What happened
Taiwan is investigating leaks of critical chip technology, including allegations of stolen trade secrets from companies like TSMC. TSMC initiated legal proceedings and internal disciplinary actions after its monitoring systems detected unauthorised activity. This involved a former Senior Vice President for corporate development allegedly copying advanced process technology data before departing the company and subsequently joining Intel Corporation. The investigation is currently under judicial review, with TSMC affirming its monitoring mechanisms enabled early issue identification.
Why it matters
The alleged theft of advanced process technology data by a former senior executive, detected post-factum by monitoring systems, highlights a control gap in intellectual property egress prevention. This increases exposure for IT security and compliance teams to insider threats and raises due diligence requirements for employee offboarding processes and data access revocation, particularly concerning high-value intellectual property. This also creates an accountability gap for data handling during transitions.
