Cybersecurity and Trade Secret Asset Management

Secrets — A trade secret asset management system can assist a company’s cybersecurity efforts by identifying files and information that deserve extra protection. Many cybersecurity activities are currently geared toward protecting all files equally, everything from the cafeteria menu to the Girl Scout cookie order form for the chief product manager’s daughter are protected equally to files for customer lists, product roadmaps, and manufacturing secrets.

Several cybersecurity firms have asked if the Hazel product could assist them in protecting a company’s most sensitive files. The answer is “yes” for the company’s trade secret assets and anything associated with these secrets.

In short, Hazel provides a way of providing information about which portion of a network are deserving of increased attention.

The Two Horse Ranchers

Suppose there are two horse ranchers with huge acreages. Both ranchers have valuable herds to protect.

The First Rancher

The first rancher doesn’t bother to determine which of his horses are the valuable ones or deserving of extra security and puts the entire protection of his ranch in the hands of a fence that stretches around his property.

The fence is old and large and over time holes and gaps in the fence appear more frequently than they did in the past.

By analogy to corporate security, these new holes relate to the rise of open innovation, increased employee turnover, and cyber attacks.

The ranch hands have trouble keeping up with all the new repair work they must do to keep the fence up and providing at least minimal security.

Nevertheless, some horses wander away and some are stolen.

Yet the first rancher persists with his old security mechanism because “that’s what my daddy did and his daddy before him.”

The Second Rancher

The second rancher also has a fence. But the second rancher has looked at his herd carefully.

He’s noticed that most of the horses in his herd are okay but really not worth all that much money. In fact, he’s concluded that nearly the entire value of his herd lies in the two Kentucky Derby winners among his herd.

The rancher concludes that he should protect the two Kentucky Derby winners in a barn when they’re not being exercised, and he makes sure that an armed ranch hand is also nearby in case coyotes or horse thieves turn up.

In many current cybersecurity implementations, the cyber security firm doesn’t know which files are the important ones requiring extra security. Hazel can help provide information about which parts of the system require additional protection and security. Once the cybersecurity firm has this information, then it knows which files to give extra protection.

Hazel Helps Companies Identify Rank & Protect Their Trade Secrets

The Hazel Trade Secret Asset Management System helps you manage your trade secrets and trade secret processes. Hazel can keep track of corporate trade secrets and help you determine an appropriate level of protection for each trade secret recorded. Hazel can record who in an organization is responsible for a given trade secret, who is responsible for protecting the trade secret, and who has access to the trade secret, among other things. Hazel can also help with various corporate functions such as a tax and human resources. Contact the Hazel Team today to learn more.

For Secrets, I’m Tom Ewing.

Credits:

Cover art: Navy security guard by U.S. Department of Defense Current Photos – 110315-N-AC979-002, Public Domain, Link

Rickety fence by Grey Geezer – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Gunfighter by Donald Scott Lee (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons