Antivirus company McAfee and R&D company SAIC recently published a report entitled Underground Economies, a study of corporate IP theft. According to the study, many cyberthieves now see stealing IP as more profitable than credit card theft and identity theft.

In the past few years I’ve been interviewing students for job openings at my companies. Some students came from large, well-known universities while other came from small colleges. Some students had bachelor’s degrees in computer science while others had master’s degrees. One thing that many of these recent graduates had in common was that they couldn’t program competently.

The precise language that legally defines a trade secret varies by jurisdiction, as do the particular types of information that are subject to trade secret protection. In the United States, different states have different trade secret laws. Most states have adopted the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, and those that don’t, have laws that only differ by subtle differences.

More confirmation that IP theft is hurting businesses. In this issue I discuss the report from the Ponemon Institute that echoes those numbers and gives some interesting (perhaps scary) statistics.