Strider, a company making its public debut Tuesday, offers a detailed screening tool to prevent international infiltrators from stealing intellectual property.

Why it matters: Countries — particularly China — are believed to frequently try to improve their economic might by stealing intellectual property for their domestic firms to copy and sell.

One major way to accomplish this is by sending people to take jobs at companies with attractive technology or throw fake conferences to recruit existing employees.

The big picture: Until now, there have been few methods to screen individual people for obfuscated ties to governments.

Strider addresses this through massive databases of human entanglements with governments, ranging from military scholarships to shell groups founded by people interconnected with previously flagged individuals from a variety of governments.

While Strider is announcing itself to the public today, its twin co-founders Eric and Greg Levesque have quietly been providing similar services to U.S. intelligence agencies and large firms in the past.

The state of play: While it might seem like screening for potential spies would drive a wedge between companies and international businesses, Strider thinks they provide the exact opposite service: the ability to confidently recruit from nations like China or Russia while minimizing the risk of being robbed.

"The reality is that we live in a day and age where companies operate globally," Eric Levesque told Axios. "We assess the risk of espionage, to allow them to do it safely."

Go deeper: China's move on intellectual property theft