IP Breaches All Over the Place

Sometimes intellectual property is move valuable than something you can touch and hold but it can often be easier to steal than an office chair. IP theft is something that Reconnex, whose business is information monitoring and protection appliances, says is more common than you might think. The company just announced the findings of a new a survey focusing on the importance of protecting IP. The research, conducted by the Enterprise Strategy Group and summarized in a brief titled "Intellectual Property Rules," found that one-third of the enterprises surveyed acknowledged loss of sensitive data in the last 12 months, while another 11 percent were unsure whether a breach occurred. IP protection, which goes beyond just securing private records, has become such a priority that 90% of companies queried plan to deploy new technologies to secure their IP in the next 12 months. The epicenter of risk continues to be insiders who either act with malicious intent or are negligent. The report also unearthed other information. Of the companies surveyed, 58 percent believe the biggest threat to their data is from insiders. One-third of companies’ sensitive data and IP exists in application databases where it can be centrally secured and managed. An additional 28% resides in file systems. About 70% of organizations review their data protection policies on a quarterly or monthly basis. Over the last year, high-profile data breaches have highlighted the loss of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) such as credit card numbers, social security numbers, and personal health information. But PII is just the tip of the iceberg for most companies when it comes to the full scope of their information assets. The survey found that the most common forms of IP, which require protection beyond PII, range from financial information, contracts and agreements, source code, and competitive intelligence to design specifications, internal research data, trade secrets, and more.