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Equifax data breach case study
Ethics and Social Responsibility (PHIL 1404)
University of the People
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EQUIFAX DATA BREACH CASE STUDY
Student Author Philosophy 1404: Ethics and Social Responsibility Dr. Sergey Petrov November 16, 2021
Equifax suffered a massive data breach, exposing approximately 143 million individuals’ personal information. The data breach itself shows the lack of security oversight maintained by the company, but how it handled itself after discovering the breach is a bad example of proper business ethics.
After discovering the data breach and before the news was made public, several Equifax executives sold off company stock in the range of $2 million (OpenStax, 2018). This was not only a breach of ethical conduct but was also a legal violation of insider trading rules. These executives showed a lack of even the bare minimum of ethical conduct when this legal compliance was broken. Their actions further eroded the trust the public had in the company, it’s hard to trust a company that took financial advantage of a situation that was harmful to their customers.
After these breaches of trust, the CEO retired just a few days before he was scheduled to testify to Congress. While this was legally compliant, it was certainly ethically questionable. After such a massive breach, the minimum the CEO should have done was testify, take responsibility, and hopefully alleviate some of the public's fears. Had the CEO taken responsibility for the breach, condoned the activities of his executive, and layed out a reasonable course of action, he would have shown his stakeholders that he is an ethical leader with strong personal integrity.
The security breach, by itself, was bound to have a negative effect on the company's reputation. But the combination of insider trading and complete lack of responsibility taken by
References Henderson, J. G. (2019, July 31). FTC Encourages Consumers to Opt for Free Credit Monitoring, as part of Equifax Settlement. Federal Trade Commission. Retrieved November 15, 2021, from ftc/news-events/press-releases/2019/07/ftc- encourages-consumers-opt-free-credit-monitoring-part-equifax OpenStax. (2018, September 24). 1 Ethics and Profitability - Business Ethics. OpenStax. Retrieved November 16, 2021, from openstax/books/business- ethics/pages/1-2-ethics-and-profitability Warzel, C. (2019, September 16). Opinion | Equifax Doesn't Want You to Get Your $125. Here's What You Can Do. (Published 2019). The New York Times. Retrieved November 15, 2021, from nytimes/2019/09/16/opinion/equifax-settlement.html
Equifax data breach case study
Course: Ethics and Social Responsibility (PHIL 1404)
University: University of the People
