A former boss of Ticketmaster has been sentenced after pleading responsible to illegally accessing pc servers of a rival firm and stealing delicate enterprise data.
In 2012, Stephen Mead left ticket firm CrowdSurge, signing a $52,970 separation settlement promising to not hold or disclose confidential data from his former employer, equivalent to shopper lists, passwords, advertising and marketing methods, and monetary knowledge.
Nonetheless, after later becoming a member of Ticketmaster, Mead shared usernames and passwords together with his new colleagues which enabled them to illegally entry CrowdSurge’s community and delicate enterprise data.
In response to the Division of Justice, Mead instructed his co-workers to “screen-grab the hell out of the system” however cautioned, “I need to stress that as that is entry to a stay instrument I might watch out in what you click on on as it will be greatest not [to] giveaway that we’re snooping round.”
In a very audacious transfer, at an Artist Companies Summit in San Francisco, Mead openly accessed a password-protected space of Crowdsurge’s programs utilizing stolen credentials throughout a presentation. The unlawful entry was projected on a convention room’s display screen in entrance of at the very least 14 Dwell Nation and Ticketmaster workers.
CrowdSurge solely found that Mead was hacking its programs after a former Ticketmaster government got here to work for the corporate in 2015, and suggested them to evaluation their safety.
Crowdsurge merged with live performance ticket agency Songkick in 2015, and in 2018 Dwell Nation – the dad or mum firm of Ticketmaster – agreed to accumulate Songkick’s dad or mum firm as a part of a $110 million settlement to resolve a lawsuit that alleged Ticketmaster had “tried to destroy competitors within the artist pre-sale ticketing providers market in a variety of alternative ways”.
Ticketmaster was in the end fined US $10 million for repeatedly accessing its competitor’s pc programs.
British-born Mead had misplaced his job at Dwell Nation and Ticketmaster in late 2017, and returned to the UK. Earlier this 12 months he was arrested in Italy and extradited to the USA.
After getting into a responsible plea to prices earlier this 12 months, Mead has now been ordered to pay $67,970 in forfeiture, and sentenced to 1 12 months’s supervised launch.
One other former Ticketmaster government, Zeeshan Zaidi, had additionally pleaded responsible to prices associated to the hacking of CrowdSurge, however is but to be sentenced.
Keep in mind, your workers typically have privileged entry to delicate firm data and knowledge.
You can not simply depend on confidentiality agreements to guard your small business after workers depart a enterprise. It’s essential to implement strong safety practices, together with necessary password adjustments upon termination, to cut back the danger of information breaches and unauthorised entry.
