Mr. Alnoor Ebrahim, former AT&T executive, admitted to a Federal Court in Lower Manhattan today that he sold AT&T sales figures on Apple and RIM products to traders who purchased shares based on that information. In a plea agreement with the federal government, prosecutor’s are recommending a maximum sentence of 2 years in prison for Mr. Ebrahim’s role to commit conspiracy and wire and securities fraud.
Over the past two weeks, there have been a number of high-profile data leaks of mission-critical information, and reaction to these leaks has been “aggressive.” Normally, when we hear about data leaks in the news, we are drawn to hacking incidents where personal information was accessed in an unauthorized manner. Companies usually do not disclose trade secret theft, because it puts a spotlight on the lack of internal controls within the organization. LinkedIn, Corp., was criticized for its lack of adequate security controls related to how clients’ access their profiles via weak passwords practices; Congress, The White House, and Department of Justice announced 2 separate investigations into data leakage of national security information; and yesterday, product specs for Microsoft, Corp., were revealed to an online website over the weekend, and purportedly gave insight into future product and service lines from the Redmond, WA- based software giant.
Early disclosure of mission-critical information can provide an organization with enough egg-on-the-face as to not require a trip to the ER, but will undoubtedly use up all the paper towels to clean up the mess. Trade secret leakage may not act as a deterrent for new-product rollout, in fact it may act as an excellent marketing gimmick, but eventually, being able to control when information is disseminated publicly is a choice that should be determined by the organization, and not a third-party. Finally, after all the data leaks experienced by the U.S. government agencies, The White House became fed up, and asked the Department of Justice to launch and investigation. This coming from the same people who thrive on intentional leaks and “anonymous” sources.