19 Jan Cyberinsurance: Cover Your IP Assets With A Trade Secret Policy
Unprotected intellectual property is risky business
– Steve Morgan, Editor-in-Chief
Sausalito, Calif. – Jan. 19, 2021
Admit it. You don’t know what or where all of your intellectual property (IP) is, and it’s not covered by insurance.
There’s a next-generation cyberinsurance broker who can help.
Mary Guzman is a first-mover in the nascent trade secret insurance market. Her startup, Crown Jewel Insurance, offers a game-changing policy that will cover your IP assets based on their fair market value.
What’s your secret sauce?
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) defines a trade secret as information that has either actual or potential independent economic value by virtue of not being generally known, has value to others who cannot legitimately obtain the information, and is subject to reasonable efforts to maintain its secrecy.
Cybercrime TV: Mary Guzman, CEO at Crown Jewel Insurance
What you need to know about protecting trade secrets
Guzman’s team provides a full suite of risk management and advisory services to help a client identify and value all of its IP assets, a daunting task for any enterprise. Those services, however, are most likely to be availed by C-suite executives and legal teams.
What about CIOs and CISOs?
Boardroom members and chief legal officers typically talk amongst themselves about trade secrets and how to protect them, according to former White House CIO Theresa Payton, a global cybersecurity expert. CIOs and CISOs are not at the table for those discussions, but they should be invited to pull up a chair. Payton emphasizes the importance of assessing which trade secrets are stored digitally and how secure they are.
What’s at stake?
The S&P 500 index had a value of approximately $28 trillion (USD) in October of 2020. If all the cars, office buildings, factories and merchandise belonging to those companies were sold in a single sale, it would fetch just 20 percent of that figure — or $5.6 trillion, according to estimations by Bloomberg.
The rest of the index’s value, $22.4 trillion based on Bloomberg’s data, are things you can’t see or count such as algorithms, brands and lists — which is IP.
No matter how you slice and dice the IP pie, the value of trade secrets demands they be protected. Guzman insists the time is now to insure your crown jewels.
RELATED: Former White House CIO Theresa Payton Joins Mary Guzman on this Cybercrime Radio Podcast Episode for a discussion about Trade Secret Insurance.
– Steve Morgan is founder and Editor-in-Chief at Cybersecurity Ventures.
Go here to read all of my blogs and articles covering cybersecurity. Go here to send me story tips, feedback and suggestions.
About Crown Jewel Insurance
Mary Guzman, founder and CEO at Crown Jewel Insurance, has more than 25 years of experience consulting with and placing insurance for Fortune 1,000 companies. She has specialized in complex cyber, errors & omissions, and intellectual property insurance.
Crown Jewel Insurance was formed to provide risk management and insurance advisory solutions focused on Intellectual Property (IP) assets, specifically trade secrets.
Learn more at tradesecretinsurance.com.
