Knowledge is Power.
Sun Tzu stated in the Art of War, "So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will fight without danger in battles." Having intelligence on your enemy is a key to winning military battles. In business having any competitive edge, including intelligence, can be the difference between winning and losing a key-project, beating an advisory colleague, and getting a raise or promotion.
Google, a small start-up out of Mountain View, has a feature called Google Alerts that will help keep your enemies informed. Google Alerts is a way for people (or attackers) to stay informed of new pages that have been indexed by Google. When Google's bots are scanning/indexing the Internet, they will look for specific keywords that the user sets up before hand, just like issuing a Google query. When Google's bots identify these keywords they will email you a link to the page the keywords were found on.
This is a great feature that can be used to stay informed on all sorts of things. Say, you would like to stay informed of Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco, running for Governor of California. You could set up a Google Alert with "Gavin newsom" and "governor" as the keywords and be emailed any new pages that Google identifies.
It seems that Sun Tzu was correct. Knowing your enemy, and knowing what he knows, is the key to winning battles.
