Let this scary story be a lesson to all IT executives who send an employee packing. Make sure you tighten up security in the wake of their departure. If you don’t, something like this may happen. Jason Cornish, 37, formerly an IT staffer at the U.S. subsidiary of Japanese drug-maker Shionogi, recently pleaded guilty to computer intrusion charges in connection with an attack against the company on Feb. 3, 2011. He wiped out 15 VMware host systems that were running e-mail, order tracking, financial and other services for the Florham Park, N.J., company. Cornish had resigned in July 2010 after fighting with his bosses, but he stayed on as a consultant for two more months until he was laid off. After his sacking, Cornish was able to log back into his company from a Smyrna, Ga., McDonald's restaurant and fire up a vSphere VMware management console he'd installed on the company's network a few weeks earlier. His nefarious task: deleting 88 company servers from the VMware host systems. The attack froze Shionogi's operations for several days, leaving company unable to handle its regular operations. The cost was estimated at $800,000. Cornish faces a ten-year sentence when he faces the judge in November. The rest of us face a good long think about how to protect mission-critical systems from the revenge of disgruntled employees. Source: IT World