![]() Through a coordinated, multiagency, and multifaceted strategy, this Administration continues to engage foreign governments to strengthen international enforcement efforts, promote private and public sector initiatives to develop industry-led best practices to protect trade secrets, and raise public awareness to inform stakeholders and the general public on the detrimental effects of trade secret misappropriation to businesses and the US economy.Īs a part of this strategy, businesses also play a significant role in addressing the growing challenges of protecting trade secrets. Advancements in technology, increased mobility, rapid globalization, and the anonymous nature of the Internet create growing challenges in protecting trade secrets. The President 5continues to remain vigilant in addressing threats-including corporate and state-sponsored trade secret misappropriation-that jeopardize the United States’ status as the world’s leader for innovation and creativity. 2 According to US Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Danny Marti, “Advancements in technology, increased mobility, rapid globalization, and the anonymous nature of the Internet create growing challenges in protecting trade secrets.” 3 (See the sidebar “US administration’s commitment to trade secret protection.”) US ADMINISTRATION’S COMMITMENT TO TRADE SECRET PROTECTION Though IP theft is hardly new, and some IP may still be attainable only through physical means, the digital world has made theft easier. ![]() ![]() 1 It’s no surprise, then, that thieves-armed with means, motive, and opportunity-are in hot pursuit.Įxplore the Cyber Risk Management collection Intellectual property can constitute more than 80 percent of a single company’s value today. These kinds of scenarios keep executives up at night for good reason: Intellectual property (IP) is the heart of the 21st-century company, an essential motor driving innovation, competitiveness, and the growth of businesses and the economy as a whole. Compared with more familiar cybercrimes such as the theft of credit card, consumer health, and other personally identifiable information (PII)-which regulations generally require be publicly reported-IP cyber theft has largely remained in the shadows. And most terrifying: Because the information exists in the form of data rather than, say, manila folders in file cabinets, a breach might remain undiscovered for weeks or months. For a US government lab, it could be foreign agents stealing blueprints for a new weapon system at a biopharmaceutical firm, staff scientists might take confidential data on a potential cancer cure or at a game developer, hackers could filch the latest first-person shooter game, pre-release. It’s a business leader’s nightmare-the stomach-churning realization that a corporate network breach has occurred, and that valuable intellectual assets are now in unknown hands. The first step toward prioritizing IP protection and incident readiness: properly valuing possible IP losses. Losing customer data to hackers can be costly and embarrassing, but losing intellectual property to cyber thieves could threaten a company’s future.
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