Since the inception of offshore outsourcing trends in the world of business, many cases or issues can be seen related to data theft, unauthorized use of data, leak of company secrets and intellectual property rights in the small history of offshore outsourcing. Although a risk of intellectual property varies from industry to industry but in the field of Information & Technology, it is very essential to carryout with foolproof data security strategy. On the other hand, offshore providing companies also provides every possible remedy of the intellectual property rights for their offshore clients. Thus, intellectual property management & control as well as data safeguard issues have become gradually more imperative for businesses utilizing offshore outsourcing.



Transfer of intellectual property depends on nature of the contract between vendor & client and type of intellectual may be software, technical & non technical, trade secrets, innovations, business & technology process, etc. For the perfect management & control of offshore outsourcing business and safe sharing of information, outsourcing company must decide which functions should be kept in the house and what should be outsourced.

Before entering in the business, company must choose reputed & reliable partner, who can understand the sensitivity of IP assets, who can follow proper documentation of IP assets. Outsourcing company should check additional security policies of service providing partner for sensitive IP assets, go for personal human resource screening of service providing staff, check physical security measures, check for other business relations of service provider to get assure from information leakage to your competitors and finally review whole data security and IP protection practices of service provider.

Doing proper research on legal system and government policies regarding offshore outsourcing contracts of offshore service providing company is very essential. Making clear contract about IP rights and mentioning the responsibility regarding data security of service provider as well as all actions of employees is another safe precautionary method. Moreover, outsourcing company should clarify all licensing & source code ownership issues as well as open source software issues before entering in outsourcing deal.

For avoiding the risks regarding IP assets or data security all large, medium & small sized organizations should go through with all types of data protection such as physical, electronic and legal.