Economic espionage and computer hacking can touch all industries and business types. Computer hacking is a federal crime, and federal prosecutors are aggressively targeting cases involving the unauthorized access of a protected computer. On January 8, 2016, this played out in a federal courtroom in Houston, where the former Scouting Director for the St. Louis Cardinals, Chris Correa, pled guilty to five counts of unlawfully accessing the computers and e-mails of Houston Astros employees. By hacking into the Astros’ systems, Correa gained access to a wide variety of confidential data, including scouting and draft information.

According to Correa’s plea agreement, he accessed Astros’ computers without authorization on five separate occasions between March 2013 and June 2014. The Astros maintained a computer network called Ground Control, which was a private database of player information and contained the team’s “collective baseball knowledge.” Correa accessed the e-mail and Ground Control accounts of one Astros employee, who left the Cardinals in 2011, by using a variation of a password the employee used while with the Cardinals. Correa later used information he obtained from that employee’s Astros e-mail account to access another former Cardinals and current Astros employee’s Ground Control account.

Correa pled guilty to taking scouting information in 2013, including a list of every player eligible for the 2013 draft and how the Astros ranked them, weekly scouting digests, the Astros’ draft strategy, and notes regarding trade discussions. In 2014, Correa viewed 118 pages of confidential trade discussion notes, upcoming draft rankings, the Astros’ draft strategy for 2014, and other player notes and evaluations.

This case is a reminder that cyber-facilitated corporate espionage touches all industries. Companies are well-served to evaluate their data security and privacy policies, procedures, and protocols on a regular basis.