Often reports on cyber attacks with the purpose of stealing confidential data, personal information, and intellectual property are seen surfacing. This news is alarming and brings a lot of distress to firms and entities that have a great deal of information stored in digital form on their computer networks and can be a target for such attackers.

Although the forms are worried about being attacked by hackers when they should be more careful of the threat that already exists in the company, many reports say that most of the cases of data leak or lawsuits related to trade secret leakage Often have someone on the inside, like a business partner or an employee being the misappropriator. Many times it can be deliberate, but it is also based on a human error that an attacker enters the system and steals all the information.

Protect the secrets both inside and outside.

As discussed before, the potential threat that any company has lies not only on the outside but also. Your trade secret should be protected at all times, not only against cyber attacks from outside but also from the thieves inside. This definitely does not mean that you have to keep an eye on all your employees at all times and not respect their privacy. This means that you have to make all the arrangements that will allow you to have the confidence of being attack-proof. This might seem a bit far off, but it is possible to have better protection in your computer systems and networks to prevent data leaks. 

Trade secrets are your corporate assets. They are the basis of growth for any company, so it is important that reasonable steps are taken to keep the data of your company confidential and leakproof, and in case of any leakage, you have to make sure of a proper action plan to keep the damage controlled at all times. With such cases often showing in recent times, even the laws and legislations are constantly evolving to meet the needs. However, there are certain basic elements that can help you with your plans to protect your treat secrets. 

Here are a few points that might help

1. Non-disclosure agreements and documentation

The law and legislation are constantly evolving. It is still very helpful and applauded by lawmakers when business owners make their employees or partners sign confidentiality agreements. The non-disclosure agreement and document related to it are signed before the partnership begins or the work begins for an employee. This way, you can be assured that there will be non-disclosure of the data, and even in case it happens, actions as per the liability of the employee or business partner are taken.

2. Access control for employees

 It is also very important to keep control over access to both Electronic as well as physical safety and security. If you are a business owner, then you have to restrict access to certain information As well as intellectual property, if you want to keep things under control. Restricting access for all employees unless needed under serious conditions would ensure that confidential data is protected, and the chances of data bridges are very slim. When employees don’t know about the trade secrets and the data, then leakage of these secrets is not possible by the employees, and hence proper security and protection of trade secrets takes place.

3. Need for proper training.

As discussed earlier, not every employee would deliberately transfer data and trade secrets from one company to another. Sometimes the lack of information and misjudgment makes them carry this mistake of confidential data transfer. To avoid the situation, as soon as the employees are taken in, proper training should be provided so they understand what measures to be taken and steps to be followed to avoid any such mistake. Scheduled training programs should be arranged for employees to keep them updated on the different kinds of threats they are dealing with and how to dodge them and avoid any cyber attack. This is a safe way to ensure the protection of your trade secrets, and little to no loss of intellectual property takes place.

4. Scheduled upgradation

Since hackers understand the new innovations in technology and adapt to them fast, normally, the technology that is meant to safeguard the information and Secure the connection is used by hackers to do the opposite. So it is important to always stay one step ahead of the attackers so you are ready for any kind of new techniques used by them to corrupt your files and get into your system. For this, you need to have timely upgradation and improvement procedures done for your networks and Systems. Proper training to help the employees become adept with the new changes should be done. Once these methods are followed, you are going to get better protection from these attacks and have a perfect trade secret protection plan.

Some final thoughts-

It is important to keep a watch on things happening around us. The way technology is developing, there are new ways of trespassing on someone’s cyber boundaries every day. Everyone who has a business or some important data available online should observe the attacks that have happened previously and prepare themselves for all the situations that can happen. If you want to protect your trade secrets, you need to have proper action plans to safeguard your data and implement good security systems to save your network from such attacks.