There had to be another way.
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Monday, March 8
New York City Times
Lawsuit Cites Virus
by Scott Mason
Will stockholders of corporations soon require that all Corporate assets be appropriately protected? Including those contained in the computers? Many people see a strong possibility of a swell of Wall Street investor demands to secure the computers of pub- licly held companies. The SEC is planning on issuing a set of preliminary regulations for firms under its aegis.
Last week, a group of 10,000 Alytech, Inc. stockholders filed the first class action suit along this vein. They are suing the current board of directors for " . . .willful dereliction of fiduciary responsibility in the adequate security and protection of corporate information, data, communications and data process- ing and communications equipment." The suit continues to say that the company, under the Directors' leadership and guidance knew and understood the threat to their computers, yet did noth- ing to correct the situation.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs have said that they are in posses- sion of a number of internal Alytech documents and memos which spelled out security recommendations to their board of directors upon which no action was taken.
Alytech was one of the many companies hit particularly hard by the Computer War. The dGraph virus, the Lotus viruses and the Novell viruses were among those that infected over 34,000 of the company's computers around the world; bringing the company to a virtual halt for over two weeks. Immediately after getting their computers back up and running, they were struck by several Free- dom viruses which were designed to destroy the hard disks on the computers.
As of this date, Alytech still has over 10,000 computers sitting idly waiting for the much delayed shipments of hard disks re- quired to repair the machines.
A spokesman for Alytech, Inc. says that the lawsuit is frivolous and without merit.