How To Prevent IT Sabotage Inside Your Company
Preventing external attacks to IT systems is a huge and critical task for most companies, but what are businesses doing to stop similar attacks when they come from within? That's a question that more companies should be asking themselves as internal IT sabotage cases regularly hit businesses hard, causing big monetary losses and often knocking companies offline for days or weeks.
Earlier this week, a 37-year-old former IT staff member for the U.S. subsidiary of Japanese drug company, Shionogi, pleaded guilty to remotely infiltrating and sabotaging the company's IT infrastructure this past February. The damage scrambled the company's operations for days and cost Shionogi more than $800,000 in damages, according to IDG News Service.
The former employee, Jason Cornish, logged in to the network using a hidden virtual server he had previously created, then wiped out the company's virtual servers one by one, taking out e-mail, order tracking, financial and other services, according to IDGNS and court filings (PDF). IDGNS also reported that Cronish's former boss at Shionogi refused to turn over network passwords and was eventually fired.
