Stealing Trade Secrets And Economic Espionage

Although every country seeks out information on other nations, China is the leading threat when it comes to the theft of intellectual assets, including inventions, patents, and R&D secrets. Trade Secret Theft, Industrial Espionage, and the China Threat provides an overview of economic espionage as practiced by a range of nations from around the world—focusing on the mass scale in which information is being taken for China's growth and development. Supplying a current look at espionage, the book details the specific types of information China has targeted for its collection efforts in the past. It explains what China does to prepare for its massive collection efforts and describes what has been learned about China's efforts during various Congressional hearings, with expert advice and details from both the FBI and other government agencies. This book is the product of hundreds of hours of research, with material, both primary and secondary, reviewed, studied, and gleaned from numerous sources, including White House documentation and various government agencies. Within the text, you will learn the rationale and techniques used to obtain information in the past. You will see a bit of history over centuries where espionage has played a role in the economy of various countries and view some cases that have come to light when individuals were caught. The book supplies an understanding of how the economy of a nation can prosper or suffer, depending on whether that nation is protecting its intellectual property, or whether it is stealing such property for its own use. The text concludes by outlining specific measures that corporations and their employees can practice to protect their information and assets, both at home and abroad.

American companies are renowned as being the most innovative in the world. Companies of every size and in every industry, from manufacturing to software to biotechnology to aerospace, own large portfolios of legally protected trade secrets they have developed and innovated. The theft of these secrets can lead to devastating consequences. The risk of trade secret theft has been around as long as there have been secrets to protect, but the methods used to steal trade secrets have become more sophisticated. Today, a criminal can steal all of the trade secrets a company owns from thousands of miles away. Many cyber attacks are the work of foreign governments. China and other nations now routinely steal from American businesses and give the secrets to their own companies. Companies now must confront the reality that they are being attacked on a daily basis by cyber criminals who are determined to steal their intellectual property. Attorney General Holder has observed, there are two kinds of companies in America: Those that have been hacked and those that do not know that they have been hacked.

Emerging trends indicate that the pace of economic espionage and trade secret theft against U.S. corporations is accelerating. There appears to be multiple vectors of attack for persons and governments seeking to steal trade secrets. Foreign competitors of U.S. corporations, some with ties to foreign governments, have increased their efforts to steal trade secret information through the recruitment of current or former employees. Additionally, there are indications that U.S. companies, law firms, academia, and financial institutions are experiencing cyber intrusion activity against electronic repositories containing trade secret information. Trade secret theft threatens American businesses, undermines national security, and places the security of the U.S. economy in jeopardy. These acts also diminish U.S. export prospects around the globe and put American jobs at risk. This book examines trade theft mitigation strategies with a focus on foreign spies and economic espionage