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Amid all enthusiasm regarding the rise of the Digital Age, industrial espionage remains the dark side of the post‐industrial revolution. The Federal Industrial Espionage Act of 1996 aimed at leveling the field regarding widespread cheating and stealing of intellectual properties by competitors in the marketplace. In this paper we aim at defining various forms of industrial espionage in the light of the ongoing information technology revolution.

The paper focuses on intentional information security breaches by insiders. The purpose is to assess the relationship between insiders' backgrounds and motivations and their deviant behaviors. Two outcome variables, information technology (IT) espionage and IT sabotage, are correlated with four predictors, financial changes, relationship strains, substance abuse, and job changes.

Some 62 cases of intentional information security breaches by insiders are examined using canonical analysis.

The results indicate that a significant relationship exists between financial hardship, relationship strains, and the theft and sale of proprietary data by insiders; and recent firings, substance abuse, and relationship strains are related to information system sabotage.

Because little or no research has been conducted on this topic, there is a lack of validated measures for variables associated with information security. Thus, the measures used in this paper are necessarily simplistic. Because few organizations report information security weaknesses, the sample is relatively small.

In the majority of cases included in this paper, it is found that the insider convey a number of warning signs before committing the security breach. After reading this paper, diligent managers should be able to identify potential security breaches.

This is one of the first studies to explore insider security breaches using canonical analysis.

With the growth of information technologies and with more firms partnering, a major concern for organizations today is the protection of competitive information from thieving. Firms must develop an understanding of the multidimensional flavor of defensive intelligence and its challenges in a bureaucracy, examine companies’ vulnerabilities and implement some basic defensive intelligence measures in order to protect their organization’s knowledge. Organizations must address major areas of vulnerabilities, including employees, partners and public information. Firms can take specific actions to minimize successful acts of espionage such as protections preventing unauthorized use of information systems. Companies should develop a set of priorities and determine where and to what degree security procedures need to be implemented. Beyond security, employing proactive measures can provide a valuable weapon for the long‐term prosperity of your firm.

Whenever America has fought wars, civil liberties are compromised. Led by Hoover, whose career began in the Library of Congress, the FBI has historically conducted questionable surveillance, often spying illegally on American citizens. There is a history of FBI surveillance in the Academy, including surveillance in libraries. Researchers, students, and librarians have been the subjects of FBI surveillance efforts. Today, the Patriot Act has reignited concerns about FBI surveillance in academic institutions. Librarians have often led the fight against limits imposed on accessing information. This is a short history of the conflict between the Academia and FBI surveillance.

US intellectual property (IP) is a key target of numerous other countries and individuals. Of specific interest to outsiders are technological resources. Illegally transferring information can range from the extreme of the often‐glamorized international espionage to the more traditional and common gathering of competitive intelligence (CI). This paper will review the key issues in the illegal transference of information technologies from the USA, will outline the role of other countries involved, and will discuss the impact on key, targeted industries. In particular the illegal attempts to procure key intellectual properties from technology firms will be discussed. In addition, the paper will distinguish between corporate intelligence, espionage, and economic espionage.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of trade secrets, reasonable steps to preserve secrecy, trade secret value, misappropriation methods used to acquire trade secrets, various legal remedies, and internal controls to protect trade secrets.

A sample of types of civil trade secret cases is highlighted. The paper includes a statutory and legal case study analysis of the elements in a civil trade secrets lawsuit. Analysis of actual trade secret court cases illustrates the importance of private civil lawsuits in combating intellectual property fraud.

This paper shows the serious impact of trade secret espionage on the success and survival of businesses and the necessity of proving each element of a civil claim under state trade secret law. Also, practical steps necessary to protect an entity's trade secrets are discussed.

This paper raises the awareness of executives, managers, internal and external auditors, forensic accountants and other interested parties about the severity of trade secret espionage. Also, this paper highlights numerous steps to protect trade secrets.

This paper fills an identified need to inform those involved in the fight against economic crime about the importance of state trade secret laws and internal controls in the fight against intellectual property fraud.

This paper discusses the difference between industrial‐espionage and competitive intelligence so that practicing managers will be more able to formulate policy in this critical area. As well, procedures for securing information as part of a competitive intelligence process are outlined.

The paper aims to explore the national security implications of a potential for a World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute on data flow restrictions. It proposes a basic conceptual framework to assess data flows’ restrictions under General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) security exception.

If a case were to be brought before the WTO dispute settlement, the defender could support its case by invoking the security exception. This paper analyzes three main arguments that could be brought up: protection from cyber espionage, protection from cyberattacks on critical infrastructure and access to data needed to prevent terrorist threats. These three cases are analyzed both legally and technically to assess the relevance of restrictions on data flows under GATS security exception. This analysis can, more generally, inform the debate on the protection of national security in the digital era.

In the three cases, restrictions on data considered critical for national security might raise the cost of certain attacks. However, the risks would remain pervasive and national security would not be significantly enhanced both legally and technically. The implementation of good security standards and encryption techniques appears to be a more effective way to ensure a better response to cyber threats. All in all, it will be important to investigate on a case by case basis whether the scope of the measure (sectors and data covered) is considered proportionate and whether the measure in question in practice reduces the exposure of the country to cyber espionage, cyberattacks and terrorist threats.

This paper represents a contribution to the literature because it is the first paper to address systematically the issue of data flows and national security in the context of a GATS dispute and because it provides a unique perspective that looks both at legal and technical arguments.

Intellectual capital's (IC's) rising value in the production of wealth has been mirrored by its increasing vulnerability to crime. Among these are the increasing frequency of cybercrime, the intangible nature of IC which facilitates theft and the lack of legal remedies for the theft of IC. Taken together, these factors have created a new environment in which IC is uniquely at risk from financial crime. The purpose of this paper is to attempt to examine the efficacy in current legal remedies and formulate suggestions for better protecting IC.

The analysis is conceptual, using frameworks drawn from legal scholarship and traditional views of law‐enforcement practice.

This paper explores the risks of crime inherent in IC and a distributed cyber environment in greater detail in order to demonstrate that traditional legal remedies are largely ineffective to protect IC property rights and that, given this policy environment and the nature of IC itself, prevention is the only reasonable means for protecting IC.

Conceptual papers offer an intrinsically different form of evidence than empirical studies. Significant public debate prior to enacting legislation and subsequent empirical testing of the paper's propositions, if enacted into legislation, are strongly encouraged.

The paper includes implications for the development of legal protections based on guarding sensitive information at its source, rather than traditional reactive policing and legal actions after a theft has been committed.

This paper fulfils an identified need to propose useful and concrete legal solutions that deal with the increasing importance of IC and the concomitant frequency of crimes that involve its theft.

Business intelligence is one of the fastest growing disciplines in corporate America. To many, however, the words conjure up images of trench coats and meetings in back alleys. Unfortunately, recent events only serve to reinforce these fears. Earlier this year, for example, Volkswagen agreed to pay $100 million to General Motors after the U.S. firm alleged that VW used documents pilfered by an ex‐GM executive to its competitive advantage. More recently, Johnson & Johnson and Boehringer Mannheim settled out of court after trading accusations of improper activities, including infiltrating company meetings and taking confidential documents. Even more unsettling to some may be the passage of the Economic Espionage Act in 1996.