In the era of big data, corporate data, including trade secret data, is growing rapidly. While companies are enjoying the great convenience brought by big data technology, the security of trade secret data stored by technical means is also facing unprecedented challenges. The risk of corporate trade secrets being leaked has greatly increased, especially cross-border data storage and flow, which seriously threatens the security of corporate trade secrets.
At present, the international community has no clear and unified definition of cross-border data storage and flow. The United Nations Center on Transnational Corporations believes that cross-border data storage and flow refers to the processing, storage and retrieval of machine-readable data stored in computers across borders. Therefore, cross-border data storage and flow refers to the transmission and processing of data across borders; second, although the data does not cross borders, it can be easily accessed by entities in third countries. With the rapid development of big data technology, cross-border data storage and transfer has become easier, and cross-border data transfer has become more frequent. At the same time, the security issues of cross-border data flow have also begun to emerge. The business data of enterprises is stored and processed through cloud services, and large-scale corporate business data is stored across borders in data centers around the world. Therefore, there are great security risks in the business secret data of enterprises.
Article 25 of the “E-Commerce Law” which came into effect on January 1, 2019 stipulates: If the relevant competent authorities require e-commerce operators to provide relevant e-commerce data and information in accordance with the provisions of laws and administrative regulations, e-commerce operators shall provide it. The relevant competent authorities shall take necessary measures to protect the security of the data and information provided by e-commerce operators, and strictly keep the personal information, privacy and business secrets therein confidential, and shall not disclose, sell or illegally provide them to others. Article 87 stipulates: If the staff of the department that is responsible for the supervision and management of e-commerce in accordance with the law neglects their duties, abuses their power, engages in malpractice for personal gain, or discloses, sells or illegally provides to others the personal information, privacy and business secrets known in the performance of their duties, they shall be held accountable according to law.