Confidential tire manufacturing data including rubber compounds and processing details are increasingly vulnerable and represent areas of high risk to any manufacturer. Current protection mechanisms are inadequate as recent experience has shown. The past year has witnessed an amazing number of articles, reports, seminars and news stories about successful hacking attempts and the lack of adequate data and/or network security. The theft of millions of debit card IDs from Target Stores is but one sad story in a long litany of digital misery. The recent revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden has made the cyber security and data protection landscape scarier because MicroSoft, Google, Yahoo, Verizon, etc., have all cooperated with the NSA and have given that organization various “back-door keys” to enable digital spying. Encryption procedures that used to be considered “safe” are now easily broken, such as RSA, triple DES, SSL, etc. This paper will cover the history of cyber security and demonstrate why current data protection mechanisms won't work. The paper concludes with an approach that does work and will protect the data assets of your company. Presented by Steve Belovich, Founder, IQware.