As part of a multi-year capacity building project supporting governments in the Indo-Pacific with defending their economic against the risk of cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, ASPI analysed public records to determine the effects, the actual scale, severity and spread of current incidents of cyber-espionage affecting and targeting commercial entities.

In 2015, G20 leaders agreed that ‘no country should conduct or support ICT-enabled theft of intellectual property, including trade secrets or other confidential business information, with the intent of providing competitive advantages to companies or commercial sectors.’

This analyses suggests that the threat of state-sponsored economic cyber-espionage is more significant than ever, with countries industrialising their cyber-espionage efforts to target commercial firms and universities at a grander scale; and more of these targeted industries and universities are based in emerging economies.