Coke Employees Busted Selling Secrets to Pepsi
This isn’t exactly a cyber story, but it does involve protecting information, so I’ve filed this one under cyber anyways. And I also used to work with Coke in information security. If there is another organization that takes security as seriously as Coca Cola does, I would like to know who it is.
The 100 year old secret formula for Coca Cola is under constant armed guard at the Headquarters. Every piece of written or printed information, from SEC filings to internal corporate memos are assigned a classification level. Cameras are everywhere. Every employee undergoes a rigorous background check. Coke only hires the very best in the field of security, both physical and electronic. Security specialists from Coke also work very closely with Homeland Security as advisors, and they maintain other private partnerships with security organizations to help shape the future of security. Literally, they write books on security and how to secure things.
All of this so they can sell water mixed with sugar.
Despite all of this security expertise, Coke suffered a breach when three employees colluded to steal corporate secrets and sell them to Pepsi for 1.5 million bucks. The thieves were stupid, however, in that they presumed incorrectly that Pepsi was in the business of buying stolen secrets. Pepsi wanted no part in this plot and instantly turned the stolen information over to Coke.
So while this story is not quite like breaking into Fort Knox to steal gold, if you understand a little about the security history and background of Coke, you can understand how utterly shocking this is to the company.
From the AP here:
3 charged with stealing Coca-Cola secrets
ATLANTA – Coca-Cola and Pepsi are usually bitter enemies, but when PepsiCo Inc. got a letter offering to sell Coke trade secrets, it went straight to its corporate rival.
Six weeks later, three people face federal charges of stealing confidential information, including a sample of a new drink, from The Coca-Cola Co. and trying to sell it to PepsiCo Inc.
The suspects arrested Wednesday the day a $1.5 million transaction was to occur include a Coke executive’s administrative assistant, Joya Williams, who is accused of rifling through corporate files and stuffing documents and a new Coca-Cola product into a personal bag.
Williams, 41, of Norcross, Ga., and 30-year-old Ibrahim Dimson of New York and 43-year-old Edmund Duhaney of Decatur, Ga., were charged with wire fraud and unlawfully stealing and selling Coke trade secrets, federal prosecutors said.
Coke thanked Pepsi for its assistance.
Video surveillance showed Williams at her desk at Coke headquarters going through multiple files looking for documents and stuffing them into bags. She also was observed holding a liquid container with a white label, which resembled the description of a new Coca-Cola product sample, before placing it into her personal bag, prosecutors say, adding that Coca-Cola later verified the sample was genuine and is a product the company is developing.
So you see that even the offices inside Headquarters are under video surveillance. You can be sure that the guards that were supposed to monitor those cameras is going to be fired. And Coke is going to crack down on background checks even more now.
