Photo by clarita at Morguefile.com

IPcopy happened upon this slide pack on LinkedIn from Deloitte relating to cyberattackers and IP (Valuing and guarding prized business assets). The slides capture the poll responses of nearly 3000 professionals from the banking, tech, investment management, travel, insurance and retail sectors.

Over 10% of the participants reported a cyber theft within the last 12 months with employees regarded as the most likely group to attempt such a cyber theft (c. 20% of the vote). IPcopy noted with a slightly raised eyebrow that “nation states” attracted 10% of the “potential adversary” vote, though given the suggestions that the recent US election was hacked by a nation state, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprise…. 

Within the “employees or other insiders” as potential adversary responses, the automotive industry had the largest industry cut with nearly a third of the votes.

As far as future theft incidents (meaning attempted or successful cyber theft of trade secrets, drawings/plans or know how) in the next 12 months the majority of responses (58%) indicated that the number was expected to increase. Within the group that expected thefts to rise the power, telecom, industrial products and automotive (again) sectors featured highly.

The votes indicated that many of the professionals taking part did not think their companies would find it that easy to assess what IP had been stolen with over a fifth ranking this issue as the largest challenge that would need to be addressed (coming second only to managing the public relations side of the problem).

Trade secret asset management is a subject that IPcopy has visited before and the above report indicates that there is scope for companies to improve their policies in this area. Defining, maintaining and updating an IP strategy is crucial for companies in the present environment where it is thought that up to 80% of the value of a company may reside in intellectual assets.

Issues to consider would be the management of trade secrets within an organisation including the proper documentation of the assets in question. Asset access and control, classification of assets and an audit trail are also areas that need to be part of an IP strategy.  Further discussion on IPcopy can be found here and here.

Mark Richardson 15 December 2016