Shannon You badged out of the Coca-Cola Co.’s Atlanta offices for one of the final times on the evening of August 8, 2017. As once-loyal consumers switched to brands that were associated with masochistic sports regimens, herbal treatment, or wilderness aquifers rather than effervescent fun and mainstream society, Coke was fighting to maintain its dominance of the global beverage industry.
The restructure was part of the plan for the incoming CEO. You, a scientist in her mid-50s, had been informed many weeks previously that she was one of the 1200 employees who would be laid off.
Every time a worker is let go by a corporation, there’s a chance they’ll take something with them. Coke, owner of the most well-known trade secret in history, was particularly aware of the risk.
Like other businesses that deal with sensitive information, it had a categorization system like to that of an intelligence bureau, and it had software that monitored employee data use.
In the summer of that year, as more and more staff announced their departure, the data loss protection system started to buzz with notifications.
“To say that that activity blew up the DLP system” would be “a bit of an understatement,” a Coke information security manager later testified. Much of that activity resulted from employees reclaiming personal files they’d stored on their work computers-tax returns, kids’ school projects, bank loan information. But not all of it did.
Shannon You in particular had access to a collection of intricate chemical formulas for the 2-micron-thick plastic liners found inside the beverage cans that Coke filled and sold. These were later referred to by a federal prosecutor as the company’s “other secret formulas.”
They were probably even more crucial than the name-brand Coke recipe, which was jealously guarded since the sugary, acidic beverage would corrode the metal of its container if it didn’t have a liner.
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