Steal me now
One might imagine that, in these difficult times, economic espionage would be on the rise. And, in fact, that is true. The cost of investing in theft is much lower that the cost of investing in research, and cutbacks in protecting IPCI have made it even easier to steal than it has been in the past.
This, then, is the perfect time for theft of intellectual property and critical information, and both companies and governments are taking advantage of this in all sectors.
Does this mean that your company is being robbed? Unquestionably! Is there anything that can be done about it? In theory, yes. In practice, your company probably doesn’t even have an inventory of its IPCI, or a program in place to protect these assets, so the answer actually turns out in most cases to be “no.”