Over the weekend, the New York Times published an interesting feature about how some companies and government agencies force employees to travel to China and Russia “electronically naked,” in order to protect their organizations from cyber espionage.The assumption is that the second they cross the border, their devices will get hacked. 

Reporter Nicole Perlroth profiled Kenneth Lieberthal, director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institute, whose travel routine may strike some as, well, paranoid.

"He leaves his cellphone and laptop at home and instead brings 'loaner' devices, which he erases before he leaves the United States and wipes clean the minute he returns. In China, he disables Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, never lets his phone out of his sight and, in meetings, not only turns off his phone but also removes the battery, for fear his microphone could be turned on remotely. He connects to the Internet only through an encrypted, password-protected channel, and copies and pastes his password from a USB thumb drive. He never types in a password directly, because, he said, 'the Chinese are very good at installing key-logging software on your laptop.'" 

But many other companies are following suit, preferring to assume guilt than innocence. 

At McAfee, Perloth notes, if an employee’s device was ever inspected at the Chinese border it could not be plugged into the company’s network. Members of the House Intelligence Committee are only allowed to bring clean, factory reset devices, and are not allowed to connect to the government’s network. Google employees going to China can only take loaner devices, which need to be scanned upon their return. 

However my colleague Neil Rubenking notes that a simple scan and wipedown are insufficient protection from getting hacked or recorded. The most sophisticated and determined of cybercriminals can slip something into firmware, which is infinitely more difficult to detect or even prevent. 

The takeaway? "DO NOT take anything sensitive to China or Russia and DO NOT attempt any sensitive communication from China or Russia," Rubenking says. 

Although China and Russia officially condemn cyber espionage, U.S. counterintelligence experts aren't bashful about pointing fingers at both countries. In a November report from the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive (ONCIX), most network intrusion attempts originate from China, followed closely by Russia.