Wal-Mart’s secret plans to be revealed by ex-employee?
Wal-Mart fired security engineer Bruce Gabbard in March, but now executives fear that he took with him secret information about “Project Red.” Gabbard was fired for taping phone calls between a Wal-Mart executive and a New York Times reporter.
Project Red focused on ideas to help the company boost the stock price, and one possibility is spinning off Sam’s Club. Reports on Project Red were encrypted, and the consultants working on it were in a locked area that was regularly swept for bugs. The company even went so far as to have two separate teams of McKinsey & Co. consultants work on the project, so that neither could have full information on the project.
Wal-mart now believes that the computer hard drives containing Project Red information were in Gabbard’s wife’s car, and they were recently turned over to the authorities.
Gabbard has also been sued by Wal-Mart for allegdly leaking trade secrets to The Wall Street Journal. The company says he had highly confidential information about the company’s strategic planning while working in the Threat Research and Assessment Group. The group was responsible for monitoring emails, phone calls, and hacker attempts to look for information leaks.
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