draft 4

· Definition of trade secrets

· Common causes of identity theft.

· Examples of the trade secret.

3. Keywords: Nanotechnology, Upstream engagement, Science communication, literature review.

4. Thesis statement.

5. Literature review.

5.1Analysis of common causes of cyber theft of trade secrets.

· Growing concern and the Current risks associated with cyber theft of trade secrets.

5.2Impacts of cyber theft of trade secrets.

· Financial Loss.

· Reputational Damage.

· Operational Downtime.

· Legal Action.

· Loss of Sensitive Data.

· Client Loss.

· Decline in market share.

· Lead to less attractiveness to ne staff.

· Unexpected Expenses.

5.3 Relevant factors contributing to cyber threats.

· Lack of awareness.

· Increased online exposure of many organizations to cyber security threats.

· Hackers have increasingly developed new and sophisticated technologies that exploit systems.

· New malware variants have been developed using complex technological tools.

· Organizations and governments are sluggish and reluctant to enact and implement policies to address the issues.

· Increasing trends of globalization of markets.

· Rise of cyberattacks by.

· Competitors,

· Foreign government

· And hacktivist groups.

· Engineering information

· Information related to methods.

· Processes and know-how.

· Business tolerances and formulas.

· Information related to business and financials.

· Computer programs, especially source codes, along with related Information.

· Details of Information linked to unpublished patent applications.

· Business plans

· Business budgets.

· Methods of calculating.

5.5 Cyber-theft of trade secrets case studies.

6. Recommendations.

a. Creation of awareness through.

· Training.

· Promoting a culture of information sharing and sensitization about cyber threats.

· Provision of cyber security guidelines on best practices.

· Dissemination of a wide range of cyber-theft of trade secrets to the executives and management.

b. Increasing awareness on cyber security policies and risks associated with lack of compliance via

· Improving and strengthening communication campaigns to cyber security policy developers.

· Collaborating with other large companies.

· Organizing and holding roundtable meetings or events on cyber theft issues.

c. Supporting and boosting training of relevant civil servants and other professionals.

d. Fundamental components of cyber security mitigation measures.

· Identity and Access Management.

· Perimeter and Network Defenses

· Communication and Training

· Data Security Measures.

· Progressive Monitoring, detecting flaws and improving security measures.

· Organization should establish supply chain management procedures and plans

· Companies are advised to develop and implement business practices and procedures augmenting on non-disclosure agreements with their contractors and suppliers

· Latest technologies and procedures should be adopted by organizations Control physical and electronic access.

· Employment of technologies that will facilitate effective monitoring identification and assessment to make it easy to establish appropriate strategies for managing risks.

· Assemble a trade secret SWAT team to facilitate reliable disaster and risk management at any given time.

· Organizations should continually adopt and make progressive adjustments and improvements to policies and strategies for trade secret protection.

· Make trade secret protection one of the companies’ priorities prioritize.

· Establish organizational security culture that embraces the protection of trade secret protection.

· Memorialize and operationalize secret trade policies at all levels of the organization.

7. Conclusion:

· Define objectives of communication

· Utilize previous research in a responsible way

· Develop communication to match the context be consistent and focus on the message

· Do not aspire for a generic framework for communication.

Introduction . Comment by Daniel Creider: First page of the paper has paper title, your name and the name of the University Missing the abstract and Keywords before the Introduction.

Cyber theft is among the cybercrime activities associated with the use of computers and devices to conduct illegal activities of stealing valuable business data and other intellectual assets. With the increasing evolution of technology, cybercrime activities have been exponentially increasing due to the development of sophisticated hacking techniques along with complex malware variants that are hard to detect or prevent. On the other end, trade secrets are described as any activities, processes, or practices employed by a corporate that is only known within the corporate environs and not to the outside world. Cyber theft of trade secret takes place when an unauthorized person accesses, utilize and share confidential business data without authorization.

Unlike in traditional when digitals connectivity was still a dream to the world, in recent past the world has experienced exponential in increase of use of digital devices such as computer, tablets and smartphones to facilitate connectivity and effective communication. increased connectivity of digital devices through the internet. Over the last one decade, hackers and other malicious actors have launched several cyber-attacks on various united states firms especially those involved in commercial networks (Poremba, 2021). The focus of this malicious actors is to steal, corrupt a compromise confidential data to demand ransoms or tarnish organizations. The word needs to understand that nothing is costly as cybercrime activities and economic espionage. These challenges are increasing at a worrying rate and soon or later things might change to the worst of technological based companies are not going to have a collaborative measure to help reduce cyber theft of business secrets. As a conjoint for against cybercrimes, united states as shown a limelight on how to curb this menace. One of the recent approaches via the creation of FBI policy whose essence will be to facilitate effective interaction between organizations that have been cyber victims with a government security and legal agencies.

This one of the best approaches that if conducted in professional manner with all due diligence, it will facilitate cybercrime investigation and prosecution. In the past, legal and security agencies have been termed as among the stumbling blocks when to comes to prosecution of cybercriminal (Poremba, 2021). Additionally, many organizations also argue that there are insufficient cyber security laws that are put in place to handle cyber security issues whenever they are reported. This has been attributed to challenges associated with jurisdictions, incompatibility of laws due to upholding of different government policies on cybercrimes as well as lack of required level of expertise to investigate and apprehend all the cyber criminals

Common causes of cyber theft of trade secrets may be associated with lack of awareness, system vulnerability, and lack of adequate security control measures to protect an organization's data as a critical asset (IIPRD, 2018). Examples of trade secrets include Google's search algorithm, Secret client lists of any corporate, customer lists, Coca Cola formula, manufacturing processes, among others.

Based on the topic for this research paper, the focus of this report will be to provide extensive analysis of the common causes of cyber theft of trade secrets, provide insight into the growing concerns along with the current risks and impacts of cyber theft of trade secrets. Also, the paper will highlight various factors contributing to cyber theft activities together with the analysis of a few case studies on cyber theft issues. Lastly, up the assessment and analysis of the causes and impacts of cyber theft on trade secrets, this paper wall provides suggestions and recommendations on how to mitigate such issues best.

Keywords : Cybercrimes, cyber theft, trade secrets, cybercriminals, phishing, malware, insider attackers, unauthorized access, access control. Data, database, assets, dark web, Comment by Daniel Creider: Out of order

Literature review.

Cyber theft is one of the cybercrime activities that target stealing valuable and confidential busses information. Such information is then sold to the dark web or compromised to jeopardize business victims’ business operations. There is a growing concern over the increase of cyber theft of trade secrets in recent days (Philipp, 2020). Many organizations have been negatively affected due to ransom pay demanded upon losing their confidential business data. What should be known is that unlike in the traditional era when many organizations largely depended on manual processes to operate their businesses, continuous evolution of technology has changed the world of businesses in numerous ways. As the world is growing digitally, technological connectivity alongside pervasive integration has introduced a wide range of security issues.

Cybercrimes have become rampart with increased economic losses due to theft and compromising vital business assets. Cybercrimes affect both small businesses and large enterprises. One of the recent security threats many organizations face is cybercrime activities aimed at stealing trade business secrets for malicious motives. The focus of cyber theft is to get hold of trade and business investment secrets (IIPRD, 2018). Other criminals collaborate with insiders to steal valuable business secrets related to research, business sustainability, and development. Comment by Daniel Creider: Wrong name for APA format. Look up the correct format for an article with no author. There are a number of these that need to be fixed.

Current cyber threats have led to the growth of global concerns due to the risks they have to the world's economy. A reasonable number of hackers and other cybercriminals target company technologies, databases, valuable business knowledge, and know-how that business entities consider as the most valuable and confidential information. Considering the numerous cases of cybercrime activities recorded over the past few years, it has been identified that cyber theft of confidential business information is one of the fatal cybercrimes that has become a significant concern in the European Union. Europe and America are the most targeted regions as their economy has incorporated features such as industrial advancement well-trained professionals in a wide range of technological fields, especially in automotive, aerospace, and biotech (IIPRD, 2018). Cybercrime-related research that was conducted between 2012 and 2016 indicated that there was an upward trend in data breaches that perhaps in one way or the other exposed critical company's data to malicious parties. Cyber theft of the business-related secretes is expected to keep on rising, and these facts should send a strong message to business enterprises to adopt and implement the most appropriate risk and cyber threat mitigation measures that could help monitor, detect, and resolve any vulnerabilities immediately it is recognized (IIPRD, 2018).

The same technologies that have been regarded as the key catalyst to economic growth and expansion of wide range of sector have also been accused of bringing challenges that companies were not prepared for. There is a continuous creation of new forms of cyber security risks along with threatening environment that perhaps make it difficult for small and giant business entities to effectively handle cyber security issues whenever they are noted (Poremba, 2021). Advanced technologies have made it easy for companies and other business entities to create, process, access, publish, and disseminate different forms of confidential data. This has also been one of the challenges that perhaps increases the probability that whenever there a cyber-attack, chance of losing business secrets. Trade secrets and cybercrimes are separate entities but as the cybersecurity is continually becoming complex, there has been simultaneous increase of cybersecurity issues that are more or less the same based on the nature of cyber-attacks conducted by hackers. In these days, every company wants to be unique in its own ways (Poremba, 2021). Every business entity is struggling had to amass a huge number of customers by proving unique and satisfactory customer services along with provision of products and other business ignited services that their competitor could not afford.

High level of business competition, the motive to be unique and different from the close key competitors has accelerated exponential increase of cybersecurity threats that are only focused on stealing valuable assets such as intellectual property, organizational data, security data, productions and operational records among others. Many nations are reacting to the call to help companies and other government agencies fight off these challenges but due to the complexity of the issue at hand it has become extremely hard to establish one size fit all approach that could be adopted to ensure that there is a long-term control of cyber security threats that target to harm and cause economic espionage (Poremba, 2021).

As the progressive studies and research conducted by different bodies concerned with control and mitigation o cyber threats. It has been indicated that other than increased use of complex cyber-attack techniques together with the use of most recent malicious codes that can evade automated detection and monitoring, business rivalry also has set in as the most recent aspect that strongly pushes business competitors to invest more in technological research that aims at destroying already established companies to create entrance point to local or international markets. Many governments are describing the ever-growing cyber theft of business secret as staged managed activities that could be controlled if firm laws and regulations are developed as well as enforced to guard the technological behavior of some malicious and ill motivated organizations (Poremba, 2021).

As mentioned early, the advancement of technology has simultaneously led to the development of more complex techniques that could be used by hackers to gain unauthorized access to organizational data from any location at any time. Significant consequences of cybercrimes in relation to the theft of intellectual property is that such incidences normally result in substantial financial losses and loss of consumer trust (Philipp, 2020). Many organizations have suffered a big blow are a result of theft of business secrets as the stakeholders feel that their information about generation business activities, investment, development, and sustainability are exposed to wrong people who may wrongly use the said information to jeopardize business operations.

Perhaps when cybercriminal get hold of vital business data such as employee data, management data, production data as well as financial data, there are chances that cybercriminals will be motivated to demand a ransom before restoring the stolen data back to the legitimate owners. As provided in the FBI’s recent report on cybersecurity and their impacts, it has been seen that by the year 2030 there will be more cases of cyber threats across various nations of the world if immediate and long-term measures are not taken as early as now (Horton, 2021). There are many reasons what cybercrime activities are becoming rampart and increasing day by day. Other than malicious motive that is driven by last for money, cyber criminals may be also enticed by other business competitors to cause indiscriminate mayhem to disrupt and disorient business operations. With advancement of technology in increasing over reliance of wide range technologies to facilitate business activities it is evidence that data has become one of the valuable assets that need to be protected at all costs. Theft or loss of business data can be fatal as this may lead to devastating economic consequences.

Major Impacts of cyber theft of trade secrets.

Data breach due to system vulnerability of growing complexity of the nature of cyber-attacks have decapitated many organizations. There are several impacts both long-term and short-term consequences that have resulted from enormous loss of data that is a critical asset to an organizations data breach can raise detrimental issues whenever they occur, this therefore means that every organization should be prepared to protect its systems and ither critical IT infrastructure from potential hackers to reduce financial, reputation and legal issues that could be experienced as an aftermath of data theft (Horton, 2021) . Negligence is one of the factors that companies should regret of whenever there is cybersecurity issue. Firm and updated risk and cyber security mitigation measures should be employed at all costs to help curb the growing menace of cybersecurity.

Loss of business data such as operation, manufacturing, customer, and financial data should not be taken lightly by any organization. Such information may land into wrong hands and cause dire consequences to the said organization and the key stakeholders within an organization. One of the immediate impacts of data breach or theft of intellectual property due to economic espionage is financial losses. Undoubtedly, financial losses are one of the most hard-hitting impacts of cyber-theft of business secret a company must deal with. As provided on the recent study that was conducted by Ponemon Institute, the cost of data theft or data compromise has tremendously increased over the past few years. It has risen to over $4.24 million. It approximately increased to over 12% in 2021 from the previous year (2020) cost of $3.86 million that was equivalent to 10% on a global basis (Horton, 2021).

Financial losses are incurred in different ways, for one affected organization may be forced to pay of compensate affected customers. This an extract cost that normally never budget for in any company. due to the damage or dangerous exposure of client data to malicious people, legal suits may take its course and force such companies to compensate certain amount to each of the affected customer (Horton, 2021). These losses can easily cripple or render an organization inviable when it comes to business productivity. Besides that, that, existing legal agencies bestowed with power to oversee and scrutinize organization and ensure there comply to existing cyber security policies and regulations may force organizations that are victims of cyber-attacks to set up an incident response plan to help mitigate threats and risks associated with cyber theft of business secrets.

As provided by cyber security regulatory bodies, company that breach General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) regulations is liable for fines up to 21 million us dollars. In a nutshell any GDPR violation is taken seriously and may result to enormous loss of finance due to huge number of fines imposed to such organization whenever any level incompliance or violation is detected. Other than fines, financial losses in, companies that have been impacted by cyber threats such as theft of intellectual property my also face a significant decline of the organization’s share prices and valuation (Harper, 2022). This what happened Yahoo company after it recorded data breech that exposed huge amount of its customer data to malicious group of people. Although the breach occurred early in 2013, it an come into light early 2016 when the organization as about to sold to US telecoms company Verizon. The result of data breach identified in Yahoo company consequently resulted to the sale of this company to US telecoms company Verizon at amounted rate of 4.48 billion US dollars the price that was slightly less by around $350 million with reference to the initial price that was asked by Yahoo. In summary Ponemon’s report as of 2020 indicated that companies in United States spend an average of $8.19 million in every data breach reported. Cyber theft of business secret can be challenging and even lead to closure of a company, if necessary, steps are not taken at the right time to minimize cyber-attack impacts.

In addition to financial losses, the brand's reputation is also negatively affected whenever data breach cases are reported within a given organization. As well-known whenever anything happens, with current technologies news spread like bush fire and within a twinkle of an eye every corner of the world has every bit of data breach news at their fingertips. Numerous research has portrayed that more than 25% of clients in finance, retail, healthcare among other industries will stop conducting business or associating with companies that have been breached in the fear of losing their shares or valuable information. studies further indicate that 85% of customers in data breached organization will tell others about the incidence and the experience thy have gained from such news. The other 35% of organizational customers will take the news about data breached company to various social media platforms and shared with friends and public about their anger with breached company. Within a matter of hours companies and data breach become trending news (Harper, 2022). Negative publicity coupled with loss of customer confidence and trust in breached brand case damage that may take decades to repair.

It must be noted that clients and consumers are aware of the value of their data when it comes to business and data breach issues. This means that any brand that will not demonstrate its efforts in preventing data breaches and protection of consumer data, the chances remain that consumers will leave such brands and join the competitors whose data protection strategies guarantee the safety of confidential data. Customers will often stick to organizations that take data protection policies and regulations more seriously.

Many stakeholders feel dissociated with the brand's activities with reference to cyber theft incidences befalling their organization (Harper, 2022). Reputational name is among the long-term effects data breached companies will have to endure and this will pose future challenges on how affected organization will be able to fetch out new clients, investors, and new employees. Reputational damage is termed as the most severe negative impact caused by cybercrime activities associated with data theft.

It is also imperative to mention that when large organizations lose their trade secrets, it is assumed that there exist numerous security loopholes where cybercriminals could get the opportunity to access and exploit critical business resources such as trade secrets (JDSUPRA, 2021). When customers lose trust and confidence in such companies, there is the likelihood that company productivity will significantly decline over time. From current research on economic impacts of cyber theft of business secrets, it has been indicated that once customer trust on a given brand is eroded, it becomes extremely difficult for the said brand to regain its business position as many of the customers and investors will divert their focus on the shortcomings and negative impacts that could befall them whenever company’s critical data is at major security stake. In any business, building a good relationship with investors as well as customers is the first step towards improving business performance as many investors will find such a business reliable, productive, and credible to do business with. As provided in NIST and other cyber security regulation agencies both small business and giant enterprises are obliged to ensure they comply with set principles on data protection along with the establishment applicable methods of mitigating cyber security threats whenever identified or anticipated (Horton, 2021).

Another impacts that may arise as result of cyber theft of business secret is unprecedented, prolonged downtime. Often, during and after data breaches. Every aftermath of data breach, organization affected need more time to launch investigation on the affected systems. Companies must stop its business activities and start investigating when, where and how data theft occurred. At many times all the business activities may be suspended to pave room for investigation. As provided in May data breach-based studies, it has been estimated that the average cost of network downtime is over $300,000 per hour. This is huge loss to some company whose investigation and operation downtime can extend to days, weeks and even months.

Lastly, cyber theft of business secret may attract legal suits. Data protection regulations requires that all organization comply to set standards for protection of sensitive data from access by unauthorized parties (Harper, 2022). Data protection policies provides that all business entities both small and large enterprise are legally bound to exhibit that they have taken all the appropriate steps that will ensure confidential, sensitive, and personal data is secured from possible breaches. In any case such data is compromised through various types of data breaches whether intentional or unintentional, it is legally acceptable for consumers and other stakeholders of the breached company to seek legal actions as well as claim for compensation.

In the last few years there have been many legal suits in both UK and United States as many victims seek legal assistance in claiming their compensation upon experience data breaches in organizations, they entrust their details with. A good example of legal implication for data loss because of cyber theft of intellectual; property can be attributed to data breach that occurred in 2017 at Equifax company. the data breach in the said company affected over 145million people across the world (Harper, 2022) . The company was forced to pay more than $700 million in compensating affected customers in United Sates.

Relevant factors contributing to cyber threats.

As per the latest stats on cybercrimes, it has been found that among the factors contributing to cyber theft include lack of awareness and increased exposure to expanded online exposure of companies. What needs to be understood is that within an organization, employees play a significant role in providing and maintaining security to critical computing and non-computing assets. It becomes a significant challenge to an organization when employees have insufficient knowledge and awareness about cyber theft (Krupa, 2018). Lack of understanding on various aspects of cyber security obligation makes many employees to remain vulnerable and target agents by cybercriminals. Statistics have shown that inadequate knowledge about various cyber security issues makes business entities prone to cyber-attacks because such employees are lured using approaches such as phishing, malware attacks, and other social engineering techniques to reveal confidential information to intruders without knowing. Lack of awareness often leads to unintentional disclosure of business secrets to unintended parties who may use the said data otherwise.

Another relevant contributing factors to cyber theft of business confidential data are more extensive exposure to online platforms where cybercriminals could use different technologies to access company data from any location at any time. Through various approaches such as supply chain intrusion and targeted ransomware have been identified as the most common strategies used by online hackers to cause business disruption by holding critical company assets such as databases hostage (Krupa, 2018). As mentioned before, cybercriminals take advantage of the lack of cyber security awareness to lure employees into accepting their requests before launching their attacks. Cybercriminals also employ techniques such as cross-site scripting attacks to steal valuable business secrets using their websites. In this scenario, attackers often manipulate vulnerable company websites in a manner that when employees or web users send search queries, malicious JavaScript is sent to the users. (IIPRD, 2018). Once such malicious JavaScript files are downloaded into the company’s system, they silently redirect the company's traffic packets to the hacker for exploitation, where confidential data is phished out and ransom demanded before restoration.

Moreover, the growing speed with which hackers create new malware and develop their skills in using advanced technological tools has positively contributed to increased cases of cyber theft of business secrets in varied ways. New technologies that are complex and hard to motor, detect and prevent have been developed by notorious international. As technologies and new risk and cyber threats measures are developed, so does hacking tools and techniques. This has impacted an organization’s ability to respond to cyber theft cases whenever they are identified appropriately. System vulnerabilities due to poor security configurations and slow and sluggish responses from cyber security policymakers have exacerbated the already volatile situation (IIPRD, 2018).

The lack of sufficient laws to prosecute cybercriminals has seen many cyber security criminals being released from various judicial systems. Inadequacy of technological know-how within the cybercrime investigating agencies makes it difficult to peruse, prosecute, and jail cybercriminals (IIPRD, 2018). This aspect has motivated other cybercriminals to continue executing their malicious motives whenever they wish. It should be remembered that an exponential increase of hacking technologies, development of advanced malware, increased globalization, and rise of cyber-attacks via competitors, foreign nations, and hacktivist groups have also highly accelerated the rate at which cyber theft of intellectual property occurs on globally.

In cyber security space, it also argued that law enforcement agencies have been so sluggish in terms of developing and enforcing cyber security policies. The challenges with legal issues surrounding cyber security cases that have been already reported is that there is no effective regulations and policies that could be used to directly address the issues presented in court. It is unfortunate that while cybercrimes are enormously growing and becoming more complex for organization to handle. Policy makers have not yet shown any progress of establishing new policies and regulations that could be applied to prosecute cyber criminals perhaps increased issues of globalization of markets has also increased cases of cyber theft of business secrets.

Examples of various types of trade secrets and their essence in business.

The most famous trade secret in the world may be said to be the Coca-Cola formula. There are also many other famous trade secrets for various companies used to develop and expand their business. Regardless of the types of trade secrets and the company using the said trade secrets, these trade secrets, along with other confidential Information, play a critical role in providing a means of companies' lifeblood (Hornick, 2004). The federal statutes create laws that govern the protection of trade secrets and intellectual property such as trademarks, patents and copyrights. Using trade secret laws identified the following Information as intellectual property and trade secrets that need to be protected, and any violation of the provisions of the federal laws may result in lawsuits or fines.

This section will highlight the key trade secrets including engineering information, Information related to methods, processes, and know-how. In business-related technologies, engineering information is defined as a branch of science and technologies whose essence in business is to facilitate and enable organizations' technologists to handle aspects related to the generation, distribution, assessment, evaluation, and analysis of data. It also relates to data management, data use, and well as knowledge management within various systems. As technologies keep on improving, data has become the primary asset that every organization is focused on in terms of storage and protection.

Cybercriminals in recent days have changed their tactics to majorly target to access, obtain and withhold essential Information otherwise identified as a trade secret to punish brands. Notorious hackers have devised new complex technologies that they use to sniff and steal vital organizations' trade secrets. Once hackers obtain engineering information used by an organization, they can use the said data to blackmail victims into paying a ransom before the said data is restored (Hornick, 2004).

Besides engineering information trade secrets, there is also data associated with methods, Processes, and know-how (Baker Mckenzie, 2019). This is also an essential trade secret that must be protected by an organization that owns such data. Methods and processes applied in product generation, as well as the technical know-how of the entire production process, must be protected from malicious actors who may use it otherwise. Business secrets such as processes and procedures provide detailed Information that describes how things must be done in order to achieve certain results that make a brand's services and products unique and different from those of their immediate business competitors.

In addition to that, business entities should also consider protecting business secrets such as tolerances and formulas since they are part and parcel of business growth. Cybercriminals have changed their tactics, and at all means, they are focusing on obtaining confidential Information such as tolerance and formulas employed by an organization such as Coca-Cola. Protecting this kind of Information is essentially good as it will prevent indiscriminate exposure of theory trade secrets to the competitors.

Trade secrets are the main pillar and building block upon which brands build their competitive edge.

Imperatively, data associated with financial, and budgeting is also regarded as business secrets as per the federal laws that define and protect business trade secrets. In business, it is important to secure and protect financial and budget-related Information from access by anyone other than those authorized to access and use such data. This is the first step toward keeping organizational business activities safe and free from potential cyber-related frauds (Baker Mckenzie, 2019). It also ensures companies are protected from scenarios such as identity theft along with drained bank accounts.

Other types of trade secrets that need to be secured as provided in the law are Computer programs, especially source codes along with related Information. Technology is the most important and key driver of the world economy. Business entities are required to secure their computer programs and source codes by using strategies such as multi-factor authentication as well as the use of IT policies and regulation to sensitize employees on what is expected of them with reference to data and computer programs protection. Policies should emphasize the essence of protecting business trade secrets in question and what might be the possible repercussions of violating any of the existing cyber protection policies (Baker Mckenzie, 2019). In summary, this section has highlighted a wide range of trade secrets whose security is at stake when organizations fail to adopt and implement cyber threat mitigation measures that meet all the compliance standards and principles as provided by cyber security regulation bodies (Hornick, 2004).

Cyber-theft of trade secrets case studies.

In 2016, German industrial conglomerate ThyssenKrupp was among the cyber theft of trade secrets victims. Hackers accessed the companies' sensitive and confidential data, which halted business activities for quite some time. As provided in the reported generated by various cyber-security researchers, cyber criminals were able to intrude into the German industrial conglomerate ThyssenKrupp IT based systems and stole sensitive business data. Such an attack deployed highly specialized professional skills to steal the company’s technical trade secrets that entailed steel product secrets along with manufacturing plant design. Many sources indicated that it was possible that the attackers of this incidence originated from southeast Asia (Philipp, 2020). The primary cause of this attack was attributes to some system vulnerabilities that enabled cyber criminals to easily access sensitive business data.

Another company that falls into the trap of cybercrimes is Managed IT service providers (MSPs). This espionage allowed cyber criminals or hackers to access company’s IP and other sensitive data. Reports indicate the company’s client data across the globe was also accessed during the incident. Additional, cybercrime analysis conducted by Operation Cloud Hopper a UK managed IT service providers indicated that cybercrimes that attacked its information technology systems portrayed high level of expertise as they launched numerous malwares together with wide range of iteration of remote access trojans where they were able to obtain a legitimate credentials to access the company’s vital and sensitive data (JUSTIA, 2021).

Recommendations on how to prevent and reduce cases of cyber data theft of trade secrets.

Business entities are advised to develop cyber security education and training programs to help increase employees' awareness of existing cyber threats. Also, the training should focus on establishing an organizational culture that adopts best security practices (Philipp, 2020). Besides that, corporates need to develop and implement cyber security policies to sensitize people on the impacts associated with compliance with cyber security regulations.

Another approach that should be employed by an organization to mitigate cyber theft issues is the development of organizational programs that focus on providing employees with progressive learning platforms about cyber security culture where every stakeholder will take sole responsibility of reporting to the relevant authority in security issues suspected or identified. Other than streamlining workflow with an organization, organizational culture should also put more effort into enlightening and creating awareness on cyber theft issues. By so doing, every employee and other key stakeholders will be able to provide the first line of defense to cybercrimes and other security threats (Searle, 2019).

Cyber security is a significant concern to any business that wants to remain successful in it enamors; lack of access control policies along with insufficient knowledge about cyber security has contributed to cyber theft (IIPRD, 2018). Organizations should adopt and implement cyber security training programs to create awareness on preventing cybercrime-related crimes that pose a danger to crucial business data.

It can also be said that for organization to effectively mitigate cyber security threats that target business secret, there five major areas that need to be taken with a lot of considerations while formulating cyber security mitigation strategies. These components involve, identity and access management. This an approach that could be adopted by companies and other small business entities to help reduce possibilities of damages that could results from cyber intrusion. As a cyber security measure, identity and access management component will enable organization to allow only right individuals have access privileges to specific resources at the right time and for the right reasons (Corfield, 2021). All business resources should be used to facilitate employee execute their duties that must be directly related to business. Any other reasons for data and resources access should be limited.

The secondly component for risk mitigation measures that must be deployed in an organization is data security measure which could be concerned with how sensitive, personals and confidential data should or should not be stored or shared. Third component is perimeter and network defenses which must include use of firewalls, restricting employees from visiting dangerous websites that could pose cyberthreats, as well as strategies and techniques to use in data encryption parameters that should be implemented to protect company network and computer data resources (Corfield, 2021). Fourthly, organization need also to adopt and implements cyber security mitigation measures such as communication and training programs by providing well defining and clear communication protocols that should be adhered to during and after cyber threat is noted. Communication and training programs should aim at teaching and educating all the stakeholders on the importance of owning security of company resources an aspect that will reinforce the development of best security practices and culture within a company. lastly, companies should also implement technologies that have automated cyber threats monitoring features to enable cyber security team monitor, detect, measure, and improve cyber threat mitigation measures contentiously to meet evolving and dynamic business needs (Corfield, 2021).

Therefore, as mentioned, cyber security has become one of the major challenges across different nations of the world. This means that business entities not only need to train their employees on the seriousness of cyber theft of business secrets but also ensure to employ highly qualified experts with the required competency and skills of handling current and emerging technological hitches leading to increased cases of cyber-crimes that involve identity theft. Other the strategies recommended early on how to curb and reduce cyber security issues in both small and big business entities, still there exist several procedures, practices as well as steps that may be employed to effectively secure company IT systems and other essential resources from access by unauthorized people. Among these practices, procedures and steps will entail.

Development and establishment of supply chain management procedures and plans. Supply chain management involves service or product planning processes from the time they are produced to the time they reach consumers (Passman, 2018). This is one of the opportunities cybercrimes may take to disrupt business activities. Therefore, there is a dire need to protect the supply chain by imposing better internal and external management practices and procedures. It must be said that third parties such as suppliers, customers, as well as joint ventures may have access to company intellectual property or trade secrets for product development or manufacturing. Since these parties might be sources of potential misuse of the accessed Information about product development, it is equally important for companies to have strategies in place to control and protect confidential assets (Passman, 2018).

One of the best approaches, in this case, is the establishment of third-party disclosure agreements, the first line of trade secret protection efforts. Organizations should also include progressive conduct reviews of these agreements and ensure to include intellectual property and trade secret protection as third primary due diligence. Communication from companies to all third parties should be done regularly to remind and keep updating third-party what is expected of them in terms of protecting trade secrets.

Another key practice that companies should have in their strategies for securing trade secrets is the formulation, adoption, and implementation of business practices and procedures augmenting non-disclosure agreements with their contractors and suppliers. As may be learned from the past experiences on the theft of trade secrets victims and even from court cases, confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements with employees and other key business stakeholders along with business partners have worn a lot of praise since study cases have confirmed that establishment and enforcement of IT resource protection policies are the most appropriate approach in establishing organizational security cultures whose responsibility is owned by every member of the company. IT security managers must ensure that security policies are well developed and followed to the later. Companies should also ensure that data protection policy, procedures, and compliance are documented progressively for accountability (Passman, 2018).

Also, the latest technologies and procedures should be adopted by organizations to Control physical and electronic access. Courts have highly recommended for a company have physical and electronic security for their trade secrets (Passman, 2018). This is an important approach to apply while securing confidential information and intellectual property from intruders. This implies that companies need to include or incorporate their trade secrets protection into physical IT security system planning. Above that company should also restrict and control system access and ensure that they continually evaluate IT security status and devise a better mechanism for improving it.

Perhaps companies also need to employ technologies that will facilitate effective monitoring identification and assessment to make it easy to establish appropriate strategies for managing risks. Finally, companies are advised to assemble a trade secret SWAT team to facilitate reliable disaster and risk management at any given time. In summary, Organizations should continually adopt and make progressive adjustments and improvements to policies and strategies for trade secret protection (Passman, 2018).

Conclusion.

Cyber security is a significant concern to any busyness that wants to remain successful in it enamors; lack of access control policies along with insufficient knowledge about cyber security has contributed to cyber theft. Organizations should adopt and implement cyber security training programs to create awareness on preventing cybercrime-related crimes that pose a danger to crucial business data.

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