Before You Fire the Company Geek

An anonymous reader writes "A new 'insider threat' survey by the US Secret Service and Carnegie Mellon University finds that 82 percent of people who hack their company 'exhibited unusual behavior in the workplace prior to carrying out their activities.' A somewhat amusing writeup at washingtonpost.com points to a bunch of more interesting gems hidden deep in the study, including: 'Almost all - 96 pecent - of the insiders were men, and 30 percent of them had previously been arrested, including arrests for violent offenses (18 percent), alcohol or drug-related offenses (11 percent), and non-financial-fraud related theft offenses (11 percent).' The blog post also notes that 86 percent held technical positions at the companies: '...if you're going to fire someone (particularly company geeks who have the motive, means and access to inflict pain on your computer systems) make double sure you cut off their e-mail and network access at the same time you hand them their walking papers.'

Comments

you don't even have to be suspicious

[yagu]

I guess I get it as far as policy goes, but I experienced this a year ago from a large corporation when I got laid off... My manager came to my desk and did the perp walk with me to the office. Told me that in the interest of cutting cough costs the company was willing to offer me a one year severance package and let me go.

I said, "You're offering me a one year severance package???" He looked confused, but said, "yes".

I said, "Well then I respectfully decline your offer.... I would like to continue working for this company."

He said, "It's not optional."

I said, "Then you're not offering anything to me, you are doing something to me."

A couple of notes about the treatment therein:

• By the time I got back to my desk, all access was gone to all systems, man they're fast!
• The one year package turned out to be 60 days pay (required by the federal WARN law), then one month's pay for every year I'd put in.... with a 10 month maximum. I had 21 years, so I got ten months pay plus the sixty days... I consider that a ten month package.
• I found it interesting that any others with ten years, eleven years, twelve years, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, and twenty years all also got the same package as mine.... so much for any extra benefits for being a long time and loyal employee.
• No information as to who else was gone was given, and those who would still talk to me (funny how one laid off somehow develops a quick case of leprosy) had no information internally who was laid off -- they could only tell by seeing around them -- no lists were dispersed.
• Those who may have had info would not give it (a bit of a pain since I no longer had access to directories, phone numbers, etc.) making the process of setting up contacts for references nigh impossible (turned out, my entire management hierarchy was gone... and I never did find out where they all went).
• I had a few years left for qualifying for full retirement.

In my career at this company I had received the highest award given by the company and was flown to a special ceremony to present my project and receive that award.

Bottom line here: you don't have to be a criminal, act like a criminal, or even be suspected of being a criminal to be treated like one....

Re:Further down in the report...

[SatanicPuppy]

It's the "Fallacy of Affirming the Consequent"

Basically, it's whenever you have a one way relation (A->B) and you turn it around to say (B->A), implying that A and B are logically equivalent when it isn't the case.

Good argument, btw.