Last year, in a single cyber attack, 760 U.S. companies had their corporate information compromised by China-based hackers. Thousands of organizations are being hacked every day, and aside from hackers, employees are leaving confidential email and documents in airports, taxicabs and on lost smartphones.
"If you assume your email is secure from corporate thieves, nation states, rogue individuals; you're making a pretty big mistake"
Eric Rosenbach
Deputy Asst. Sec. of Defense, Cyber Policy
CNBC, November 16, 2012.
Value is created through the sharing of information. What happens when the need to share ends? How do you retrieve your intellectual property? Can you be confident it hasn't been saved or passed on? When you hit Send, are you losing control?
It is estimated that 12,000 laptops are lost or stolen every week at US airports. Best case: the data is wiped and the laptop resold. Worst case: the laptop was targeted and stolen for what was on it. How would you know?
Industrial espionage and IP theft can endanger your business. Competitors can receive assistance from insiders, hired guns and even governments. Is your hard drive getting scanned when you go through customs? Are your emails passing through a competitor’s jurisdiction? Who has access to your confidential communications?
When IP is being shared, are you taking the necessary steps to ensure that access is truly on a need to know basis. Can those with a need to know save, copy, forward or print without your knowledge or consent?
Your emails and their attachments are not only being stored on every email server they touch, but also in the regular backups that are performed on these systems. This gives your confidential communications a perpetual life.
