort Lauderdale, said her store sells equipment to businesses and individuals. The most popular item is a camera that’s tucked inside a smoke detector, but cameras in eyeglasses and beepers are also favorites.

     “I have seen in the past year or so a big increase in the market as far as the equipment is concerned,” she said.

     While companies are more aware than ever about security concerns, officials like to keep mum about their problems or what type of security they have in place.

     Several local companies contacted for this story declined to comment.

     “I think companies don’t want to advertise because people can become even more imaginative and get stuff out the door,” said Andy Lowen, the director of product marketing for the Access Control Division of Sensormatic Electronics Corp. of Boca Raton – a company that specializes in security equipment.

     Most companies work toward preventing information leaks rather that stopping them altogether. “You can never stop everything,: he said.

     BellSouth Corp. has a number of protections in place to make sure its security remains intact, said Mike Branigan, a company spokesman. Like most companies, Branigan didn’t want to be too specific, but he did say BellSouth has security programs in place to protect its data networks, for example. “As technology has changed and made the methods of transmitting data and information different, the need for more security technology has become evident to us,” he said.