Recently the FBI announced that a defendant pleaded guilty in federal court to computer intrusion arising from her unauthorized invasion into, and destruction of data on, the computer system of her former employer following her termination of employment.

According to court filings, the defendant was fired from her position and two days later, she remotely accessed the company’s file server and deleted more than 20,000 files totaling over 21 gigabytes of data. The deleted data also included valuable customer information. The company has spent more than $10,000 in fixing this intrusion and destruction of data.

This case reflects the urgency of employers to act swiftly to disable a terminated employee’s access to everything in the organization. Using a Termination Checklist (available on MyFrankCrum, My Resources, HR Resources) is helpful. An insider threat can be just as damaging as an external criminal.

FrankCrum is now offering Cyber Liability Insurance to help businesses with cyber incidents. October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month but keeping your organization safe requires year-round vigilance. Read more here.