Confidential agreements must contain all basic parts of a contract (i.e. offer & acceptance, consideration, intention to create legal relations, capacity, and formalities). More specifically, confidential agreements require the identification of parties, a definition of what needs to be confidential, exclusions from confidentiality, terms of the agreement, etc. Some questions that should be answered are: who discloses to who?, and how long does the agreement last? If a contract and the project associated with it are not maintained in secrecy, I would first analyze the extent to which information was passed on to others. After doing this, I’d be able to determine the risk associated with the shared information and take action accordingly. Depending on what information or how much information is shared, I would seek compensation (e.g. monetary damage) and most likely cut ties with whoever broke confidentiality to prevent it from happening again. In addition, I’d take more precautions to prevent future breaches (e.g. workshops to ensure customer understanding of confidentiality, meetings with partners, etc.). 

The Key Elements of Confidentiality Agreements - AllBusiness.com

According to Dr. Simon's lecture, a confidentiality agreement must have all the same basic aspect of a contact such as who is the contact for, what information is it pertaining to, it cannot be agreeing to anything illegal and the duration. The parties identified must agree upon the the specifications, has to include why the information must be confidential and have term of agreement as well as terms if one of the parties were to break that confidentiality. If the other party in the contact were to break the agreement and disclose something that was not meant to go to the public, I would fine the company for disclosing the information to the public and ask that the employee that breached the contract have some disciplinary action held against them as well as for them to be removed from the related project. I would also try to do training on confidentiality of the product and what can be considered a breach so that it would not happen again.

As the other posts have already mentioned, confidentiality agreements contain all of the basic components of a contract. Offer and acceptance indicates that both parties are aware of the agreement and have both accepted it. Consideration is directly stating what services or goods each party is providing the other. Intention states that the relations that both parties are committing to is legal. Finally, capacity is making sure that the person is mentally and authoritatively able to agree to the terms and sign the contract. Confidentiality agreements specifically have more questions they need to answer, such as who is disclosing to whom and how long the CDA will last.

If confidentiality was breached by the other party, I would ask some legal representatives from my company to assess the degree of the breach and decide a monetary value to the breach. I would ask questions like, if the confidentiality agreement was breached, how much money could my company lose from this? Depending on the breach, if could be little to no financial loss to millions of dollars. I would also investigate the nature of the breach and request to the other party and much more training needs to be conducted in maintaining confidentiality.

From Simon's lecture, one could point out that essential factors of the confidentiality agreement would be the same as the contractor law regarding the offer and acceptance, Consideration, Intention to create legal relations, Capacity, and Formalities. Moreover, it has a confidentiality term that mentions that the person or one of the parties wouldn't reveal hidden information about the other party or other person that they worked with. In order to maintain secrecy, the other parties have to mention the agreement in specific detail, especially what terms, equipment, or methodology shouldn't be mentioned by the other party. Moreover, I would try to do training with these people to confirm the confidentiality terms if these people were employees.

To add to the comments made earlier, a confidential agreement (in addition to the basic components of the contract) should first clearly define what constitutes the document to be confidential and it should also underscore the duration of the confidential agreement. The document should also highlight the responsibilities of the party receiving this document. The document should also highlight the responsibility of the party after the duration of the confidential agreement has come to an end: should the party return the confidential information or should they destroy it? Lastly, the document should also state the consequences that the party would face if there is a breach of confidentiality.  

If there was a breach of confidentiality, the first step would be to minutely detail the evidence of this breach. Next, the breaching party would need to be notified of this breach. Since the agreement would have outlined the consequences of breaching the agreement, this would be the time to pursue that course of action. This could be either having the party immediately be released from the contract (to reduce further disclosures), pursue damages, etc. There may be cases where these actions may not work and the company would have to take legal action against the breaching party. After resolving the issue, the company should take this opportunity to strengthen the agreement to prevent a repeat of such incidents.