smart ip protection
TRANSCRIPT
Smart IP protection
Electronic theft of proprietary information
is a big threat to business — and one that
increases in significance as networks
continue to saturate society. The more that
formal intellectual property — copyright,
patents, trademarks — and corporate
knowledge lives and breathes in cyberspace,
the more vulnerable it becomes.
This year’s CSI/FBI Computer Crime and
Security Survey, published on 10 June,
indicates that theft of proprietary
information accounts for $11.5m of the
losses reported by the survey’s respondents.
That is the survey’s second biggest category
of loss — the first being denial of service.
However, since total losses reported were
down from $201.8m in 2003 to $141.5m in
2004, chances are that $11.5m figure is an
under-estimate.
In 2003, denial of service was the second
most loss-making computer crime – up
250% from $18 million in 2002 to $66
million in 2003. Theft of proprietary
information cost the US $70 million,
according to the 2003 survey.
But whether number one or number two in
the US as a cause of financial loss, the
vulnerablitity of intellectual property is a
matter to which information security
professionals need to turn their minds —
especially those who work in IP target-rich
environments.
This issue of the
magazine trains part
of its focus on how to
protect intellectual
property in ways that
are savvy to its
commercial value. Companies will want to
track down and punish abuses of their IP, but
they won’t always want to do so heavy
handedly. They will be interested in digital
rights management technology, but won’t
want to alienate customers by brooking no
compromise with digital copying. S.A.
Mathieson surveys some of the issues in our
cover story.
The pharmaceutical industry is heavily
based on IP, in the form of patented drugs.
Danny Bradbury, in his sectoral feature on
infosecurity in pharma and biotech
discovers that pharmaceutical giants are
surprisingly lax. On the other hand smaller
pharmaceutical and biotech engineering
companies cannot afford to be so
complacent. Whether you are looking for
negative or positive security models and
practices, this industry sector should give
you some food to chew on.
The locking down or the opening up of
intellectual property is analogous to the
security/privacy dichotomy. In this issue’s
set piece interview with a leading
information security professional, IBM ’s
Peter Berlich makes the point that: “ we need
to protect the concept of privacy precisely
because we have the means to destroy it
completely” . Similarly, digital technology
gives companies the means to claustrate
their intellectual property in ways that can
be excessive or draconian. On the other
hand, internet technologies do enable a
terrible threat to legitimate corporate
intellectual property from hackers and
pirates. The trick is a balancing one.
Brian McKenna, Editor