A Samsung Electronics employee has been found to be illegally retaining data, some of which was deemed to be protected trade secrets, says a report from KoreaJoongAngDaily. The employee, who was scheduled to leave the company soon, took the opportunity to make a quick buck by photographing confidential data when working from home.

While Samsung has confirmed the legitimacy of the incident, it hasn’t divulged much about the nature of the data stolen. Some of it is assumed to be related to its chipmaking business, specifically about the company’s 3 nm and 5 nm manufacturing processes. Exactly how Samsung detected that the data in question was being photographed by a smartphone is unknown.

Samsung Electronics was subject to quite a significant data breach some time ago, with hackers making away with a few hundred gigabytes of data. However, it was one of the rare instances in which an external actor managed to compromise Samsung’s systems. More often than not, data breaches have been the result of disgruntled/greedy employees.

The corporate espionage problem got so bad that Samsung had to institute specific regulations pertaining to Chinese OEMs, who, on several occasions, wooed Samsung/LG employees with ludicrous amounts of cash/incentives in exchange for trade secrets.

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