Sarah Hutchins, Charlie Middlebrooks, and Caroline McCracken wrote an article in Risk Management Magazine about how generative AI has quickly become a routine workplace tool, but its convenience creates a new problem for companies that require trade secret protection.

"Employees may inadvertently expose sensitive company information through public or unapproved AI tools, while AI developers increasingly rely on trade secret and contract law to protect proprietary models and systems from extraction or reverse-engineering efforts," they wrote. "Trade secret law gives companies a way to protect valuable, confidential business information. Under the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act and state trade secret laws, information generally qualifies as a trade secret if it derives economic value from not being generally known or readily ascertainable and the owner has taken reasonable measures to maintain its secrecy."

"Each element of that definition matters, but for companies using generative AI, the 'reasonable measures' requirement is especially important," they continued.

You can read the full article here: Protecting trade secrets from generative AI-fueled risks

Risk Management is the official magazine of the Risk and Insurance Management Society (RIMS), a network of risk management professionals in more than 75 countries.