9/25 tech e&o seminar

CASE STUDY #1:: Scanners, E-mails and Copyright Violations
Jones Videoconferencing Inc., (JVI) operates video conferencing centers in various urban centers
throughout the United States. It’s sales force communicates primarily using e-mail. Scanners
are used for sending and receiving RFQs, invoices, and other paperwork necessary to transact
business.
Bill Mills, an employee of the JVI Kansas City office is issued a laptop computer by JVI. Prior
to taking a job with JVI, Mills worked for JVI’s competitor, International Conferencing Centers
(ICC). Mills posted libelous content on various chat rooms about his former employer ICC.
Mills left ICC due to his dissatisfaction over ICC’s acquisition of Kansas Video Conferencing (
KVC). Mills was employed by KVC at the time of acquisition and resented ICC’s iron handed
management so much so that he quit and went to work for JVI , but not before downloading all
of KVC’s customer accounts that he put to use as soon as he went to work for JVI. To retaliate
against ICC, Mills posted content on web sites (using JVI’s lap top computer ) claiming that
ICC was falsely overstating its financial performance and Mills was impersonating an officer of
ICC when posting the libelous content. ICC, after discovering Mills was behind the libelous
postings, filed suit against Mills and ICC. Discovery in the course of the litigation lead to the
disclosure of Mills’ use of ICC’s customer account data over the internet.
CASE STUDY #2: Former Employee Hacks Into Prior Employer’s Client Server
Bruce McNeil, the real estate agent for Prentice Properties, quits and goes to work for a
competitor, Lakewood Brokers. Using Lakewood’s access to the internet and password, he
obtained information belonging to employees remaining at Prentice’s real estate company. He
periodically downloads information concerning the top performing agents at Prentice. He then
uses that information to solicit those agents to come to work for him at his new company.
The Prentice management information supervisor asks why one her employees is logging into
the computer at 2:00 a.m. At that point, it was determined someone was using the employee’s
password without the employee’s knowledge. Ultimately, the management information
supervisor figures out the link between the agents who have quit and gone to work with
Lakewood, and the information accessed from the computer using passwords belonging to its
employees when they were not in fact logged to their computers.
Prentice sues Lakewood and the agents who quit and went to work for that company claiming
theft of trade secret and unfair business practices.
C:\Documents and Settings\zappala\My Documents\TECH E&O1.doc CASE STUDY #3: Stolen equipment, customer private information
Jim Plant and George Boone are technicians for the MIS department for Friendly Finance Inc.
(FFI). They both have private e-mail accounts and buy and sell goods on E-Bay. Their
supervisor Mary Vahn goes to the company's computer supply room to retrieve a lap top she
previously set up for an accounting project and when that job was completed she returned it to
the supply room. She finds the lap top is missing. She figures someone in her department must
have taken the lap top elsewhere and she sends out an e-mail asking for it to be brought to her.
Rather than wait for it to show up she goes on the internet to find a replacement and in effort to
save money she checks e-bay. Sure enough the lap top she is looking for, the one in the photo on
e-bay, the very same one she thought she would find in the supply room, is available for
sale. She calls the phone number and the voice on the message greeting is Mr. Boone. Instead
of leaving a message she goes to Mr. Boone for an explanation. He claims he purchased the lap
top from Mr. Plant with the understanding that the server was surplus. Ms. Vahn decides to take
inventory and finds that other servers, laptops and desktops have left the supply room. She asks
Mr. Plant if he can explain where the equipment has gone. Realizing he is caught, he claims that
Mr. Boone told him that he would split the money from the sale of equipment stolen from the
company. Neither Boone nor Plant were very convincing about what they did to take data off the
hard drives and servers before selling the equipment. Vahn realizes that the servers and
computers likely contain credit applications and payment histories for an undetermined number
of people who applied for and received consumer loans from FFI. The cost of replacing the
missing equipment is no where near the amount of money to be dedicated to staff hours
necessary to reconstruct account information left on the computer equipment that was sold on E-
Bay and to see if the computers can be reclaimed.
C:\Documents and Settings\zappala\My Documents\TECH E&O1.doc

Source: http://dev.plusweb.org/files/Events/Case%20Studies.pdf