A MAN from Atherton was sentenced to two years in jail after he hacked his former employer causing £500,000 loss leading to redundancies.

Steffan Needham, 36, of Everest Road, Atherton was sentenced at Reading Crown Court, Berkshire, after being found guilty of two computer misuse charges on January 31.

The charges relate to incidents on 17 and 18 May 2016, when Needham accessed servers of a former employer, Voova, and deleted 23 servers of data, which related to clients of the company.

This caused an estimated loss of £500,000 to the company and numerous redundancies at a business based in Maidenhead. The company was never able to retrieve the deleted data.

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.”

Needham was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment at Reading Crown Court on March 1.