Last week, news broke that Grant Hardin, the former police chief of Gateway, Arkansas, escaped from prison. But this wasn’t your average prison break. There were no tunnels, no high-speed chases, no movie-script dramatics. Hardin simply walked out the front gate.
Dressed like a corrections officer and pushing a cart, he blended into his surroundings and vanished. It took nearly half an hour before anyone even noticed he was gone.
For many, the most disturbing part isn’t just that a murderer and rapist escaped, it’s how he did it. Hardin used his knowledge as a former insider to manipulate his environment. He knew the protocols. He knew the shifts. He understood the psychology of the staff. And he played the part convincingly enough to bypass every layer of security designed to keep him in.
That’s because before he was an inmate, he was on the inside (figuratively speaking). I was recently interviewed by Fox & Friends regarding this escape where we talk about how he could have done it – and most importantly, I touched on the topic of security updates and policies.
Hardin’s escape is an extreme case, but it’s a mirror for what happens across corporate America every day. Warehouses get cleaned out overnight. Retail stores lose merchandise with no sign of forced entry. Customer data disappears. And the phrase that always gets whispered around the office afterward?
“It had to be an inside job.”
The truth is, in many cases, it is. But not always from someone currently inside.
Former employees, especially those who were terminated under tense circumstances, often pose the greatest threat to a company’s security. They don’t need to hack in. They don’t need to force entry. They just need to walk in the way they used to. Wear what they wore. Say what they used to say. And more often than not, no one will question them, until it’s too late.
What I try to explain to corporate clients when I’m conducting an audit, is that insider knowledge is one of the most underestimated risks in business security today. They know which doors are alarmed and which ones aren’t. They know what times the cleaners come. They know if the cameras are fake – because they’ve been there. And in many companies, especially fast-growing ones, there’s little to no offboarding process. You’d be shocked how often old badges still work.
That’s where private investigators usually come in. While most companies think of PIs as people who follow cheating spouses or investigate fraud, our services expand into corporate risk mitigation.
Companies bring us in after something goes wrong, and we help them figure out where the gaps are. But the smart ones bring us in before anything happens. We simulate breaches. We test how easily someone could walk in, access files, or manipulate staff. We look at your business like someone planning to break into it.
The goal isn’t to just catch bad actors – it’s to build a culture of awareness. Because the truth is, most breaches don’t happen with force. They happen with familiarity.
So what can a company do? Start with the basics: change access codes immediately after terminations. Audit security cameras regularly. Revoke digital access the same day an employee leaves. And most importantly, educate your team. Make sure they know what to watch for – and who no longer belongs.
What happened in that Arkansas prison is disturbing. But it wasn’t magic. It was manipulation. It was someone who knew the system and used that knowledge against it.
And it’s a warning. Because whether it’s a prison or a corporation, the most dangerous person is often the one who already knows your playbook.
