National Security and Outsourcing essays

National Security and Outsourcing essays The current spate of globalization brought myriad benefits to industries around the world. The United States alone benefited by way of outsourcing a lot of its industries to Third World Countries and emerging economies like China, India, the Philippines and Russia. The main reason for this endeavor is the bottom line. The low labor and operational costs offered by these countries make for an attracted business proposition especially when it comes to satisfying the investment returns of major stockholders. Outsourcing has been done to almost everything from business processes, customer relations management, production and technical services. But despite the hefty return in revenue, outsourcing is by no means totally secure or safe. Some segments of the US society looked at outsourcing as a threat to national security and they are far from wrong! In one example last year: India's 350,000 call-center workers are starting to mount, some outsourcing providers forgo background checks of e mployees and even help applicants dress up their resumes. In one security breach last year, three former employees of MphasiS, a company providing outsourcing services, were arrested for stealing more than $350,000 from four customers of Citibank. The workers were accused of acquiring passwords and transferring money from customers' bank accounts into their own. (Germain, 2006) The situation may only be a commercial problem but if taken exponentially and ends up hitting a lot of the American public, situations such as these may hold the US hostage economically by way of funds being stolen on a grand scale. Aside from the economic impact, national security can be compromised in terms of theft of technology. This is one of the major problems that faced outsourcing. American firms owning proprietary technology information may end up getting their processes reversed engineered when these technologies or parts thereof are outsour...