The EEA also covers conduct occurring outside the United States where the offender is a citizen or permanent resident alien of the United States, or an act in furtherance of the offense was committed in the United States. Further, because of the recognized difficulty of maintaining the secrecy of a trade secret during litigation, the EEA requires that courts take actions, as necessary, to preserve the confidentiality of the trade secret. The EEA also permits the Attorney General to institute civil enforcement actions and obtain appropriate injunctive relief for violations. There are a number of important features to the EEA, including a provision for the criminal forfeiture of any property or proceeds derived from a violation of the EEA. ![]() The second provision makes criminal the more common commercial theft of trade secrets, regardless of who benefits. ![]() ![]() § 1831, is directed towards foreign economic espionage and requires that the theft of the trade secret be done to benefit a foreign government, instrumentality or agent. The first provision, codified at 18 U.S.C. The EEA contains two separate provisions that criminalize the theft or misappropriation of trade secrets. 3489 (October 11, 1996) (hereinafter the "EEA") to address the growing problem of theft of trade secrets. Organisations need to adopt human and technology-based intelligence processes to prevent damaging impact from these activities.Congress, recognizing the importance of the protection of intellectual property and trade secrets to the economic health and security of the United States, enacted the Economic Espionage Act of 1996, Pub.L. The massive increase in working from home has led to a corresponding reduction in the effectiveness of risk management and information security.Ī logical conclusion is that the Covid WFH category has increased the opportunities for organisations to be the target of industrial and economic espionage. If we take into consideration that in Pre-Covid era employees primarily worked in offices and the security around information management was more easily monitored and controlled. This activity also needs the human factor to substantiate the validity and usefulness of the data. In other words, perpetrators of industrial or economic espionage will adopt and learn new emerging technologies to obtain information. This is a major factor, that according to (AUSTLII, 2000) means, “Criminals will organise themselves, adopting all those strategic information technologies useful in order to retrieve, manage and communicate important information.” The reason for dividing the world into these two main categories is that technology, particularly IT technology, has evolved tremendously in the past two decades, leading to information being scattered around the globe in different locations and in different types of protective environments. I’m going to focus on the two known categories. Going forward, there is likely to be a third category, that of Post-Covid. Firstly, Pre-Covid and a new category, Covid WFH (working from home). Right now, we can divide our way of living and working in two main categories. Globalisation has enabled the world to evolve at an incredible speed, with new technologies emerging on a daily basis. Technical Factor – which explores vulnerabilities of IT and Cyber Security Human Factor – by nature this is either the strongest or simultaneously the weakest link in preventing espionage activitiesĢ. However, here I want to examine two key elements of why industrial or economic espionage is successful and how competitors or foreign countries exploit them.ġ. In previous pieces, I have discussed industrial and economic espionage along with the purpose and examples of those activities. Industrial and economic espionage are clearly interrelated. “Industrial espionage is the same as economic espionage, except that rather than benefiting a foreign government, it benefits another private entity’.”.“Economic espionage refers to targeting or acquiring trade secrets from domestic companies or government entities to knowingly benefit a foreign state’”. ![]() (Button, 2020) in his article quoted definitions from Wagner’ (Wagner, E.R., 2011) to explain and distinguish the differences between economic and industrial espionage: Revising our Understanding of Industrial and Economic EspionageĮconomic and industrial espionage come from a different base, but their activities are similar.
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