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Stuck on Manual: Businesses and Intellectual PropertyBy Pedro HernandezJune 25, 2007
A survey finds that some businesses need to come to terms with automating the protection of private data and intellectual property ... and quick. Results from the study conducted by the Enterprise Strategy Group point to a big slice of enterprises that are courting danger, if not from regulatory bodies, then from their competitors. Of senior IT executives in organizations of 1,000 to 20,000 employees, 55 percent were still found to employ "sweat equity" to secure intellectual property (IP). This comes despite the 74 percent of respondents that gave their companies a good or excellent rating when it comes to securing all forms of IP. Nonetheless, the majority of businesses plan to increase spending on IP protection this year. Sixty-five percent of those with over 20,000 employees are planning to do just that. In a report commissioned by Reconnex, "Intellectual Property Security: The Elephant in the Room", research firm Enterprise Strategy Group underscores the inadequacies of manually driven processes to discover, categorize and protect sensitive data stored in emails, files and databases. However there's hope, according to Jon Oltsik, senior security analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. He recommends that firms fist establish a "set of policies and procedures that are standard across the company." Oltsik also advises firms to get their business units on the same page when it comes to establishing what is considered confidential and what isn't. This cooperation is critical since these units do not always share a blanket policy. Twenty percent of those polled left the protection of sensitive information to users and departments with little intervention from legal or IT security. Lastly, it's time to automate. Given the sheer volume of data combined with the locations in which that data is stored (databases, servers, workstations, laptops, etc.), organizations "really need to look at new tools," says Oltsik, suggesting that they "implement tools to automate processes." In a statement, Oltsik outlines the benefits of an automated approach, "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." For more information, click here for a copy of the report (PDF).
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