Morning Security Brief: Protecting Trade Secrets, Surviving a Nuclear Blast, and More.

► The White House held a press conference yesterday to  announce the Administration’s Strategy on Mitigating the Theft of U.S. Trade Secrets. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, "New measures raise the prospect of stepped-up U.S. trade restrictions on products and services derived from stolen trade secrets and diplomatic pressure to reinforce the administration's commitment to curbing such thefts."

►The U.S. Defense Department's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is seeking ideas on how "to mitigate the dangers that ionizing radiation poses to human health," to improve the chances of surviving a nuclear disaster, whether man-made or the result of extreme weather, writes the Danger Room. DARPA is focusing research on three areas: immediate post-event mitigation, long-term effects, and molecular-level remediation--possibly a way to reverse damage.

► The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency pushed localities hard to round up illegal immigrant populations to improve its chances of meeting targets for deportation of illegals set by the Congress, according to a report from McClatchy Newspapers highlighted by The Crime Report. Agents were asked to work more traffic checkpoints and weekends and to vet denied driver's license applications, among other measures.

► Elsewhere in the news, Human Rights Watch says that authorities in Mexico have participated in the disappearance of hundreds of people since 2006.