Obama administration looks to protect trade secrets from hackers

The White House is set to unveil a plan on Wednesday to better protect the business secrets of U.S. companies, including from Chinese hackers.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Acting Commerce Secretary Rebecca Blank and U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel are scheduled to discuss the new strategy at a White House event.

Jim Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the plan will suggest stronger counter intelligence, sharing of security best practices among corporations and a coordinated diplomatic strategy to pressure China to stop hacking U.S. companies.  

On Tuesday, Mandiant, an American computer security firm, released a report concluding that an elite military unit of Chinese hackers is likely behind a wave of attacks on U.S. computer networks. 

Analysts traced a series of attacks to a 12-story building in the Pudong district of Shanghai. They concluded that the building, which likely holds hundreds or even thousands of employees, is almost certainly the headquarters of China's secretive cyber war division, the People's Liberation Army Unit 61398.

Mandiant concluded that since 2006, the Chinese unit has stolen data from at least 141 companies across 20 major industries, including critical infrastructure sectors like energy and telecommunications. At least 115 of the companies were in the United States.

—Updated at 12:28 p.m.

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