- During the handover period, he used his company account to access their Google Drive. He then deleted a total of 20 documents. Of the 20 company property files, he deleted 16 from the trash bin.
- He denied deleting the file and guided her on where to search for the file. He did not comment when asked if he deleted the file by accident.
Singapore — A man who was given only a day’s notice of his impending dismissal despite his earlier resignation took offence by deleting company files from its Google Drive.
On Tuesday (Dec 7), Tan Wei Chiang pleaded guilty to one charge under the Computer Misuse Act of unauthorized modification of computer contents.
The termination was based on Tan’s overall performance and failing to meet the company’s expectations, according to Channel News Asia.
Tan was to receive his final pro-rated salary at the end of January 2021. He signed and accepted the letter, and his supervisor instructed him to hand over all the projects he had on hand, company login details, and all related documents and information.
He deleted in a few batches 20 documents belonging to the company by moving them to the bin. He then deleted 16 of these documents from the bin.
Tan’s supervisor later accessed the company’s Google Drive and realized that several files were no longer there. She sent Tan a message asking if the file containing the company’s production records was still there, as she could not find them.
She asked if Tan had deleted the file, but Tan said it was still there and told her where to search. His supervisor then asked if he had deleted them by accident, and he did not reply.
Do you have a ‘Tan’ in your Organization?
After engaging an IT employee to track Tan’s user logs, it was confirmed that he had deleted the documents.
The company later managed to recover 16 of the 20 deleted files but was unable to retrieve the remaining four.
The company had to expend time and effort for its employees to recover the documents, and had to contact the SFA to retrieve some records from them and recreate some documents from scratch.
“The loss of these documents, is not, as if – say, the loss of a precious ring. So all that needs to be done – not to make light of it – is the manpower required to reorganize the documents.” said the lawyer.
On Tuesday, the prosecutor asked for a S$5,000 fine, saying that Tan had offended in a deliberate manner, deleting documents in batches and going further to delete them permanently from the bin.
The statement of facts also reflects his lack of remorse, as he continued to deny his acts when confronted, said the prosecutor. She asked for “a higher fine” as four of the files were not recovered.
PREVENTING COMPANY PROPERTY LOSS WHEN AN EMPLOYEE LEAVES
Leaving a former employee’s accounts active puts your network and data at risk, regardless of how friendly a parting may be. If you don’t immediately delete, disable, or shut down former employee accounts, the following security risks may arise.
Companies can also implement PDM (Product Data Management) which can be acquired from providers if said data is highly confidential or essential for research & development purposes. This implementation can avoid manpower wastage, company data leakage and intellectual property protection.
Lastly, there are significant benefits offered by PDM, such as interdisciplinary collaborations, reduction of product development time, reduction of the complexity in information access, and improvement of project management.
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