ATLANTA — It wasn't locked up in a bank vault like the recipe for its flagship soda brand.

Instead, prosecutors say a new product sample at the heart of a corporate espionage case that erupted this week at The Coca-Cola Co. was accessible to a secretary.

The episode has made Coke re-evaluate its safeguards for protecting trade secrets, and other corporations ask whether they should do the same — even as the secretary's lawyer wonders what all the fuss is about.

"It's something that's made (everyone's) ... hair stand on end," said corporate security consultant Richard Heffernan, who works for trade group ASIS International.

Experts say the important thing is to have tough employee screening and to catalog what secrets you don't want others to know.

"One of the things that gets less importance than it really should get is we're really careful when we hire a CFO that is going to handle money or a director of research, but I think we need to pay more attention to the support people that have access to this information," Heffernan said.

Stealing trade secrets is not uncommon in a competitive corporate culture where heavy premiums are placed on bringing an innovative new product or device or technology to the market first.

In New Jersey, an electronics company executive was charged last year with hacking into the computer system of a rival firm to steal its customer and supplier lists so he could undercut the competitor's prices.

In 2004, a man was arrested in Florida after being accused of selling to a Belgian firm a stolen set of Pratt & Whitney blueprints for precision tools needed to repair a commercial jet engine. And two Michigan men were charged in 2003 with trying to steal and sell company secrets from auto-parts maker Visteon Corp.

In the Coke espionage case, Joya Williams is accused of stealing confidential documents and a sample of a new Coke product from the Atlanta-based beverage giant while working as an administrative assistant to the company's global brand director. Two men, Ibrahim Dimson and Edmund Duhaney, are charged along with her with trying to sell the items to PepsiCo Inc.

Richard Darwin, an intellectual property lawyer in San Francisco, said biotechnology firms and software companies that maintain confidential information used by employees and engineers often put that information on a highly secure computer network that is password-protected to limit access.

Other companies make employees sign confidentiality agreements promising not to divulge trade secrets, even after they leave their jobs.

"I think it's fair to say that taking steps to safeguard intellectual property, in particular the trade secrets of a company, is absolutely critical, especially here, where those trade secrets relate directly to the success of a product," Darwin said.

Coke's general counsel, Geoff Kelly, sent a memo to employees yesterday reminding them of that.

Kelly said company policy states that any materials classified as "confidential" must be secured in locked offices and drawers when not in use. He said materials marked "restricted" must be encrypted for electronic transmission, including e-mail, and hard copies must be secured when not in use. Kelly also urged employees to come forward if they see someone doing something inappropriate.