Ex-Goldman Sachs exec arrested for stealing code

A former Goldman Sachs executive dipped into the company's data base and allegedly stole quite a few secrets. He allegedly took propriety computer programs that the financial giant uses to make rapid trades in the financial markets. It's just another example of how data is not really safe, regardless of how many firewalls and trip wires you've put up to protect your systems.

Sergey Aleynikov was arrested last Friday as he got off a plane at Newark International Airport. He pleaded not guilty to charges of theft of trade secrets and transporting them abroad. Aleynikov joined Goldman in May 2007 and was a vice president for equity strategy, but announced his resignation after little more than two years.

Before he left, court documents alleged, he used his desktop computer at Goldman's New York offices to upload a stream of code to a website hosted by a server based in Germany. For anyone attempting to pull this kind of stunt, be forewarned. The bank noticed a surge of data leaving its servers and his activities were recorded by the computer system. This was a smart move for Goldman Sachs, and a necessity for any company housing large amounts of sensitive data.

For more on this modern-day theft:
- check out this New York Times article [1]

Related Articles:
Insiders biggest threat to IT theft [2]
Medical ID theft rampant [3]
Security guard at hospital hacks computer system [4]