Security firm McAfee has sued three former employees. The employees are accused of wanting to steal trade secrets and pass them on to their new employer, competitor Tanium. That’s what ZDNet reports.
The three employees, Jennifer Kinney, Alan Coe and Percy Tejeda, were senior sales employees. They knew the “secret ingredients” in terms of the company’s sales tactics and business strategy. McAfee is claiming damages in court for stealing trade secrets, and for “breach of contract, wrongful interference, breach of fiduciary duty, aiding and abetting, and conspiracy”.
According to the documents in the trial, Tejeda left McAfee at the end of last year and joined Tanium. In 2019 he would have persuaded Kinney to resign and join Tanium as well. McAfee did not appreciate that and the company contacted Tejeda to remind him that his contract does not allow him to recruit employees from his former employer. Subsequently, a letter was sent from Tanium’s legal team, in which McAfee was informed that Coe also joined Tanium.
Stolen information
The team then turned out to be almost a copy of the team that worked at McAfee. The security company then decided to examine the PCs used by Kinney and Coe to see if any confidential information had been taken away before they left. According to the company, this is indeed the case. The two would have a “pattern” of “gaining access to confidential McAfee information both before and after they resigned”.
This included, for example, moving confidential information to private e-mail addresses and Google Drive. Information was also carried on unauthorised USB sticks. However, the company cannot say exactly which files have been included. All McAfee knows is that there has been access to sensitive sales and financial documents. The security company hopes to gain access to the Google Drive accounts and USB devices through the lawsuit.
McAfee also says he wants to prevent the stolen data from having an impact on his business. That’s why it filed an emergency motion for a temporary restraining order. It also claims that the ’embezzlement and threat of embezzlement of business secrets’ has caused losses, which would entitle it to compensation.
Tanium informed ZDNet that he could not respond to current affairs.
This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.
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