Traditional Bug Sweeps Are Point-in-Time. Threats Are Continuous.
Corporate espionage costs US businesses an estimated $600 billion annually. The standard response: hire a TSCM (Technical Surveillance Countermeasures) firm for a $5,000-$15,000 bug sweep. They arrive with equipment, scan your boardroom, give you the all-clear, and leave.
Then someone plants a bug the next day.
The problem with point-in-time sweeps
Traditional TSCM sweeps are:
- Expensive ($5K-15K per sweep)
- Scheduled (the threat actor can wait until after the sweep)
- Infrequent (quarterly at best, most companies do annually)
- Point-in-time (no coverage between sweeps)
A bug planted the day after a sweep has months of undetected access. Sweeps find what’s there now, not what was there last week or what will be there tomorrow.
Continuous monitoring
The alternative: always-on RF spectrum monitoring using commodity SDR hardware and AI anomaly detection.
A $30-100 SDR sensor node in each room learns the normal RF baseline, then alerts on anomalies: new transmitters, unexpected WiFi devices, Bluetooth bugs, cellular transmissions that don’t match known devices.
Monthly subscription ($2K-5K) instead of per-sweep billing ($5K-15K). Continuous coverage instead of quarterly snapshots. Automated detection instead of manual sweeping.
What this looks like
We’re developing TSCM SaaS at Symvek: always-on counter-surveillance monitoring for enterprises.
- SDR sensor nodes learn your facility’s RF fingerprint
- AI detects anomalies: new devices, unexpected transmissions
- Cloud dashboard shows alerts, history, and facility map
- Monthly compliance reports for regulated industries
The same SDR technology we’re using for drone detection applies to facility monitoring. The hardware is commodity. The intelligence is software.
If you’re interested in continuous TSCM monitoring for your organization, contact us.