Second Annual Study to be Presented at RSA 2018 Full Study Released on April 24

ATLANTA (April 17) – Continuing to respond to the ever-increasing targeted attacks on organizations’ most vital confidential information – their “knowledge assets” – Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton and the Ponemon Institute will be announcing their findings from The Second Annual Study on the Cybersecurity Risk to Knowledge Assets. The new study shows dramatic increases in threats and awareness of threats to these “crown jewels,” as well as dramatic improvements in addressing those threats by the highest performing organizations.

Three Distinguished Fellows of the Ponemon Institute – Jon Neiditz, Co-Leader of Kilpatrick Townsend’s Cybersecurity, Privacy & Data Governance Practice, Will Bracker, Senior Director of Privacy at Cox Communications, and, as moderator, Dr. Chris Pierson, Chairman & Founder of Binary Sun Cyber Risk Advisors -- will present their findings in San Francisco at RSA 2018 – the world’s largest cybersecurity conference. The presentation – “Knowledge Assets, Their Defense and Regulation—Making Them Work for You” – will occur on Friday, April 20th. Please click here for more information.

Knowledge assets are defined in the study as confidential information critical to the development, performance and marketing of a company’s core business, other than personal information that would trigger notice requirements under law. For example, they include trade secrets and corporate confidential information such as product design, development or pricing; sensitive non-public information about the organization, its plans or relationships; and competitively valuable or other important information of or about customers, including customer profiles and databases. More than 630 security practitioners familiar with their companies’ approach to managing knowledge assets and involved in the management process were surveyed.

“Protection of information – whether the information of individuals or organizations, and whether from threats to its confidentiality, availability or integrity or to the rights to own and use it – has become one of the greatest needs and challenges for all of our clients,” said Jon Neiditz. “Kilpatrick Townsend combines a longstanding focus on technology with a distinctive breadth of experience in the protection of information, from our deep engagement with Europe’s GDPR and other data protection and incident response around the world to trade secrets and every area of intellectual property. These challenges and linchpins have led us to form a newly-integrated Technology & Global Data Protection Team. Like our knowledge assets studies done with the Ponemon Institute, this team is uniquely positioned to harmonize and improve the organizational, cybersecurity and contractual mechanisms by which personal and corporate data are protected. And as the new study makes clear, we are just getting started.”

The study will be made available on April 24.

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