"Whenever I leave a company I make sure..."

But its also that companies responsibility to ensure that the employer doesn't take anything.

Apple know how to use MDM on Apple laptops, why wasn't the device locked and located.

Absolutely, but just as it's not ok to enter someone's home just because they forgot to lock the door, it's not ok to exploit access at your old employer because their offboarding process missed something.

I do the same as GP does; I don't want there to be any chance that my former employer has forgotten to revoke access to something, so I make sure to clear out anything that might remain on any device that I don't return to them.

Who knows, maybe another former employee will decide to steal from them around the same time I leave, and me having access credentials on a personal device, even if I haven't used it, might arouse suspicion.

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khurs 6 hours ago | parent [-]

But it's Apple, which is a huge target. Never mind these individuals, you will have China, Russia and other seeking to infiltrate it.

In any top r&d area, one wonders if they perhaps should be searching staff on way out and making then sign out and return CAD drawings etc.

	▲	peyton 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You get trustworthy people by trusting people. Generally when I was there there was a presumption of trust. Given how blatantly the defendants are alleged to have acted, that’s still the case.

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notatoad 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>it’s also that company’s responsibility

Is it? I mean legally. Obviously it’s dumb of Apple to have left this guys access open, but that doesn’t mean they actually had any legal responsibility to lock him out. As far as I understand, the law is pretty clear that you can’t access anything you’re not allowed to by policy, whether there’s a technical block or not.

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nradov 4 hours ago | parent [-]

While it doesn't apply in this particular case, for healthcare organizations the HIPAA privacy rule implies a legal responsibility to lock out terminated employees from any access to protected health information.

	▲	vel0city 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That doesn't absolve an employee (or ex-employee) of the covered entity going about and abusing the access they do have.

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achierius 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Many devices are indeed locked down. But given that it's an OS company and hardware vendor, many employees have access to hardware with e.g. SoC fusing that allows them to install custom-signed firmware. It's very difficult to make an OS lock out the people whose job it is to build the platform that OS depends on.

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trollbridge 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I once worked at a cybersecurity firm and they had a particularly botched rollout of MDM to Macs (which would regularly put the machine into an undesirable mode of 100% CPU usage plus max out upload bandwidth repeatedly trying and failing to backup the machine to some online backup service). I had work to do, so I simply disabled the MDM profile for the machine, installed an OS to my liking, and restored the apps I wanted to use, and went about things.

A year or so later the company hit hard times and we had a large layoff that affected me, and at the end of the video call, the directory of my department mentioned that they needed to wipe my laptops but it "wasn't showing up in MDM". I said I'd be glad to jump on a call with IT to fix that, but then he mentioned the IT staff were laid off too.

I then suggested I did get hired for my cybersecurity expertise, that I do take my obligations seriously, and he could just ask me to do whatever they were planning to do from the MDM console, and it would get done. He insisted that wouldn't be necessary since in his worldview the MDM was unbreakable and he just needed to reconnect to Wi-Fi or something.

Very amusing worldview. In the real world, where I live, I would assume a highly competent employee could exfiltrate trade secrets without me being able to catch them via standard / automated means. This particular Apple former employee got caught because he bragged about it, not because of technical means to catch him. As I've pointed out to a number of people, the very best DLP solution can be completely obviated by someone aiming a camera at their company-issue workstation's monitor.

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justusthane 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> then suggested I did get hired for my cybersecurity expertise, that I do take my obligations seriously, and he could just ask me to do whatever they were planning to do from the MDM console, and it would get done. He insisted that wouldn't be necessary since in his worldview the MDM was unbreakable and he just needed to reconnect to Wi-Fi or something.

> Very amusing worldview.

It’s ironic that you’re displaying the exact behavior pointed out by the GP:

> This is how you behave when you think you're so much smarter than everyone around you that consequences don't apply to you.

MDM is implemented to protect company assets regardless of the actions of the users. It would not be due diligence on the part of the director to trust you to wipe your own device.

It’s not clear to me what the point of your comment is other than illustrating that you’re smarter than your director.

	▲	trollbridge 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I don't think I'm smarter than everyone else, but instead attribute this to organisational dysfunction. The problem (that went on for weeks) of the default MDM deployed software making some computers unusable was one everyone who got afflicted by it just found workarounds for, and in particular, our incentives were to get our jobs done, not to make sure we continued to allow the MDM deployed stuff to do whatever it wanted that was actively harmful to the company's best interests. Considering the MDM was not implemented properly (particularly in an environment where one hires cybersecurity professionals, who are more likely than most to be able to figure out workarounds to it), it would actually be much more prudent to hire trustworthy staff who can be trusted not to steal company assets, trade secrets, and so on versus thinking you can conduct a zoom call on said company asset and then fire off a command via the MDM to wipe the laptop when the call is over. I actually think the director was pretty smart, since he managed to avoid having an extended conversation about the lack of working MDM and ability to follow the procedure in front of the other person on the zoom call. Sometimes it's very important to be able to read between the lines of what someone is telling you. Relying on remote wipes to secure company data is not a particularly strong plan, either (as this Apple saga should make clear); a determined person would simply be either constantly exfiltrating data, disconnect a machine from the network before it can be wiped, or other various plans (and do so without detection). I should know, since my job duties there were to advise customers on how to move towards a zero trust environment.
	▲	Barbing 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Sounds like the boss's response was not to insist the proper procedure be followed, but to assert that the technology had to work as intended, and as soon as he figured out the issue on _his side_ the standard operating procedure could be followed.

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paxys 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Um, no. Why would it be their responsibility? There are laws regarding IP theft. If you willingly break them you can't just say "well your security wasn't good enough".

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bathtub365 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Apple is obviously the victim but prevention is easier than what is happening now, which is potentially going to court, discovery, etc.

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paxys 4 hours ago | parent [-]

There's really no way to prevent an employee from taking a piece of paper or a digital file from one place to another. The most you can prevent is accidental transfer. If they are malicious they will find a way no matter what guardrails you put.

	▲	habinero 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		And they can get you for theft, etc, if you do. Sometimes the social and legal controls are far more effective.

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khurs 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[flagged]

	▲	nearlyepic 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Huh? This analogy makes no sense. It’s beside the point anyways. The utility of laws isn’t in stopping something from occurring, it’s in establishing remedies for when they do. Someone illegally transferred IP to a competitor that had knowledge they were stealing, and now Apple is seeking their remedy. “They could have prevented it” is victim blaming.

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tanseydavid 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If you leave your house unlocked and someone steals your stuff AND is never caught, you're SOL.

	▲	paxys 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Okay but why assume the latter part? In this case the perps were clearly caught.

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tiohijazi 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

what part of "Mr. Tan warns them not to tell Apple that they have taken jobs at OpenAI, so they can stay at Apple as long as they can." did you miss?

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khurs 6 hours ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

	▲	clipsy 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Mr Tan was not the one who retained the Apple-issued laptop: > Liu also failed to return an Apple-issued laptop after his departure.