cflWith companies cutting jobs as the economic downturn deepens, the incidence of corporate and organizational sabotage is spiraling. “There is a renewed threat from disgruntled employees in times of economic downturn because more people are angered at losing their jobs,” says Richard Power, editorial director at the CSI. Experts and law enforcers advise users to increase their vigilance in line with the potential threat from disgruntled ex-employees.

In San Francisco and Silicon Valley, mass lay-offs are creating extra casework for the local branch of the Computer Intrusion Squad. Supervisory special agent Peter Trahon says his team of nine agents, the largest of 16 teams located across the US, is fielding up to six cases a day arising from malicious attacks on firms by former employees nursing grievances — only a fraction of which it has the resources to pursue. The team is investigating between eight and 12 cases out of the 60 it has on its books.

Trahon’s squad is called on to probe a wide variety of cases. “Recently, a disgruntled former employee intruded into the network and sent disparaging e-mails about one individual to 50,000 employees across the …