Trade secret law is unusual: it grants no certificate, requires no filing, and can last forever, yet it protects valuable information only if the owner took reasonable measures to keep it secret. This guide explains how to build a protection program that satisfies that requirement, tracking a fictional diagnostics startup as it identifies its secrets and defends them across physical, technical, and administrative layers. It covers what qualifies as a trade secret under the DTSA and the UTSA, how to inventory and classify confidential information with enough specificity to survive a motion to dismiss, the contracts that supplement the statutes, and the one-paragraph whistleblower-immunity notice under 18 U.S.C. § 1833(b) that can silently forfeit a plaintiff's punitive damages and fees. It works through employee training, the high-risk departure, the DTSA's ex parte seizure remedy, valuation, and the improper-means line, and it accounts for the 2025-2026 collapse of the FTC's nationwide non-compete ban. The through-line is simple: almost everything that decides a misappropriation case is decided long before the misappropriation, so the program is the case.