Cyberespionage: Stealing our IP, fetch me my angry trousers!

Verizon's 2013 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) of their incident investigations during 2012, concluded one in five breaches were theft of company intellectual property, rather than the usual customer or credit card data theft. 

This is a known growing problem and so a useful statistic to see in black and white, yet the risk and realities of Cyberespionage can be a hard pill for some business directors to swallow. It is clear foreign countries like China, are targeting western businesses, are increasingly employing sophisticated hacking techniques, all with the intent of stealing western business's information. Everything from organisational charts to the types of photocopiers in use, is all of interest and of future financial benefit, as they seek to compete on an international market.

The new "Compare the Market" advert is the type of reaction I would love to see with UK business leaders when warning about this threat Stealing our Intellectual Property, fetch me my angry trousers

Your Personal Information has a value, who are you trusting to protect it?

Your personal information has a cash value to the bad guys, this is why you are plagued with malicious software (virus), scam emails and scam websites hiding malicious payloads, all attempting to steal your personal information.  But think about who you are freely sharing your personal information with, and then ask yourself, do they care to the same extent as you do in ensuring your information is protected?

In the newly released McAfee Data Loss Report 2013, the report highlights that most data loss is occurring within data centres, as used by the those third parties you trust your personal information with. The report says the reason for data loss is not super clever hackers, no, its negligence, a basic lack of security controls on servers, storage, content, and networks.

Worst still, you will be lucky if you are even told about a loss of your data, as there is no law which compels private companies to inform you if they lose your data.  So ask yourself if that company will protect your information adequately, better still ask them.