Dear Colleagues,

With technological competition between countries intensifying in recent years, technology trade and protection have also become increasingly important. The issue of technology theft, previously considered a problem between companies, has now grown to become a point of contention between countries, through acts of industrial espionage. In addition, technology theft through the loss of core personnel overseas weakens a country’s industrial competitiveness in terms of global competition, and is fast becoming a serious threat to the economic security of nations.

Industrial security is an especially important issue, not only for maintaining the competitiveness of a company, but also for continuing the sustainable industrial development of the country. Despite increasing social interest regarding recent technology disputes and the active discussions between advanced countries on a technology protection policy, the reality is that there is a severe lack of academic discussion and research related to this topic. As technology leakage and theft occur through various routes—including personnel, hacking, and M&A—and through complex methods, it is necessary that discussions be approached from new perspectives. Interdisciplinary efforts involving various academic fields, including business administration, law, criminology, and engineering, are especially needed in order to arrive at a practical solution in order to prevent technology leakage and theft.

Therefore, this Special Issue plans to collect research papers on various topics such as global trends, theories, cases, information systems, technologies, and related legal policies, related to technology leakage and theft prevention, in order to sustain corporate competitiveness and industrial development. The Special Issue requests not only research papers from the perspective of the social sciences, such as business administration, law, psychology, criminology, and public administration, but also submissions from experts in technology protection in engineering fields.

Submissions to this Special Issue related, but not limited, to the following topics are welcome:

• Technology and Knowledge Protection for Corporate Sustainable Growth
• Technology Management for Sustainable Competitive Advantage
• Human Resource Management for Industrial Security
• Information Security Management for Industrial Technology
• Industrial Security Theory and Framework
• Industrial Security Governance
• Industrial Security Management
• Industrial Security Law and Policy
• Industrial Security Technology
• Industrial Security Education
• Industrial Security Consulting
• Industrial Security Crime
• Industrial Security Forensic
• Industrial Security Audit
• Industrial Spy and Espionage
• Startup Technology Management
• Smart Industry Security

Dr. Hwansoo Lee
Dr. Dowoo Kim
Dr. Wonhyung Park
Dr. Yanghoon Kim
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Industrial Security
• Convergent Security
• Smart Industry Technology
• Technology Management
• Technology Protection
• Technology Theft