Special Book Offer - Confidential: Business Secrets, Getting Theirs - Keeping Yours by John Nolan

[Tony Steele]

"Confidential: Business Secrets, Getting Theirs - Keeping Yours"

John Nolan has released a limited reprint of his book Confidential: Business Secrets, Getting Theirs - Keeping Yours (ISBN 097213560X). The title is on many Competitive and Business Intelligence reading lists, but has been off the open market for over a decade. John, a veteran of the CI field, recently did up a print run (by request of one of his clients) and has authorized me to offer the remainder of the books to the intel community. The book is an outstanding resource for learning the Elicitation/Counter-Elicitation techniques and (more importantly) how to apply those techniques to the Business/Competitive Intelligence field.

Veterans of the Business, Competitive, and Military Intelligence industries know John’s background and contributions to the intelligence community. For those not familiar with John (a retired Counter Intelligence Agent), he co-founded Phoenix Consulting Group where (in addition to providing services and training to Intelligence and Special Operations groups) he pioneered the application of Military Intelligence techniques to the business community. He served as an adjunct professor at the National Defense Intelligence College and regularly lectured on economic and competitive intelligence issues.

New copies of “Confidential” are currently being offered on Amazon for $19.95 (plus shipping). However, as a special offer, members of the Ning Community can receive copies of the book at the discounted rate of $15.00 per copy, plus shipping (see the shipping rates below). This is approximately 25% off the retail price – and is only being offered to a few select organizations in the CI field (and while supplies last).

If you are interested in receiving copies at the discounted rate, please send me a brief message through Ning (you'll have to add me as a "friend") - or you can send an email to [e-mail] with the subject line of "BOOK OFFER." You'll need to include the following information:

• Your Name
• Mailing Address
• The number of copies that you would like to purchase
• An email address that I can send a Paypal invoice to
• And any comments, questions, or special instructions that you may have

(**Note: The Paypal invoice can be paid securely online with a Credit Card or with Paypal funds. You do not need to have a Paypal account to make a payment on Paypal.)

An invoice will be created through Paypal and emailed to the email address that you provided for payment. Once the payment is received, the package will be processed for shipping. We generally ship orders within 24 hours of receipt - but please allow us 48 hours (two business days) to process the shipment. 

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. For your reference, I have attached a "Cheat Sheet" of the Elicitation Techniques (based on the book), as well as a PDF that describes the book in more detail (see the links under my name).

I look forward to hearing from you!

Tony Steele

Elicitation Cheatsheet

Confidential: Business Secrets, Getting Theirs - Keeping Yours

*****************************************************SHIPPING RATES************************************************************
US Orders:

Method: USPS Media Mail with tracking. Cost: $3.99 shipping charge for the first book and $1.00 charge for each additional book. Estimated Delivery: Media Mail usually takes less than a week to arrive in the Continental United States. I CAN ship to APO/FPO/DPO addresses at the same price, but please understand that it naturally takes a little longer for packages to arrive at these destinations and that the package cannot be tracked past the port of exit.

Canada Orders:

Method: USPS Priority Mail International. Cost: $19.95. (**NOTE: I can ship up to two books for the price of $19.95. It costs me the same amount to ship one book as it does to ship two books. So it may be in your best interest to purchase two books. As a suggestion: you could either go in on the order of two books with a partner - or sell the other copy off at the full rate to someone else). Estimated Delivery: 6-10 business days.

International Orders:

Method: USPS Priority Mail International. Cost: $23.95. (**NOTE: I can ship up to two books for the price of $23.95. It costs me the same amount to ship one book as it does to ship two books. So it may be in your best interest to purchase two books. As a suggestion: you could either go in on the order of two books with a partner - or sell the other copy off at the full rate to someone else). Estimated Delivery: 6-10 business days.

[Trip Krant]

CI maven Seena Sharpe recently did a podcast with Social-Engineer.org:

http://www.social-engineer.org/ep-043-social-engineering-without-a-...

[Trip Krant]

Tony, I completely agree with you.

[Tony Steele]

Be sure to check out the Elicitation Cheatsheet based on John Nolan's book. It's a great resource for learning the Elicitation Techniques and how it applies to the Business Environment.

[Tony Steele]

I read a lot of books on as many types of collection methods as I can. I am a firm believer in educating yourself - even if you don't believe in using certain methods or techniques. Just because you don't use some methods......this doesn't mean others won't use them against you! Education is the only way to understand when (and how) you and your organization are being targeted - by whatever method it may be. Remember, there are two sides to the CI "coin".....Offense and Defense. To be effective, you have to know both.

[Trip Krant]

Ha, you have no idea what you just did with the mere mention of terms “social engineering” and “hacking”!

I can already hear tsk-tsks and posts of righteous indignation being typed up.

Which is of course complete hypocrisy, because hiring some hacker in Siberia to spearphish a executive is a low-cost substitute (albeit an illegal one) for paying for and maintaining CI services. So at the least they should some understanding of the issue.

But yeah, the parts I read in the Hadnagy book were good. Recently read Mitnick's autobiography too, which I thoroughly enjoyed and completely blew my mind.

[Tony Steele]

Trip - good memory! No, I'm not really "with" them - but I definitely facilitated John's appearance on their podcast. Chris Hadnagy and crew do some great work over there. I definitely recommend his book (Social Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking) to everyone in the CI community as well. Great book - a lot of lessons learned.

[Trip Krant]

Tony you are with the Social-Engineer.org guys, right? They had John Nolan on their podcast this fall, and I remember some said they were working on getting the book re-released. That was a great episode – you guys have some cool guests.

Right now, the competitive intelligence field needs to be revamped.

I think the infosec field can bring a lot to the CI world; PenTest types especially, because they already have the mindset of mentally sizing of strengths and weaknesses of a targeted network and the ability to think systematically.

Nolan's work was probably the second most significant transfer of knowledge from the govt world to CI, following Jan Herring's move DI/S&T at the agency to Motorola in the 80's.

[Tony Steele]

Be sure to check out the "Elicitation Cheatsheet" that is attached to the blog entry! This cheatsheet is an excellent resource for learning the Elicitation Techniques. This is the same resource that I give to my Soldiers when I teach them.

[Andrew Beurschgens]

I agree with your sentiment Mark, cracking read and one of its kind in HUMINT CI

[Mark Johnson]

Outstanding offer.  I already have both the paperback edition and the original hardback (personally inscribed from John), and I'm considering it anyhow.  A lot of other CI books overlap in their coverage of various techniques and analytical tools.  Trust me...this book is totally unique.  I've never seen another CI book cover this material.  If you're interested in learning HUMINT CI, this is the only book you need, and futher it's the only book that will help you.