business espionage:

... in essence, the same thing as industrial espionage, except that it steps down from being a risk management concern of relatively large corporations (corporate espionage) to small business as well. Use of the word, espionage, creates an analogous expression that covers all types of threats to business information security and breaches of confidentiality, the latter being, in its extreme, the disclosure of sensitive information to criminals and unscrupulous people while being, in a lessor sense, the gathering of intelligence that causes harm to business plans, projects, or operations of competitors as well as to those who do business with them. More from a Wikipedia article about routine activity theory.

The Business Espionage Controls & Countermeasures Association, Forest Park, WA (BECCA) has an document online titled The Four Faces of Business Espionage.

Consumers and employees have a heightened awareness today that sensitive personal information maintained by businesses is persistently under threat of being compromised. Providing security to prevent the gathering of proprietary and personal information is an ongoing routine process not to be taken lightly within the smallest of business operations.

The word espionage has strong emphasis but no relationship to business networking environments governed by accepted principles of right and wrong use of information exchanged.

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