Economic espionage and theft of trade secrets have become big business opportunities and experts say companies might be leaving themselves wide open to information theft because they don't see themselves as being at risk.

Former CIA operations officer Christopher Burgess and Richard Power from the Computer Security Institute look at three vectors of attack: insiders and competitors targeting business; state sponsored theft from business (including France, Russia and Brazil) and counterfeiters, pirates and organised crime.

Their paper, Secrets Stolen, Fortunes Lost makes scary reading and provides some neat links to high profile case studies in all three vectors.

The paper also identifies areas now being targeted: information systems; military production processes and communication systems; Aeronautics; electronics; armaments and energy materials.

It also gives some tips on how to protect the business from attack but the tips are just a start. Protecting secrets is hard work and there are no quick-fix solutions.