Terry Childs was charged for using a private account to block the city network of San Francisco. He used criminal network meddling and refused to reveal the passwords to the San Francisco city and county administration’s FiberWAN system to his superintendents. Childs worked for five years for the IT faculty (Kravets, 2008). Reports have been of him being angry that his employer would terminate him. He compromised 1100 devices and unauthorized network doorways, collecting pages of usernames and passwords, including that of his boss (Surdin, 2008; Venezia, 2008).
In mid-July 2008, Childs was also charged with disturbing and rejecting the use of the city’s computer network. He was also accused of providing access to the system through modems in an illegal manner. This cost the city over a thousand dollars (Vijayan, 2010).
Evaluation of Employer’s Response
The employer’s response was quite natural as it launched a case against the person who resulted in causing such a grave loss to the city and disgrace to the company. However, the company must have been aware that an inside employee may also prove harmful and dangerous for the firm. Geoffrey Bowker of the University of Santa Clara regarded the behavior of Childs and his organization to be utterly bizarre. Clara argued that the whole incident reflected the organization’s mismanagement.
What could the company have done?
The company should have been more observable regarding work since its negligence cost much money. The company should have retained ownership of private accounts and passwords in an efficient manner that has a connection with the critical networks and systems. The company must install security software that monitors the data at all times. Access to computer terminals and records should be restricted. Also, a periodical change of entry codes should be maintained, and the company should ensure that all the security procedures are effective. Moreover, the organization must ensure that organizational details are altered frequently, exceedingly protected against unsanctioned use, and carefully scrutinized. This monitoring should also have included full movement seizure and footage(“Cyber-Ark Asks,” n.d.).
References
Cyber-Ark Asks: What’s Changed in IT Security Since the Terry Childs Network Lockout Incident? (n.d.). Retrieved January 13, 2018, from https://www.cyberark.com/press/cyber-ark-asks-whats-changed-security-since-terry-childs-network-lockout-incident/
Kravets, D. (2008). San Francisco Admin Charged With Hijacking City’s Network. Retrieved February 2, 2018, from https://www.wired.com/2008/07/sf-city-charged/
Surdin, A. (2008, August 11). San Francisco Case Shows Vulnerability Of Data Networks. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/10/AR2008081001802.html
Venezia, P. (2008, July 30). Sorting out fact from fiction in the Terry Childs case. Retrieved January 13, 2018, from https://www.infoworld.com/article/2653133/data-modeling/sorting-out-fact-from-fiction-in-the-terry-childs-case.html
Vijayan, J. (2010, April 28). After the verdict, the debate rages in Terry Childs case. Retrieved February 2, 2018, from https://www.computerworld.com/article/2517653/security0/after-verdict–debate-rages-in-terry-childs-case.html
