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 maintain or disclose confidential info from his former employer, similar to shopper lists, passwords, advertising 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 keeping with the Division of Justice, Mead instructed his co-workers to “screen-grab the hell out of the system” however cautioned, “I have to stress that as that is entry to a stay software I might watch out in what you click on on as it could be greatest not [to] giveaway that we’re snooping round.”
In a very audacious transfer, at an Artist Companies 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 in entrance of no less than 14 Reside 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 assessment their safety.
Crowdsurge merged with live performance ticket agency Songkick in 2015, and in 2018 Reside Nation – the mum or dad firm of Ticketmaster – agreed to accumulate Songkick’s mum or dad 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 providers market in a lot of other 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 Reside Nation and Ticketmaster in late 2017, and returned to the UK. Earlier this 12 months he was arrested in Italy and extradited to the USA.
After coming into a responsible plea to fees earlier this 12 months, Mead has now been ordered to pay $67,970 in forfeiture, and sentenced to 1 12 months’s supervised launch.
One other former Ticketmaster government, Zeeshan Zaidi, had additionally pleaded responsible to fees associated to the hacking of CrowdSurge, however is but to be sentenced.
Bear in mind, your staff usually have privileged entry to delicate firm info and information.
You can not simply depend on confidentiality agreements to guard what you are promoting after staff depart a enterprise. It’s essential to implement strong safety practices, together with necessary password modifications upon termination, to scale back the chance of knowledge breaches and unauthorised entry.
