Former IT director gets 2 years in jail for hacking
July 28, 2009 by Sam NarisiPosted in: IT employment, In this week's e-newsletter, Information security, Latest News & Views
A woman was fired from her job as the IT director for a nonprofit organization. So what’d she do?
She went home, accessed the employer’s computer network remotely and deleted vital files, such as databases, accounting invoices, software applications and various backup files.
Problem was, the company knew it was her. So they told the police, who charged her with one count of unauthorized computer access.
She plead guilty and was sentenced to two years in jail, three years of supervised released and a $94,000 fine.
The company may have gotten justice, but it’s doubtful that’s worth the headache of having gone through the mess. Sabotage by disgruntled former employees is getting a lot of attention as a common security threat in this economy. Staying safe requires communication between HR and IT, so tech staffers know whose access to remove at what time.
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Tags: hacker, IT staffer, jail
August 4th, 2009 at 8:23 am
9 years ago we fired our IT person. As soon as they were out the door we unplugged the internet connection (in the days you could do that and still work) & I had a locksmith waiting in the parking lot to change the door locks and the safe combination. We had all the passwords in the office changed before we did another thing. Some times you just know when someone is going to mess with your company.
Unfortunately, they were the only one with the password to one of our programs. Getting that hacked into so we could make changes cost us plenty.