Laptop logs exposed the gap - but a deeper breach is what ended his claim

A 98-hour timesheet gap, caught by laptop logs, cost a Defence-project worker his job - and his unfair dismissal claim.

When Leidos Australia suspected one of its systems administrators was clocking off early, it didn't rely on a hunch. It pulled the data - and what it found ended a career.

The company cross-referenced Mark Sherwood's company-laptop access records against the hours he had logged in its time-entry system, Deltek. The gap was hard to miss: 98 hours and 15 minutes between the time he recorded and the time his laptop tracked, between February and August 2025.

Sherwood had worked as a systems administrator since January 2024 on a Defence project building a health knowledge management system. The work touched national security, and Leidos - a global defence, IT and biomedical company engaged by Australia's Department of Defence - ran it under tight security rules.

Asked to explain the discrepancy, Sherwood said he had done the work from home, writing code on his personal laptop because it ran the Linux software he needed. He insisted the code was generic, carried no Defence or client data, and that he never moved Defence documents onto the device. The company saw it differently: what it believed was a clear breach of security protocols on a national-security contract.

Leidos sent a detailed allegations letter on August 18, 2025, invited a written reply, and held a meeting the next day. It...

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