Blog Entries

Here is my challenge to you…don’t think you have anything to worry about when it comes to protecting your intellectual property and confidential information online? Let us give you a sample of what is out there on your company…for free without any obligation. Everyday current and former employees, partners, and customers post information and documents on the web that they shouldn’t. This is done 75% of the time without maliciousness: either by mistake or thinking that the link they posted the information or document to was secure. We see only about 25% of the confidential and proprietary data that gets posted on the internet, be it on blogs, forums, open links, etc, come from someone or some party that wants to create harm against another.Still, no matter how the information got there, it is still doing damage to your company. The FBI acknowledges that nearly $300 billion (that is $300 with a very large “B”) each year to intellectual property (IP) theft. A portion of that comes from actions like social engineering and espionage. However, a significant portion also comes from companies being careless about how they protect confidential documents that describe their company’s future product roadmaps, new R&D processes, future marketing strategies, or eminent M&A activities.What I find moderately amusing is that companies still are spending a significant amount of money on network security but pay little attention to internal processes of how their employees, contractors, and vendors communicate internal, non-public information and documents to the outside world. In future blogs, I’ll be talking about simple and easy steps your company can take to reduce the threat of confidential information and IP loss. But, it all has to start with someone picking up the ball and running with it.Take care,

Tim Rhodes