BANFF – A former employee at the Banff Centre that is accused of illegally accessing the company’s information technology systems in 2016 is heading back to trial.
Thomas Towne was charged with mischief involving data and unauthorized use of a computer under the Criminal Code by RCMP over a year ago in connection an incident at his former workplace. Towne was the server and storage manager for the IT department at the Banff Centre prior to the incident.
Defence counsel Tyson Dahlem represented Towne after he pleaded not-guilty and went to trial last year, however the matter did not end up proceeding because the judge assigned the case was ill.
Towne then agreed to enter a guilty plea, but sentencing would proceed with an agreed statement of facts. The guilty plea was set down four separate times in Calgary Provincial Court to move forward.
On July 11, however, Dahlem told the court that without an appropriate agreed statement of facts for his client to consider, he was unable to move forward with the guilty plea. The matter has been put over to Aug. 15 to set new trial dates.
“This matter was waived into Calgary some time ago for disposition,” Dahlem said, adding he provided a draft agreed statement of facts in April to the Crown. “I discussed what was and was not agreeable for disposition and I never received a response.”
According to the RCMP, the Banff Centre reported its computer network and IT systems were compromised by a suspected cyber-attack between December 2015 and January 2016.
After hiring Deloitte to forensically examine the network data, a complaint was made to the RCMP in February, which aided in the police investigation according to Cpl. Laurel Scott.
The Banff Centre also issued a statement where it revealed that 2015 the organization began to experience a disruption in its information technology systems and by the end of January it was suspected that the situation was the result of a third party cyber attack.
“Banff Centre immediately began working with the cyber-security team from global professional services firm Deloitte to determine the source of the attack and the extent of information that was accessed,” said director of marketing and communications Matt Matheson in the statement. “Through this work, Banff Centre and Deloitte have concluded that there was no personal or financial information accessed during the attack and that it was suspected to be the actions of a former employee. This information was provided to the local RCMP and the criminal investigation has been led by the RCMP since that time.
“The privacy of participant, guest and staff information is of the utmost importance to Banff Centre and over the past few months we have been working with Deloitte’ s team and have undergone extensive third party testing of Banff’ s IT infrastructure to ensure its appropriate protection.”
