A Technical Surveillance Counter-Measures (TSCM) survey is a specialized threat assessment that protects organizations against loss of intellectual property and other proprietary information. Specifically, technical experts inspect and analyze sensitive areas and nearby locales from which communications may be intercepted.
TSCM surveys are conducted in a sequence that maximizes the potential for signal threat discernment (i.e., proceeding from non-alerting techniques to mildly alerting to alerting, in that order).
Also known as electronic sweeps, these surveys include the following:
- Telephone systems (inspection of instruments, ancillary wiring, telephone jacks and cross-connect fields)
- Radio frequency (RF) spectrum examination (to include direction-finding techniques used for signal threat analysis)
- Thermal imaging searches
- Strong Signal Detection analysis
- Carrier Current Analysis
- Comprehensive physical search to detect hidden microphones, transmitters, recorders, cameras, etc.
