Universities hold valuable and influential intellectual property. Depending on the nature of the data stolen, espionage often takes place as a result. Research within medicine and engineering, in particular, can provide valuable insights which can then be used in the following three ways.

1) To understand the developments of a certain subject/project. This data can then be sold to competitors or nation state actors to influence economic, social or political change.

2) Individuals / researchers / departments can be held to ransom in return for their valuable data. Often the process of stopping research can be more costly than the demand made.

3) Researchers can be restricted to access their own data. By making it possible to hide or restrict the users own information, development in a particular field (COVID-19 related research for instance) can be halted.

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