Don’t Underestimate Technology, or You May Get Burned

By: Stephanie O'Neill | Posted: 2009-07-08

As far as technology has come in the past 20 years, I am still amazed that people underestimate its sheer power. But a disgruntled employee in India learned the hard way that destroying company records, i.e., deleting thousands of important emails from one of his pharmaceutical company employer's highly used accounts, could and would be traced back to him. With the help of the company's email service provider, local authorities were able to track down the suspect, using Internet protocol and Internet service provider addresses as well as broadband phone records. While the suspect's fate is yet to be determined, his former employer estimates the loss in the hundreds of thousands of local currency.

Of course if Health Guard Private Limited had an email archiving solution in place, the virtual war their former employee waged against them wouldn't have had such a crippling effect. In addition, they could have quickly and easily recovered their valuable data, which is now gone forever.

Unfortunately, there will probably always be a percentage of folks who think they can shirk the system and get away with something. Perhaps some do, but would you really want to chance it in this day and age? I can answer that right now ... that would be no, no for me.