The Insider: A True Story Reveals the Threat to Intellectual Property from High-Tech Industry Insiders
Insiders Can Destroy Company Value by Stealing Intellectual Property Worth Billions of Dollars, Says Author Dan Verton
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Aug. 10, 2005—Malicious insiders have stolen intellectual property from some of the most security-conscious high-tech firms and IT departments in the world using corporate networks—networks, ironically, heavily fortified against outsiders trying to get in. The Insider: A True Story, written by security expert Dan Verton, delves into the problem of insider theft in an era when high-tech companies have intellectual property worth millions or even billions of dollars—and when the loss of such property can destroy the value of a company. Verton illustrates the seriousness and extent of the insider threat, whether malicious or inadvertent, with terabytes of hard data collected by Reconnex Corporation using its unique Reconnex iGuard content monitoring security appliance. The Insider: A True Story, published by Llumina Press, is available from on-line retailers such as www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com and at bookstores across the U.S.
Today, high-tech companies are valued most by their intellectual property. Studies suggest that U.S. companies derive more than 70 percent of their market value from intangible, digital assets and intellectual property. A study of one technology company determined that the value of its intellectual capital—which amounted to tens of billions of dollars—was nearly equal to the value of its tangible assets. Yet despite the advanced measures currently used by security-conscious technology companies, they have no way of knowing if and when intellectual property is leaving their own corporate networks. The Internet has destroyed forever the concept of controlling information flow, and the security perimeter is on its way to extinction. This lack of insight is of great concern because insiders are responsible for more than 80 percent of all corporate security breaches today. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft estimated in October 2004 that intellectual property theft costs U.S. companies about $250 billion a year.
"America's high-tech industry, particularly its intellectual property, is the engine that powers the nation's competitive advantage. That is why America's high-tech companies are often the prime targets of espionage activities," said Verton. "Foreign businessmen, scientists, academics, and government officials from more than 90 countries targeted sensitive U.S. technologies and corporate trade secrets throughout 2003. And now we have the first real evidence that shows many of the nation's biggest and most respected IT firms have serious internal security weaknesses -- weaknesses that enable insider crimes and international espionage."
New Security Solution Offers Insight and Protection for Intellectual PropertyThe Insider: A True Story shows how new security technologies can let high-tech companies find out whether insiders are using network resources to leak intellectual property and other information. Verton’s research centers on hard data compiled by Reconnex Corporation, whose content monitoring security appliance has the unprecedented ability to detect threats to sensitive proprietary data including source code and analyzes all content flowing over a network to determine who is transmitting it inappropriately.
"We started Reconnex to address the high-tech industry’s concern about the leakage of intellectual property," said Donald J. Massaro, founder and CEO of Reconnex. "High-tech companies had a real need for technology that could protect their intellectual property. They were early adopters of our products. Yet this industry is just as vulnerable to network security problems. At one high-tech company, for example, a risk assessment revealed an employee trying to start their own business who sent proprietary technical design documents to their personal Webmail account. Without Reconnex, this company would have been completely unaware of this threat to their competitive advantage."
About Dan VertonIn addition to The Insider: A True Story, Dan Verton wrote the highly acclaimed book Black Ice: The Invisible Threat of Cyber-Terrorism (McGraw-Hill, 2003), endorsed by some of the nation’s top experts as one of the best descriptions of the terrorist threat to critical cyber infrastructure to date. He has presented his research on cyber-terrorism to the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Secret Service, The Air Force War College, and to other organizations as well as to colleges and universities. Verton is former Marine Corps intelligence officer.
About Reconnex
Reconnex is the leading provider of enterprise risk management (ERM) systems that reveal and address the insider threat to compliance risks, competitive risks, corporate governance risks and critical infrastructure risks. Reconnex enables Fortune 1000 companies, government organizations, and smaller healthcare and financial services companies to protect their brands, shareholder value and mission critical operations by revealing hidden risks in the first 48 hours of deployment. Without exception, every deployment has enabled these organizations to quickly remediate the risks that could have damaged or destroyed their organization.
Give us two days, you’ll know™ . Call Reconnex today at 1-866-940-4590 or visit us on the web at www.reconnex.net.
