Tesla was recently the victim of malicious sabotage at a section of its Fremont factory. The issue was rapidly identified and resolved by the company's IT and InfoSec teams, successfully minimizing damage.
In an internal Tesla email, the company told workers that one employee "maliciously sabotaged" work at part of the plant last month and was fired after an internal investigation, according to a note seen by Bloomberg News.
Tesla reacted quickly to the incident, and the operations at the facility were interrupted for only a short period, wrote in an email Monday by Al Prescott, Tesla's vice president of legal and acting general counsel.
“Two weeks ago, our IT and InfoSec teams determined than [sic] an employee had maliciously sabotaged a part of the Factory,” Prescott wrote in the email. “Their quick actions prevented further damage and production was running smoothly again a few hours later.”
The letter said that one of the employees, whose name was not named, tried to cover up the traces of his crime, blame a colleague for what he did, and destroy the company's computer. “Ultimately, after being shown the irrefutable evidence, the employee confessed. As a result, we terminated employment.”
The company said in an email that it does not tolerate unethical behavior and will take action against employees who do so.
“We place tremendous trust in our employees and value everyone’s contribution. However, whatever the personal motivations of the attacker were, these are crimes, violations of our code of conduct, and are unfair to other employees,” Prescott wrote. "We will take aggressive action to defend the company and our people."
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