A trade secret is both an important intangible asset that an
enterprise owns and a powerful market competition
"weapon". How a business manages its trade secrets is an
indicator of the enterprise's overall management competency and
core competitiveness. Our firsthand research confirms that
protecting and managing trade secrets has become one of the key
tasks for enterprise leaders.
Common questions asked by business operators are (1) how
risks can be analyzed, and (2) how protective mechanisms can be
established. Similarly, leaders are interested in (3) how trade
secret metadata should be classified and (4) how management
mechanisms processes, and systems can be integrated accurately and
efficiently. This paper, divided into two parts, responds
to these increasingly relevant questions for modern enterprises. In
particular, the paper focuses on best practice trade secret
protection, combining theory with practice.