IT Worker Jailed for Ruining Former Employers Network

I daresay that many of you reading this have probably had a bad experience with a former employer. I would also presume that while you may have had a few choice words as you walked (or were escorted) out the door, your actions did not go as far as anything criminal (even if a dark part of you perhaps wishes that you had!). It seems, however, that a former IT technician decided that when he was fired from his job, he would take some revenge on his former employee. Well, more specifically, their network he had just spent the last year setting up.

An action though, that has now led to him receiving a 2-year prison sentence!

IT Worker Jailed for Revenge on Former Employer!

So, what happened here? Well, the man in question, Deepanshu Kher, was hired by a fairly significant Californian-based company to help them transition their in-house computer network system to Microsoft Office 365. We should note, for the sake of clarity, that he wasn’t hired directly, but as a proxy through a separate consultancy company.

After working with the business for around a year, however, the employer (for reasons unknown) was largely dissatisfied with Mr. Kher’s performance and, as such, following contact with the consulting agency, he was fired from his job in May 2018 and returned to his native India.

Around 3-months later, however, Deepanshu Kher managed to gain access to the companies network (likely through his own user name because we suspect that they possibly failed/forgot to remove it) and in a report via TechSpot, he seemingly managed to delete 1,200 of its 1,500 Microsoft Office 365 employee accounts. Yes, the same accounts he set up himself!

No Network? No Networking!

Given that the company had just spent over a year attempting to transition to this new system, the removal of such a high-volume of their employee’s accounts was clearly a massively disruptive action. It reportedly took them several weeks to successfully reinstate the accounts, and then, of course, several months in order to get back relatively back on track. All of which apparently cost them the princely sum of $567,084.

Having somehow identified that Deepanshu Kher was the culprit here, a warrant for his arrest was issued and he was detained while making another trip to America back in January this year. Apparently, he was completely unaware that he had ever been associated with the attack. – So, what happened next? Well, he was found guilty of the offense, he will have to spend the next 2 years in jail (and another 3 on probation), and he also has to pay a fee of roughly $750,000 (of which the significant sum is to be paid to his former employer as compensation).

So, I guess the moral of the story is, if you do plan on some kind of ‘parting gesture’ for your former employee, don’t, you know, do something criminal.

What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!