A former boss of Ticketmaster has been sentenced after pleading responsible to illegally accessing pc servers of a rival firm and stealing delicate enterprise info.
In 2012, Stephen Mead left ticket firm CrowdSurge, signing a $52,970 separation settlement promising to not hold or disclose confidential info from his former employer, resembling shopper lists, passwords, advertising and marketing methods, and monetary information.
Nevertheless, 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 info.
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 might be greatest not [to] giveaway that we’re snooping round.”
In a very audacious transfer, at an Artist Providers Summit in San Francisco, Mead openly accessed a password-protected space of Crowdsurge’s techniques utilizing stolen credentials throughout a presentation. The unlawful entry was projected on a convention room’s display screen in entrance of a minimum of 14 Stay Nation and Ticketmaster staff.
CrowdSurge solely found that Mead was hacking its techniques after a former Ticketmaster government got here to work for the corporate in 2015, and suggested them to evaluate their safety.
Crowdsurge merged with live performance ticket agency Songkick in 2015, and in 2018 Stay Nation – the dad or mum firm of Ticketmaster – agreed to amass 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 companies market in a variety of alternative ways”.
Ticketmaster was in the end fined US $10 million for repeatedly accessing its competitor’s pc techniques.
British-born Mead had misplaced his job at Stay Nation and Ticketmaster in late 2017, and returned to the UK. Earlier this yr he was arrested in Italy and extradited to the US.
After coming into a responsible plea to costs earlier this yr, Mead has now been ordered to pay $67,970 in forfeiture, and sentenced to at least one yr’s supervised launch.
One other former Ticketmaster government, Zeeshan Zaidi, had additionally pleaded responsible to costs associated to the hacking of CrowdSurge, however is but to be sentenced.
Keep in mind, your staff typically have privileged entry to delicate firm info and information.
You can not simply depend on confidentiality agreements to guard your small business after staff go away a enterprise. It’s essential to implement strong safety practices, together with necessary password modifications upon termination, to cut back the danger of information breaches and unauthorised entry.