A web developer we fired a few years ago recently completed a 90-day state prison sentence for hacking into our servers. He was angry that we fired him so he had a friend of his who worked as a professional hacker break into our servers and delete our databases using a remote computer.
One day, one of our developers discovered that some of our client databases were missing. By reviewing log files and tracking the former employee's IP address, we were able to put two and two together and trace the hacking back to him.
We lost about a half a day's worth of data but what happened to him was a lot worse. At the time of the incident, our company was building apps for the public school system, so we had a lot of confidential student information stored in our databases.
When we reported that our servers had been hacked, the FBI had to get involved because of the confidential nature of the information we were storing. The FBI considered the hacking a cybercrime. A 10-month investigation got underway and they seized his hard drives. He and his hacker friend did 90 days in state prison and paid a fine of about $5,000 each.
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