If your company has to fire an IT worker, it’s a very good idea to make sure they no longer have access to your company’s servers.
Priyavrat Patel has been sentenced to six months in prison and three years of supervised release for sabotaging three servers at Pratt-Read in Connecticut. He also has to pay $120,000 in restitution and may face a fine at a later date.
Prosecutors say Patel knocked the servers offline over Thanksgiving weekend last year. He pleaded guilty to computer intrusion charges, according to The New York Times.
Patel admitted deleting files from the servers, hoping to bring them down. He succeeded, critically damaging operations at the Connecticut-based toolmaker for two weeks.
Late last November, Patel accessed the servers from home to retaliate against the company, according to court documents. It had fired him about a month earlier.
His attorney said Patel’s intention was to cause “a small hiccup” that would create problems for a few hours, not days. The attorney claims the company’s recovery took a lot longer than it should have because it inadvertently caused more damage while trying to repair the situation.
