My first reaction too, I have two backup drives for my kids pics just in case. A whole TV show in one location, what wish-full thinking. Dick move on this guys part though.

Mohammad1000, I'll split the cost of the backup discs with you and the profits. Good money with a minimal amount of work. I am also just a regular guy. LOL

I am also just a regular guy too. Its always a good idea to have more than one hard drive. I have two 500GB hard drives in my computers for home use. Like they say. Always remember to. Back Up! Back Up! Back Up!

And these Guys are a TV PRODUCTION COMPANY.....ROFLMMFAO...Idiots.You ever Hear of Backing Up Files.? DUH.

Mohammad1000:...Wow.....they had no backup whatsoever?...

Nada!

So the manage, supervisor and director should be fired. How can manager in the right mind run a business without a backup that is off limt from hackers?

Fire the yogun.

CyberLynk should pay out the a$$ for this one. They should be backing up and protecting their clients work. Why the heck would they plea bargain with a little hacking weasel? I'd have gone for a twenty year sentence for grand larceny and every other charge the DA could drum up as well as put liens on his everything and take it all away which I doubt would be a lot as most hackers live in their little caves in their mommas basements.

Um...

I hate to say this....

But....

If I were them? I would be checking TPB.

I mean, I know it's a long shot- not to mention ironic in the extreme but- when disaster strikes, some of the possible solutions you may find yourself stuck with aren't always pretty. And, if they were popular enough then it is within the realm of possible that someone may have gotten away with a copy before the hacker struck.

I know I wouldn't be too proud to check- and, if successful, I sure wouldn't be too proud to admit it either- hell, I'd probably buy the whole remaining staff their tee-shirts.....

But like I said, in a disaster situation- pride's generally a second consideration to solutions imho.

For a companysuch as this that relies on tv program films and whatnot, why didn't they have back up discs of their work just in case of a situation like this. The man was wrong in what he did, but damn, this company is stupid for not saving their work on DVD discs in case of a system crashing or burning out.

This is one company I certainly wouldn't be investing in.

Why do you think they hired them in the first place...all their editing and all their work goes to Cyberlink to store and hold for them. The movie production company will most assuredly hold onto a hard copy now but this is why they are doing everything virtually now. Less storage for no longer used tapes/disc. Cyberlink will pay out the nose because what the story didn't say is that he PROBABLY wiped out the backup as well since he knew where everything was.

I agree 100%, to all "IT'S YOUR DATA - BACK IT UP". IT 101 and two copies are better than one, storage is cheap and nothing beats basic security and back-up process. If you don't know how find a 14 year kid to help.

I used to work for a company that hosted medical data, and this was a common what-if scenario auditors would question us about. What if "Johny Bad Employee" went postal on us one day. Would the data be secure???

We had offsite tape backups, onsite backups to DVD, and third party backups at the offsite DR facility as well as an additional electronic copy on the backup server. So, the answer was always YES.

...a man named Michael Scott Jewson was terminated from CyberLynk. From his parents' residence, he allegedly accessed CyberLynk's data and intentionally wiped it out.

Enough said. The guy is a loser geek still living at home with his parents.

@ Mohammad. I was thinking the same thing..... They had NO backups of this data that was destroyed. That's what companies get for "cutting costs."

I also can't believe that they didn't disable this guy's access BEFORE he was fired, so that he doesn't get a chance to do damage after he's been fired.

What happened to their data security managers? They should be fired as well. ANY company who does not (at least) have redundant backups of data DAILY, as well as off-site data storage is just asking for this very scenario.

What kind of fly-by-night outfit is CyberLynk that they did not have off site backups of their data stores. This is completely unheard of in the industry. Cyberlink is guilty of extreme negligence on so many issues here. First, their security did not prevent the break in or detect it in a timely manner. It takes a while to wipe out 300 GB of data in such a way that it can not be recovered. This would require not only deleting the files but overwriting the area of the disk as well. It sounds like CyberLynk either had absolutely no system monitoring what-so-ever or the person responsible for the monitoring went to sleep. Also, the same catastrophe would have occurred if there had been a fire at the facility instead of a disgruntled ex-employee hacking their system. CyberLynk should be forced to pay restitution to the producer of the program for their extreme negligence. The fired employee should be forced to pay every dime he makes above the poverty level for the rest of his life until full restitution is made to CyberLynk for what they have to pay the producer. While what this hacker did is despicable, the extreme negligence exhibited by CyberLynk is also inexcusable. As word of this circulates it is likely that they will go out of business. I can not see any company trusting CyberLynk with their data storage needs in the future.

Just a backup is not enough.

You're not truly backed up until you're are backed up and the backups are in different locations.

I also store with my backups copies of the backup software and a laptop that can run the software. I learned that lesson when my old tape backup system software/hardware went bellyup years ago and I had to scramble.

And the "cloud" (as it exists now and I understand the concept) is scary to me for some reason. I may some day be on the cloud with like music and the like but sensitive personal data stays at my backup sites.

Besides no backup plan, they also didn't have a proper termination check list. It's not really hacking if you are logging in to the network with an Admin password that was never changed when you were terminated. I just can't fathom how they couldn't backup 300 GB of data. That would have taken less than an hour. Wow!

I'll charge you half of what Mohammad charges and use a continuous off-site backup plan using the internet. :)

I see all of us were thinking the same thing as I did when I read it. "where are the backups?"

You can buy a 1 TB external USB drive for a about $100. All I can say is WTF.

I agree with all of you. How can you have work consisting of a collaboration of people all over the world and, as the article stated, can't be reproduced and not have an off site backup?

I have more than one solid backup of all my pictures, music and important documents. This is not rocket science. Also, if this was irreplaceable data why was it not in a read only state?

Anyone involved in there IT department, specifically involved with security, should be polishing up their resumes because they need to be fired. Inexcusable.

ROFLMAO! Apparently the show producers are morons.

Even my (much smarter) 12 year old niece has enough sense to back her files up.

;-)

If they're too cheap/foolish to have off-site backups, they should at least have backups on something that is NOT internet accessible.

These people are actually running a business? These days even the little kids the show is geared for could tell them to backup.

The case against Cyberlink is not as air tight as one would think. It depends on the service level agreement ("SLA") that it had with the producer of the television programs. It's hard to tell from the article if Cyberlink served as a streaming service or if it was just an archival service. The producer, nevertheless, by not keeping a local backup of the data on an inexpensive disc drive was contributory to the damage to the extent that any data loss, whether or not it was the result of cyber vandalism, could have been overcome with one or more backups performed by the two parties at interest.

If Cyberlink promised in its agreement with the producer to make regular backups and to keep multiple copies of the data, then I would say that it has no defense; but if it made no such assurances then it has a more defensible position. What will make the case interesting is whether or not the attorney for the producer attempts to make the case that Cyberlink did know or ought to have known as a professional in the field of digital storage that such events can and do happen and that it would be expected of a prudent man to make provisions for additional storage measures to safeguard the data of its customers. That argument would work well if the SLA indicates that it does take those added measures, but it could work against the producer, too, since the same argument could be levied against him. After all, he was seeking to safeguard the data and knew enough to go to a service that would be his first line of defense against data loss. If so, then he should have exercised similar safeguards as Cyberlink in the form of making personal data backups.

All this has a suspiciously familiar ring to the RICO statutes so often cited in cases pertaining to investment fraud, and I suspect that is where this will go. The "did know or ought to have known" nature of the producer's likely case, if resolved in favor of the producer, should send shivers down the spine of every company out there that provides such services. One failed disc, one bad tape, one unpredictable employee, one power outage, anything could open it up to the possibility of litigation and crippling settlement amounts. If it goes against the producer, a precedent would be established throwing more of the onus on the customer to take similar protective measures as the services he might hire to protect his data.

Incidentally but not unimportantly, this case highlights something that I have contended for some time now which is that running a business that fully protects itself from potential data loss and business interruption due to computer failures, data loss, security breaches, and regulations that apply solely to digital information costs just about the same today as running a business based entirely on paper records. The only real benefit to businesses that are digitized is that information is accessible more rapidly and more can be done to farm information from the extant business records. The cost, however, of running the business is really the same since the whatever might have been saved by eliminating the storage cost for paper records is more than made up for by having to hire computer programmers instead of warehouse workers, buying computer equipment, hiring compliance officers to ensure that digital information is not leaked through digital communication channels, making backups, establishing failover data processing centers in the event that a cyber disaster occurs at the primary processing site, validating backups, hiring a chief technical officer, establishing policies and procedures that are designed to prevent disasters and to anticipate data recovery in the event of a disaster, etc., etc., etc.

The payback for digitizing a business can be bigger than expected, but doing so also makes a business more fragile. Small things that often cannot be anticipated can destroy it, hence the need for risk management and analysis. If a paper-based business were to look at its primary risks of data loss, they would likely be fire, flood, and earthquakes. For a digitally-based business, the risks are the same and many, many others are added to the list that are highly technical in nature, much harder to anticipate, harder to diagnose, and equally if not more dangerous.

One simple example of the additional risks for computer-based businesses would be a programmer testing an application that sends e-mail to customers in Massachusetts. He might connect to the database, grab a few fields of data from each record and send a test transmission. He might think that the test data is a few records that were specially created for the test, but if the database is the production database and the query used to grab the data was written incorrectly, he might end up sending a test transmission to every customer of the company. If the fields he "grabbed" contained the customer's driver's license, his Social Security number, his credit card number, his biometric data, or some other similarly personally identifying information, the company could be fined $5,000 per violation. Saying, "Oops!" would not be a defense in court, and considering the ease with which such breaches can occur compared to running a business based on paper records, it is fair to say that their digital counterparts are significantly more fragile from a legal and risk perspective.

But it does still save trees, right?

Very interesting comment, both on topic and off,

thanks.

You all are thinking of backups and I am ticked off as hell that the JERKOFF got a plea agreement for a federal crime.

The good news is that this JERKOFF needs to change careers.

HE WILL NEVER GET A JOB IN COMPUTERS AGAIN.

He may have pled guilty but HE STILL HAS A RECORD.

So True...

No excuse for the hosting company,the producer of the show or the management. Having Disgruntled employees is an accepted risk in any or all intellectual properties companies. Termination for many creative employees is a very difficult experience, similar to a woman giving birth to child - then having it taken away by some faceless entity... for its own good. Regardless of how much a person is paid for "work", that work includes a great deal of personal involvement, investment of uncompensated time.

Where does "work" stop verses creative investiture - when all or most of the work is done inside the brain of one person, a single individual?

lets look at this from accepted practices.

1). why did the employees still have access to the data after termination?

ans. A. someone failed in their duty to close his accounts and B. anything he contributed to the business should have been backed up, safeguarded and stored off-line (removable media) - days, if not weeks before his termination.

2). as mentioned. No self-respecting IT/MIS/CIS wonk actually believes in "Cloud" technology as a service. Even a duffus neophyte IT admin keeps backup data stored off line - even if his employers don't know about it.

Creative work is not something that appears out of no where, it is both collaborative and singular in nature. There are reasons an employee would strike back when he thinks he was terminated without cause or real reason. Thats why you have safeguards in place. Visual arts workers, these are not folks who have a deep investment in reality, thats what draws them to alternative reality in the first place. They build their own world - to them, if you take away their toys, its like a punch in the face. If you can understand the reality of being punched, then you can understand the normal reactive response of getting even.

So, this clap trap about no reason for a person to respond by seeking revenge is BS.

No, its not a good thing, and yes he should have been and was prosecuted ... but as being unexpected or unreasonable ... someone doesn't have a good grasp of human nature and it not just the idiot that erased the files. It is predictable that people with certian personality traits "might" react adversly - appropriate safeguards should have been inplace, before terminationg his employment.

Oh yea ... never trust "The Cloud" for your important data - put it on removable media and stored off-line ... just in case.

You know, it's kind of funny, but no company ever hires a "disgruntled" person. They become that way for a reason, while they work for that company. Usually, it's because they're pissed on or passed over for no real good reason. And yet, when that person retaliates against the company, it's always because he was a "disgruntled employee". No company ever says it's because they had a disfunctional workplace, with alchoholic bosses, favoratism, nepotism, cronyism, yes men, sycophants, character assassins, credit stealers, bosses that have no idea of how much work they are loading on someone, etc., that can make life at a company pure hell for an individual, who at one point was a valued employee until he maybe stood up for him/herself and got canned because of it. I would have liked to have seen included in the article the reason why this guy took the revenge he did. He must have known he was going to get caught, so he must have been REALLY pissed off!

tjm797297 - Life is tough - and then we die.

The little S. O. B. was upset; poor widdle baby. If he wasn't happy working for them all he had to do was be a big boy and move on, but no, like the spoiled brat in an adult body that he was/is he had to "show them" that he was fed up and wasn't going to take it anymore.

In the process he destroyed the creative efforts of countless individulas who had invested thousands of man/woman hours creating a show that obviously people enjoy.

There is no excuse for what he did and you are just as silly and immature as he is if you think he had any justitfication or deserves any defense.

That's 1 opinion, among millions.

This may not have started out as a conspiracy to deprive the entire organization of its resources. It could have been a act meant to irritate the company - which it would have been. if they had a reasonable backup plan in place.

With reasonable backups this incident would have been a mere annoyance, work and data restoration could have, could have resumed in hours or days at most.

By failing in providing for due diligence, providing minimal industry acceptable protection of copyright data - a small annoyance has expanded into a full scale crisis.

Bottom line: if you don't protect your data, your money, your valuables - show at least a little effort, then you are complicit in the crime.

Scenario: you report your car is stolen, question number one, two and three will likely be ... Was the car locked? Where are the keys? Who else has copies? Why would you think those questions are asked...?

A simple lock makes all the difference. It shows that you tried to protect something which had value. Gates, locks, fences, signs, security processes and procedures, firewalls, passwords - they all have meaning. Its meant to show that some form of authority, ownership or access restriction is in place.

I think you should be looking at management - how effing stupid can they be?! I bet they protect their physical property- how could you NOT protect their creative property?!

Remember they are a corporation, I suppose that corporate greed reared its head, *$15* for a backup, "well thats too much, we have to cut expenses and be conservative in this poor economy, yes even cut benefits and pay, even jobs of lower level staff, ofcourse we no doubt deal out millions to executives .. but umm..."

Read the story again. The owner of the data was hosting the data at a "Secure Hosting" facility. A former employee of the "Secure Hosting" company was the one that wiped the data. The owner of the data, understandably assumed, that the secure facility would be providing backups.

Now, I'm making the assumption that backups were stipulated in the contract, and if not, then the owner of the data is still at fault, but it's not as cut and dried as it seems at first glance...

Stoops2conquer -

You must be a boss or supervisor because, just like they typically do, you incorrectly filtered what you read (or heard) and read something in there that I never said - nowhere did I say that he was justified in doing what he did. I said, again, that not all problems are due to a "disgruntled employee" - most times it's a dysfunctional company. And if you do hire a dysfunctional employee, you better review your HR hiring procedures. And this is one of the other major symptoms of a dysfunctional company, the failure to listen to your employees. Communication only takes place when one side speaks and the other side LISTENS. Can you hear me now?

Disgruntled employees is an accepted risk in any or all intellectual properties companies. Termination for many creative employees is a very difficult experience, similar to a woman giving birth to child - then having it taken away by some faceless entity... for its own good. Regardless of how much a person is paid for "work", that work includes a great deal of personal involvement, investment of uncompensated time.

You have an incorrect assumption. In the IP world, most work is done on A HIRE AGREEMENTS which means the the employer OWNS ALL RIGHTS.

In fact, most entertainment companies will terminate your employment on the spot if you do not sign the work-for-hire agreement. The company is not going to spend all this money and not own the work.

Anybody ever hear of the BRATZ doll case? One of Mattel's doll designers designed BRATZ on their own time. Mattel sued on the basis of a work for hire agreement that all work produced by the artist during his employment would be owned by Mattel. Mattel won at the US District court level.

Then BRATZ (MGA) appealed and WON THE APPEAL. The reason they won was because the designer clearly designed the BRATZ doll on his own, personal time, not at Mattel and therefore, Mattel did not own that work.

Correction of 3.9: You have an incorrect assumption. In the IP world, most work is done on A WORK FOR HIRE BASIS which means the the employer OWNS ALL RIGHTS.

They become that way for a reason, while they work for that company.

Or they are just pyschos who are are disgruntled over any perceived infraction. I've run into plenty of those.

Karen in L.A. -

"Or they are just pyschos who are are disgruntled over any perceived infraction. I've run into plenty of those."

My pre-sponse in #3.8 - "And if you do hire a dysfunctional employee, you better review your HR hiring procedures."

"Or they are just pyschos who are are disgruntled over any perceived infraction. I've run into plenty of those."

My pre-sponse in #3.8 - "And if you do hire a dysfunctional employee, you better review your HR hiring procedures."

I don't agree. I would not hire a dysfunctional person IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Guess he is a product of current society where no child ever fails, therefore, he did not know how to react when he was fired (failed). So, the child retaliated.

Mercury, you are so right. Don't you just love the games where nobody keeps score, and everyone gets a trophy at the end of the season? Heaven forbid anyone ever loses. No wait, heaven has nothing to do with this, because the people who don't believe in winners or losers are probably all atheists, because if you win you go to heaven. And if you lose you go to, well, you know where you go........

His last name should've been "Assange."

For all the idiots that said "back up," that's partly what they were paying the company for. That's why both the company and the ex-employee are being sued.

Tim -

Article did mention that the fella hacked into the show from his "parents' residence". This may give some clue as to his possible age. Still......imagine that he was at least 18 yrs. old IF he was a full time employee....or not.

I am about as "pc/tech challenged" as you will find now adays and even I know that going to your parents' home to commit a crime online is a waste of time and energy! His intent was obviously to hide his crime - geeeeeze!

Top of my list of "Things To Learn How To Do ASAP"......learn how to use the new pkg. of disks to backup my pc - lol. I've never had to use computers during my career, other than to enter and print out specific info. on a limited number of order forms and such - clerical staff did all the "heavy" work. I purchased this pc for my home use a couple of years - mostly for keeping up with current events and the occassional email.

My usage has expanded far beyond that now and I simply forgot all about the importance of backing up "anything and everything" that you might want to access again! DUH.......me!

For all the idiots that said "back up," that's partly what they were paying the company for. That's why both the company and the ex-employee are being sued.

Back up data is typically data that is, bear with me now, backed up. Data can corrupt, and something can happen to cause data loss for the company that is storing your data. Having a second file for a company, especially considering it would have cost only a few hundred dollars, is a must.

The ex-employee is still to blame, but they certainly deserve some of the blame. It's naive to assume that because you're paying someone to store data that it's completely safe. When your file is this important, it's idiotic.

In fact, Carbonite (a website whose services are similar to the company they used) had an issue only a couple years ago where people lost data. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2009/03/21/data_backup_firm_sues_2_hardware_suppliers/

This is why he was fired, smarty.

You're right. What the x-employee did was wrong.

Usually in cases similar to this where financial compensation is asked for the suing party needs to prove that they protected their property to the best of their ability and this company did not.

For example if a car is stolen and crashed and totaled the insurance comp. is going to ask if the car was locked and if the key was left in the car or in a 'hiding' compartment of some type. If the key was accidentally left in the ignition or in a hiding compartment the insurance company may not have to pay the full cost of replacement. Happens with accidents also and in many other suits. A party, company, person, etc. needs to protect and safe guard their property to the best of their ability. And in this case they did not.

I can't believe in this day and age, seriously, that no one made a back up of any or all of this work. This sounds way fishy to me like something else is going on because no one is this stupid, really, no one.

Back up was part of the service they were paying for, thus the company is as liable as the ex-employee.

My youngest son who at age 16 in 1992 was replaced by higher technology in his first "tech" job was working for a manufacturing company for whom he manually backed up their files every night. After three months, he was replaced with an automatic back-up system. THAT was back in 1992! That this company didn't have an auto back-up system in place is unfathomable. In fact, there's part of me that doesn't believe it! I have to believe there's much more to this story.

This is laughable. Totally laughable. What idiot doesn't make backups of his most important data? He should be fired for his lack of responsibility if you ask me.

-

Dude they had no backups, backups are stored in numerous forms. Anyway, mess with the techies they will serve you right, that's for sure. Good job techie dude, totally good job! Sucker punch to the belly of the fat pig!

You all know the government is tracking your cellphones, right?

Excellent! Now, when you go to the supermarket, the CIA will be completely left in the dark, not knowing how many bananas you bought that week. Perhaps one day, every shopping cart will have a cloaking device. Until then, we cannot truly be free.

Mark, I'm waiting for you to add a comment about the USA not landing on the moon, either. LOL You conspiracy theorists! It must suck to be you!

stoopid & Love It -

:) LOLLLLLLLLLL

not cricket! there owend by druglords and they dont give out info to the goverment they were once leap wierless then qualcomm then they were bought by dope dealers. read up on it all over the net

Love it or Leave It: Don't hold your breath.

Lady in Red: Nice contribution. watch out for brain cancer from the cellphone, mmmk?

And stoopid: so appropro BTW, at times your ignorence is most refreshing.....

LOL, the government can track your mobile, doesn't mean they necessarily want to, though. I mean, there's what, 300 million Americans? Most of you guys are not that interesting. Or interesting enough to warrant a "OMG, mah privacy is being violated!" Facebook already takes care of that. The gov is more entertained by more interesting people who are undesirable to be in the States to begin with, you know, terrorists and that sort. And it was reported a long long, long time ago most of the better terror cells moved from mobiles anyway, because of the same reasons you are allegedly concerned about.

It would be so ironic if you had a Facebook account.

And stoopid: so appropro BTW, at times your ignorence is most refreshing.

Mark: ignorEnce is actually spelled ignorAnce. You probably knew that. Still, its nice when sentences don't contain ironic self contradictions.

Yep, I knew it, just like you knew stoopid is really spelled stupid.

Talk about ironic self contradictions..........

Are you finished with your distractions to avoid the truth now?

Mark, you just have to dig the hole deeper for yourself. Stoopid is a name. My real name is Sir Lunatic D. Stoopid, of the New Haven Stoopids. It's just a name, it is not referring to being stupid.

As far as getting to "the truth", I never said cell phones could not be tracked. I know they can. There is no dispute over the facts, I was more commenting on how you rank the facts in importance. If you don't want to be tracked, don't buy a cell phone. Problem solved.

OK stupid.

Sure Peter, sure.

The only problem is he forgot those bimbos on The View. The're at the top of the list!

For the want of a $300 independent hard drive, my kingdom was lost!