Last month, five employees from an India-based IT company decided to stay up late to finish some critical tasks. Their families must have blamed the company for making them overwork. The team was working on a confidential project, quite a risky one that would crumble the dream and years of hard work of an entrepreneur.

The software programmers hacked into their own company's servers, stealing sensitive information from five of their trusted clients. All of this to launch and operate a new company—Blue Dawn. Soon after gaining access, they contacted these clients on behalf of the new company and offered the same services for a steep price. The next day, the founder returns to work, only to find the changed AWS credentials and disappeared clientele.

It feels like something from a heist movie or an OTT series—both the incident and the reports.

The impact of this attack has left customers and the founder in distress and is one of the brutal cybercrimes we have witnessed in India this year. I feel for the founder and hope the cybercriminals face trial as per the law. Thankfully, the team did not care much about the digital footprint they left behind, helping authorities to track them down.

Now, the bigger challenge for ITES firms is gaining customer confidence. The incident may also raise trust issues within enterprises because data operations work based on trust.

People may say time for a reform of laws in India, What could save enterprises from insider threats in the future.

My take is that no matter how tough fool proof law you make, a criminal is always 2 step ahead. What could save these theft is your relationship with client, later law will play its role as it should be
Dr GP