Samsung Dismisses Chip Engineer for Leak of Confidential Data

Samsung Electronics went through a series of data leaks in the last few months, and the continued incidents gave the company a lot to worry about. This also happened at a time when chipmakers are battling to be the leader in the global semiconductor industry, so the leaks are really concerning.

In connection with the illegal release of company secrets, The Korea Times reported that Samsung Electronics has already fired the engineer in its Device Solutions (DS) division who was in charge of semiconductor production. He was dismissed not long ago as the company’s investigation revealed he sent out dozens of emails containing confidential proprietary data.

The recipients were said to be mostly private email accounts. The South Korean electronics giant also requested the authorities to launch a formal investigation into the data leak case.

In March, there was another incident of leakage where another engineer of the company mishandled some of the confidential data. He accidentally uploaded the company’s source code to ChatGPT, and this prompted Samsung to ban its staff from using the AI chatbot while at work.

In addition, another engineer who was moving to another country was discovered to have taken and stored images of important data that were also on display on his monitor. He was said to be working from home at that time.

At any rate, Samsung requested the police to probe the incident that happened in April of last year. He was fined KRW10 million, or about $7,500, and given a jail sentence of 18 months but with two years of probation.

Most of the employees involved in the leaks, whether accidental or intentional, were sent to prison and fined. Samsung Electronics said it would be imposing harsher measures if a similar case happens again.

"Through disciplinary measures and legal actions, we will be tough on coping with this issue," the company’s spokesperson said in a statement.

An industrial security professor at Hansei University, Cho Yong Sun, agreed that stiffer punishment is a must. "The current law is not effective enough to prevent the leakage of industrial technologies. Stricter punishments are needed to prevent such crimes," he commented.

Photo by: Samsung Media Library