If your question is selected, only your first name will be published with it. A former Cisco Systems engineer was arrested by federal authorities late last week on charges he stole some blueprints for an optical networking product. Several recent surveys attest to the increasing prevalence of insider security breaches by current and former employees. Though Morch has not been accused of doing anything illegal with the information other than copying a large portion of his work files and taking them home, other news sources say Cisco often uses the courts to punish former employees that join competitors. One attorney said it is routine for Silicon Valley programmers to copy their files when they leave a company, because they often include personal files or other information they will need later.
Most companies try to resolve it informally and confidentially to protect their reputations.
These types of cases present a significant threat to businesses. Recommended safeguards include developing written policies for organizations regarding the protection of trade secrets and other proprietary information, limiting file size of e-mail attachments sent outside the company, having all employees sign employment agreements that have confidentiality and intellectual property rights clauses, conducting exit interviews to remind former employees to remove company information from their personal computers and of their obligations to maintain confidentiality, and limiting access to highly confidential information. However, the code that parses .ASX files has an unchecked buffer, potentially enabling a cracker to run code on the computer of another user. The malicious user could either send an infected file to another user or host it on a Web site, causing it to launch automatically whenever a user visited the site. The code could take any action on the machine that the legitimate user could take.