Ex-employee sentenced for killing company’s servers
Filed under: In this week's e-newsletter, IT staffing, Latest News & Views, Security and law
When your company’s IT department lets someone go, are they leaving the organization open to an expensive security problem?
That’s what recently happened to one company.
Just before Thanksgiving last year, Priyavrat Patel was fired from his job as a systems administrator for Pratt-Read, a Connecticut-based tool manufacturer.
Rather than leave quietly, he decided to use his knowledge of the company’s computer system to wreak havoc.
Over the holiday weekend, Patel accessed the company’s servers from home and deleted critical files. Employees had no access to the network for about two weeks.
The company filed criminal charges against Patel, who was recently sentenced to six months in prison and a $120,000 fine.
In court, he claimed he was only trying to cause a “small hiccup” that would disrupt operations for a few hours.
The lesson: IT departments need to make sure they change access restrictions following staffing changes to make sure ex-employees can’t get into the network.
