Malware, theft of mobile devices and network intrusion were cited as the reasons for loss of intellectual property by 21 per cent of manufacturers within the past year, according to a recent survey.
The report said that a business’s most decisive advantage often comes in the form of research and development (R&D) insight or a proprietary high-tech solution, which in the case of manufacturers, can help firms produce items more efficiently than their competitors.
However, in a highly competitive global economy, organisations operate on extremely tight profit margins so if a rival business is able to obtain this insight, especially without incurring the initial R&D costs, then that competitor has a significant business advantage and the loss could even put the firm that developed the insight into financial difficulty.
However, the manufacturing industry clearly understands the importance of securing their intellectual property, as the survey found that manufacturers ranked “Internal Operational Information” and “Intellectual Property” as the two types of non-financial data they fear losing the most.
In fact, IP protection is rated so highly by the Government for its contribution towards the economy, that a new Intellectual Property Act was granted Royal Assent only this year, with its new measures coming into force in October and all measures being in place by late next year.
Interestingly, however, those surveyed listed the fear of losing “Customer or Client Information” the lowest out of all business segments, most likely because manufacturing facilities are less likely to store this information in the first place.
When asked about the cause of their most serious data loss event within the past 12 months, malware was the most common cause, cited by 23 per cent of manufacturers. They also reported other sources of incidents leading to data loss, including software vulnerabilities, network intrusion, “information leaked on mobile devices” and targeted attacks.