Beijing Municipality, Guidelines for the Protection of the Trade Secrets of Internet Enterprises (Draft for Comments)

Issued: November 3, 2023

Main contents: Categories and classification of trade secrets shall be objectively delineated based on factors such as the content of the trade secrets, the fields involved, their commercial value, the research and development costs invested by the enterprise, the extent of the harm in the event of leakage, etc. and the means of storage and transmission appropriate to the categories and classification shall be taken. Storage may be carried out using localized storage systems, cloud storage space, hardware storage equipment, hard copy information, etc. and encrypted transmission service carried out using integrated network office systems, enterprise mailboxes and encrypted office tools, such as enterprise network disks (Article 3).

An internet technology protection roadmap shall be adopted, inspections conducted on a regular basis and risks of leakage of trade secrets shall be detected in a timely manner. The work of protecting the confidentiality of computer programs, algorithms, models, data, business plans, etc. shall be strengthened and management of the security of office software, storage media, classified equipment, documents and files, local area networks and the internet shall be carried out. The adoption of technical measures, such as building firewalls, data leakage prevention systems and traffic monitoring tools, to protect trade secrets is recommended (Article 4).