Here at the Law Office of Vincent Miletti, Esq. and the home of the #UnusuallyMotivated movement, we take pride as a resilient and dependable legal services firm, providing such services in both a traditional and online, web-based environment. With mastered specialization in areas such as Employment and Labor Law, Intellectual Property (IP) (trademark, copyright, patent), Entertainment Law, and e-Commerce (Supply Chain, Distribution, Fulfillment, Standard Legal & Regulatory), we provide a range of legal services including, but not limited to traditional legal representation (litigation, mediation, arbitration, opinion letters and advisory), non-litigated business legal representation and legal counsel, and unique, online legal services such as smart forms, mobile training, legal marketing and development.

Still, we, here at Miletti Law®, feel obligated to enlighten, educate, and create awareness, free of charge, about how these issues and many others affect our unusually motivated® readers and/or their businesses. Accordingly, to achieve this goal, we have committed ourselves to creating authoritative, trustworthy & distinctive content. Usually, this content is featured as videos posted on our YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtvUryqkkMAJLwrLu2BBt6w and blogs that are published on our website WWW.MILETTILAW.COM. With that, the ball is in your court and you have an effortless obligation to subscribe to the channel and sign up for the Newsletter on the website, which encompasses the best way to ensure that you stay in the loop and feel the positive impact of the knowledge bombs that we drop here!

As the authoritative force in Employment Law, it only seemed right to introduce one of the many upcoming series where we remain persistent in introducing a variety of topics, which will look to not only educate but also deliver in a sense that only Miletti Law® can. In this regard, this blog is Part I of our fresh and new series on “Cybersecurity Measures to Protect Employers.” Among other things, we shall focus more on protecting confidential information and trade secrets in this series. For now, we shall hammer on three key areas important when it comes to cybersecurity.

Definition and Overview of Cybersecurity

With the globe now in the digital age, computer networks and systems are used to store most information for employers in diverse sectors. Employers store highly confidential and proprietary information, which raises the question of how to secure such information and, henceforth, the concept of cybersecurity. In general, cybersecurity entails the technological protection of computer systems, programs, networks, and computers from unauthorized access, internal and external attacks, and damage.

Since a wide range of confidential information is stored on computer networks and systems that must be protected both from the misappropriation of employee information perpetrated by employees and from data breaches caused by anonymous hackers, cybersecurity is essentially vital for employers. Employers would not like their information to get in the wrong hands, irrespective of what kind of information it is.

Why Would an Employer need a Workplace Cybersecurity Program?

By minimizing gaps through which an employer’s data, networks, systems, and computers can be accessed by unauthorized parties, the risk of trade secret misappropriation can be reduced through the establishment and maintenance of formalized workplace cybersecurity programs. Further, in the event of a trade secret misappropriation or data breach, a well-established and maintained workplace cybersecurity program ensures that employers are in a better position for faster response and recovery. On the one hand, the speed at which an employer recovers from such an event is critical because it is an indication that the employer has a vital and protectable interest, which, during the establishment of a trade secret misappropriation claim, must be demonstrated in a court of law. On the other hand, prompt recovery enables employers to mitigate and limit the extent of damages that a data breach may cause.

Variations of Cybersecurity Measures in Diverse Employer Settings

Based on the type of information that needs to be protected, cybersecurity measures are unlikely to vary significantly. For instance, a retail firm may want to protect customer lists and client information. In contrast, a processing company may want to protect the blueprints of a sophisticated production formula that gives it a competitive advantage against its competitors. In this case, although the trade secrets are different, both can be protected by similar or the same cybersecurity techniques since they involve the electronic storage of such information via an online repository framework or a computer network, software, or system.

However, the type of cybersecurity measures appropriate for an employer may be determined by the size of such a particular employer. Generally, large companies tend to have more personnel and resources as compared to smaller ones. This means that depending on an employer’s size, the oversight of cybersecurity may be entrusted to either an information security team or one or a few persons. Furthermore, smaller firms may not have the resources and capital to install modern programs and software or invest in advanced information technologies to protect their computer networks and systems. However, this does not imply that a court will rule that a small company failed to take reasonable measures to protect its confidential information since it did not make such investments and/or installations. Nonetheless, irrespective of the number of resources and size of an employer, employers should utilize as many cybersecurity measures as they can, especially if it requires demonstrating, in a court of law, that it took reasonable steps in protecting its proprietary and confidential information.

In Part II of this new series, we shall move the discussion forward and hammer on the “Statutory Definitions of Trade Secret”& “Types of Information Considered Trade Secrets” under the applicable laws.

In the meantime, stay tuned for more legal guidance, training, and education. In the interim, if there are any questions or comments, please let us know at the Contact Us page!

Always rising above the bar,

Isaac T.,

Legal Writer & Author.