Intent not proven, just "reasonably" assumed
The acts they say were malicious are not by default and to be fair are the sort of things he might do as part of his job.
They suggest that his behaviour after the actions indicates malice but unless he admits acted out of malice then it is all just "reasonable assumption of guilt".
Now if he had a document asking him to perform these actions or had a "reasonable professional" justification for his actions then it there would have been a greater burden of proof required.
I don't have all the evidence to say that yes he definitely is guilty, all we have is the court's ruling that he is and what professionals here should take away from this is that not having proof of authorisation when performing these kind of actions leaves you exposed.
Having been in a situation where someone attempted to maliciously blame for their own failures, when I had told them in advance were likely then proof becomes very important. If your colleges who should know better give any credence to accusations of this type then yes you are going to be making certain you have proof for every action until you move jobs.
In my case a user had always had an issue with me, so when she asked me to look at her machine I got her to put in a support job first detailign the nature of the fault. The issue was that a file had been corrupted or intentionally deleted from the local storage. Since in my case all client data was required to have been on the backed up network storage and I had already alerted the client to the fact that the local sharing of data files without any record locking was going to cause corruption then there should have been no credence given at all.
That there was credence resulting in me not offering to restore the data from the main database and removing my offer to provide a local record locking solution to prevent the problem. Unsurprisingly the corruption reoccurred but since I had removed myself then the next time they were left with no one else to blame. Even still, this liar was still working for the client when I left.
In summary not having proof that your actions are reasonable can leave you exposed to malicious accusations so cover your back every time. Not everyone is reasonable,truthful or competent and only you can protect yourself from abuse when your management start pukering. The same management I might add who had often complained about my insistence upon a paper trail.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
