A man has been jailed for cyber crime offences after he accessed the servers of his former employer in Maidenhead.

On 17 and 18 May 2016, Steffan Needham deleted 23 servers of his former employer’s data, which related to clients of the company. This caused an estimated loss of £500,000 to the company and numerous redundancies at the Maidenhead business. The company could never retrieve the data.

Mr Needham, aged 35, of Bury, Greater was sentenced to two years imprisonment at Reading Crown Court on 1 March. He had originally pleaded not guilt to a charge of Section 1 Computer Misuse Act and Section 3 Computer Misuse Act but was found guilty and convicted on 31 January.

Investigating officer Detective Constable Giles Murphy, of the Cyber Crime team at Loddon Valley police station, said: “This sentence demonstrates the seriousness of this case, which was aggravated by Needham seeking revenge.

“His actions, although just a matter of clicks on a computer, resulted in major financial loss to the company concerned, and people lost their jobs.

“We hope this serves as a warning to those who may be involved in cyber crime.

“We would like to remind companies to ensure that log in details of former employees are no longer accessible once they have parted ways.”