Getaway Car: Insiders Hot-Wire Tesla’s Trade Secrets

In a California legal complaint, Tesla alleges that ex-employees systematically stole trade secrets for the benefit of their new employer, competitor Rivian. 

Even if you’re not a hotshot producer of electric horseless carriages with model names that spell “S” “3” “X” and “Y”, you can still bet that others are gunning for your prized intellectual property. People want to copy your homework.

Scroll past Tesla’s initial allegations about recruiting and compensation data theft and it starts to get interesting. Actual trade secrets. Remember kids, to keep it a trade secret you must actively keep it out of the public eye. Tesla says it did: non-disclosure agreements, guards, visitor control, sophisticated software. And yet, close reading of the complaint reveals that Tesla did not catch the alleged perpetrators until after the fact.

Too late, Ricky Bobby.  Second place is first loser if you are only first snaring misappropriated trade secrets at the edge of the firewall.

If the allegations are true, these guys weren’t too smart in covering their tracks. The complaint alleges that they basically followed the same formula: 1. Open personal Gmail account (why Gmail?) 2. Copy confidential files, 3. Hit ‘send’. 

As a company desiring to protect your trade secrets, you need to rev up your Insider Threat Program so you can go fast. Real fast. Ludicrously fast.

1.      Measure disgruntlement and root it out. Make people happy, not paranoid. HR is often the best placed to keep tabs on employee satisfaction, because they do not scare your employees as much as your Security department does.

2.      Focus on the biggest (wait for it) drivers of your economic value. Start protecting that data first, then work outward so that you don’t get overwhelmed. Develop a program to protect it systematically. (pro tip: don’t call it the ‘Insider Threat Program’).

3.      If you are ever the recipient of peddled purloined wares, do not accept them. As sure as a Model X on ‘Smart Summon’ returns to its owner, this bad behavior will boomerang back on you and poison your company culture. Instead, take your own ethical Pepsi Challenge. In 2006, when a Coke secretary offered Pepsi one of Coke’s new secret formulas, Pepsi told Coke they had a leaker. 

These steps are a baseline to keep you innovating while reducing the risk that malicious insiders will make off with your trade secrets like bootleggers into the Talladega night.