PROTECTING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IS CRITICAL TO SHAREHOLDER VALUE BUT IS STILL A MANUAL PROCESS, ACCORDING TO NEW SURVEY
Enterprises to Radically Ramp Up Spending on Intellectual Property Protection in 2007
Mountain View, Calif., June 25, 2007 - Reconnex, the leader in data loss prevention appliances, today announced the findings of a new a survey focused on the business drivers for and key process issues concerning the protection of Intellectual Property (IP) in corporate enterprises. The survey, titled “Intellectual Property Security: The Elephant in the Room,” was conducted by the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) on behalf of Reconnex. ESG found that nearly 75 percent of enterprises surveyed plan to spend more money on people, processes, and technologies to secure electronic forms of IP in 2007. In spite of the high priority placed on IP security spending, the data reveal a troubling lack of centralized policy oversight and an outdated reliance on manual processes for securing IP. Close to one-third of respondents are increasing their spending defensively, in reaction to high-profile security breaches of the past year.
“Intellectual Property Security: The Elephant in the Room” is based on data gathered from senior IT executives at enterprises with 1,000 to 20,000 employees. Following are the survey’s key findings:
- Some 65 percent of organizations with 20,000 employees or more say they will significantly increase spending on IP protection in 2007
- About 74 percent of respondents rate their companies’ performance in securing all forms of IP as good or excellent
- Yet a startling 55 percent of respondents still rely on “sweat equity” to secure IP. About 56 percent of organizations with more than 20,000 employees spend more than 80 hours per quarter on manual processes for identifying and classifying IP.
These manual processes can lead to vulnerabilities that allow IP—which can account for a large portion of shareholder value—to leave the organization undetected.
“This report is a combination of good news and bad news,” said Jon Oltsik, senior security analyst with the Enterprise Strategy Group. “Corporations understand the business, technology, and compliance drivers for increased IP security and are willing to make the appropriate investments, but benefiting from these investments means eliminating outdated, inefficient, and subjective manual processes. With the right technologies, companies not only can automate the discovery of their corporate IP, they can also automate the creation and enforcement of policy.”
IP Security Perception vs. Practice: The Emperor Has No Clothes
The survey revealed a disturbing disconnect between organizations’ perception and reality of how well they deal with IP security. Since corporations create, modify, and update their IP assets on a daily basis, the process of discovering, reviewing, and classifying IP must be dynamic to be effective. Yet the majority of organizations rely on corporate manpower to perform these tasks.
Decentralization was another key inefficiency in respondent IP security practices. Nearly one-third of organizations rely on individual users, application owners, or departments to classify IP—and 20 percent give sole responsibility to these users and departments, with no oversight by the legal or security staff. Relying on multiple IP classification and security processes can create inconsistencies that increase the risk of corporate IP loss.
The data also show that the number of hours required to conduct these manual processes grows with the size of the organization, which further reinforces the need for automated and scalable processes and technologies.
IP Security “Best Practices”
The report concludes with some practical recommendations derived from the survey results:
- Automating the discovery of IP is a high priority, the first step in applying appropriate technologies to data
- Organizational excellence requires formal processes for identifying and classifying IP
- IP security is a company-wide issue that requires cooperation across multiple functional groups such as information security, general IT, compliance, legal, and line-of-business
To download “Intellectual Property Security: The Elephant in the Room,” please visit http://www.reconnex.net/documents/ESGBriefReconnexIPSecurityJun07.pdf
About Reconnex
Reconnex is the leader data loss protection appliances designed for any organization - including enterprises, government agencies or educational institutions - that wants to protect its brand, maintain compliance, or secure sensitive information. Reconnex's simple-to-deploy appliance delivers accurate detection while protecting an enterprise before, during, and after any threat to corporate privacy or intellectual property. A privately held company based in Silicon Valley, Calif., Reconnex protects information for over one million users today. For more information about Reconnex, visit www.reconnex.net or call 866-940-4590.
