Lily Johnson

With the advent of the rapidly developing technological era, the need to elaborate its own cyber law policies and to evaluate cyber risk has become needed for almost any business institution, irrespective of its size and area of business activity. With regard to the present case study, Roshen, a chocolate manufacturer and retail distributor, several underpinning of the policy shall be outlined.

First and foremost, the common opinion rendered by the scholarly and practical communities is that cyber law policies are vital for effective company functioning, since Internet marketing and cyber-based business conduct has become immensely applicable nowadays. The contracts are concluded online and even the management process has been partially computerized nowadays.

Secondly, the policy shall be customized, since the industry has its particular features and therefore common cyber security and risk evaluation solutions are not applicable here.

The objective of this paper is to outline the areas in which the targeted policies are to be analyzed and the measure relevant for immediate implementation.

Having aggregated practical evidence of the similar industry business units operating nationwide and overseas, it has been inferred that the most cyber vulnerable and beleaguered areas of the company business activity are intellectual property issues, security, crime and competition issues.

Chocolate production and most importantly distribution is closely connected with multiple set of intellectual property issues. Electronic merchandising and distribution of the company output has become a popular form of commerce. Consequently, business agents of the company are routinely perplexed with the resolution of the various copyright, trademarks and industrial design alleged infringements.

To be more exact, the nature of this problem is practically twofold, both of the constituents gradually assuming global significance. Under the first possible scenario the company may somehow be an aggressor to the trade secrets, copyrightable intangible assets, trade designs and trademarks of the company's main competitors. Moreover, if such encroachment takes place, the closest competitors will definitely benefit from the situation. Company management shall take this caveat responsibly, in order to aver the promising litigation and immense indemnification payments. The second part of the problem deals with the infringements on the company's intangible assets or exclusive rights perpetrated by the competitors of the company deliberately or without aforethought. Since the internet is not directly regulated by the state supervising authorities, these legal deviations can easily take place.

With regard to the most viable solutions, the first scenario requires the professional and skilled Intellectual Property attorney counseling the company merchandising and marketing team before any significant action is taken. Having recurred to the second problem, the most effective remedy is permanent monitoring of the competitors web-based assets.

One of the most widely embraced solutions to sap the market position of the particular targeted company is to break into the servers of the company and to steal important business documentation, including customers base, transaction history and suppliers records. This area is the most vulnerable and a sophisticated and well-prepared hacker attack can obliterate a certain business initiative of a company.

As far as the most viable and effective strategy to tackle this issue is concerned, the hiring of a professional IT team is the necessary prerequisite to accomplish this task. Considering the fact that in-house upkeep is considerably expensive, even for financially stable Roshen, the two-staged approach seems relevant. Firstly, the in-house IT-consultant will detect the attacks and malware which targets the servers and clouds (this technology becomes incrementally popular nowadays and it can be with 100% certainty assumed that soon it will be installed into the software framework of the company). On the second level, a team of accomplished IT specialists shall be outsourced. When a threat is detected, the specialist communicates them and their synergy neutralizes the external intervention. Then, authorized law enforcement agencies shall be notified about the assault and the respective actions will be taken. Not self-based retaliatory actions are to be taken, since they constitute a business misdemeanor or a crime, depending on their nature and scope.

Competition between Roshen and its competitors is fierce nowadays, since the industry is among the most financially lucrative ones. It is natural that multiple internet-methods of commodities distribution, marketing and advertising campaigns have become extensively widespread. The main vulnerability in this paradigm is more effective campaigns conducted by the competitors and legally interdicted methods of competition employed either by Roshen management or by the rivals thereof.

With regard to the most effective applicable solution, it is analogous to the one already discussed in the intellectual property section. Counseling of the professional and experienced attorney is mostly indispensable under such circumstances.

Having aggregated the main findings of this report, it can be recapitulated that the main threats generated by the cyber environment are the intricate intellectual property framework, hacker attacks deliberately carried out by the competitors, or unintentionally committed by the company managers, and the rise of internet-based competition. To be protected, the company has to hire two departments ( or individual analysts), the legal one, being proficient in online competition and cyber law and the IT one, being capable of detecting malware attacks and other unauthorized attempts to intrude into the framework of the company business activity. Provided that all these actions are taken, it can be assured that the risks incurred by the company are substantially minimized.