* Deletion of files by parting employees could be a felony crime
A small company in my home state of Texas recently asked for help in investigating an employee’s abrupt departure. The employee had been the company’s primary network administrator and had administrative rights to every system the company owns. Given that the employee resigned in anger, the company owner was concerned that the employee could have sabotaged or otherwise harmed the computer systems. Unfortunately for the owner, his hunch was correct.
A small company in my home state of Texas recently asked for help in investigating an employee’s abrupt departure. The employee had been the company’s primary network administrator and had administrative rights to every system the company owns. Given that the employee resigned in anger, the company owner was concerned that the employee could have sabotaged or otherwise harmed the computer systems. Unfortunately for the owner, his hunch was correct.
Now I’m not a lawyer, but what I learned about the law in Texas regarding computer crime is interesting – enough so that I thought I would share it with you. Statutes regarding computer crime vary from state to state, so the situation I describe may not apply where you live. What fascinates me here is the fact that an employee doesn’t have to do much damage to quickly find himself in felony crime territory.
Before he resigned, the employee in question deleted all his e-mail and formatted the hard disks of his desktop and laptop computers. It’s unknown whether he did this with malicious intent, or if he just thought the data was personal and of little interest to the company. However, the employee had signed a company policy statement acknowledging that all e-mail and all files stored on PCs or the company network are company property. The owner wanted this property back.
Technical consultants stepped in and used several data recovery tools to restore the lost information. Among the tools used were Easy Recovery Professional from Kroll Ontrack (http://www.ontrack.com), and Easy Undelete from the company of the same name (http://www.easy-undelete.com). Some of these tools are inexpensive; however, the Ontrack software alone cost $800, although the company also makes lower price tools. Interestingly, the price of the tools used to fully recover the missing files pushed this situation into the category of being a felony crime.
Meanwhile, the owner sought out professional help and started to learn the law about computer crimes. This foolish ex-employee’s rash actions had caused quite a few problems with regular company business, such as an interruption with business contacts that had been stored in the employee’s e-mail folders. Further, the employee had deleted significant work files on his hard disk, including project files that existed no where else in the company’s computer systems. The deleted data was far beyond anything that could be called personal and irrelevant to company business.
It turns out that in the state of Texas where these actions took place, the situation could meet the criteria for a computer crime. The employee acted to destroy the data without the effective consent of the owner of the computer system. Further, because the company owner was forced to spend more than $1,500 to restore the data, the offense is automatically a state jail felony.
Now the business owner is still adding up his losses and debating the pros and cons of getting the police and insurance companies involved. But the fact is this businessman has enough proof and enough ammunition to send the former employee to jail. I’m sure that didn’t enter the mind of the hapless ex-employee when he clicked on delete.
Lessons learned here: For the business owner, it’s comforting to know you have legal recourse in such a situation, at least in Texas. However, sending a former employee to jail may not be in your best interests. For the employee, it’s never a smart idea to maliciously delete or damage any sort of company property, whether it’s physical or intellectual property. What’s more, company-provided e-mail is not your property, and neither is anything that is stored on company computers. Messing with it could land you in a world of hurt.
Linda Musthaler is vice president of Currid & Company. You can write to her at mailto:Linda.Musthaler@currid.com
