Florida woman ‘damaged pcs, deleted vital enterprise data’ right after she was fired

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James Walker

17 August 2021 at 12:08 UTC

Updated: 17 August 2021 at 12:46 UTC

A harsh lesson in the importance of obtain revocation

A Florida woman has been uncovered guilty of accessing a protected computer system and “recklessly resulting in damage” to a business immediately after her employer failed to revoke her access subsequent her dismissal.

A jury returned a responsible verdict on August 16 versus Medghyne Calonge, 41, on a single count of deliberately causing problems to a secured pc and one rely of accessing a safeguarded laptop and recklessly causing damage.

Both counts relate to Calonge’s deletion of tens of 1000’s of human resources documents at her previous employer, according to a US Office of Justice (DoJ) press release.

‘Repeatedly hitting the delete key’

In January 2019, Calonge was employed by a Manhattan-primarily based companies to serve as the head of human means in their Florida place of work, the DoJ said.

The Tampa resident was terminated just five months later following failing to meet the bare minimum specifications of her work.

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“While she was currently being terminated, and just prior to she was escorted from the constructing, Calonge was observed by two employees… repeatedly hitting the delete essential on her desktop pc,” according to the DoJ.

Calonge is afterwards alleged to have “rampaged” by the company’s inside community, deleting extra than 17,000 career applications and resumes, and leaving a string of profanities on the technique.

$100,000 clean-up

The unnamed employer subsequently put in more than $100,000 to investigate and react to the incident, though it was not possible to recover all of the knowledge.

Audrey Strauss, US legal professional for the Southern District of New York, said: “As a unanimous jury discovered these days, Medghyne Calonge intentionally and maliciously induced significant problems to the computer systems of her former employer.

“Her actions wiped out facts vitally important to the employer business, and price the corporation funds and time to fix.”

Calonge now awaits sentencing for her crimes.

According to the DoJ, the cost of ‘intentionally harmful computers’ carries a utmost jail term of 10 a long time, and ‘recklessly harming computers’ carries a maximum phrase of 5 many years.

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