Laptop Security Blog » dupont security breach http://blog.absolute.com Laptop Security blog by Absolute Software Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:00:52 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 DuPont Sues Employee for Insider Theft http://blog.absolute.com/dupont-sues-employee-for-insider-theft/ http://blog.absolute.com/dupont-sues-employee-for-insider-theft/#comments Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:30:03 +0000 arieanna http://blog.absolute.com/?p=1610 Many of us think about protecting our data against the strangers of the world who might be trying to find a way to use our information to their benefit.  It can be surprising, therefore, when the breach occurs within our company (or circle of friends, family, etc…).  Unfortunately, DuPont is learning that insider theft is becoming more and more common.businessman at laptop

The industrial manufacturing company discovered that one of their employees, a senior research chemist, transferred confidential files containing trade secrets from his company-issued laptop to an external hard drive.

Immediately, I couldn’t help but wonder why DuPont wouldn’t have some sort of alert in place in case someone tried to attach a hard drive to company computers.  I was further baffled when I learned that this isn’t the first time they’ve been through this. 

After 10 years with DuPont, an employee gathered information from thousands of documents and scientific abstracts.  His mission?  To sell the information to rival company, Victrex.  He ended up being sentenced to 18 months of jail time.

Aside from setting up some sort of alert system for when data breaches occur and using laptop security products like Computrace, DuPont (and other companies) has to find a way to work around the fact that even people with legitimate access to their information need to be considered potential threats. 

image: www.sxc.hu

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