Introduction
Equifax is a credit reporting company operates across the United States
since 1899, its headquarter is located at Atlanta. The company stores sensitive
personal data used to help companies in diverse industry to make decisions
based on the reports and analytics that Equifax provides. It is their mission
to help people live their financial best. (Equifax, n.d.)
This paper will answer the following questions; Which elements of this
case might involve issues of legal compliance? Which elements illustrate acting
legally but not ethically? What would acting ethically and with personal
integrity in this situation look like? How do you think this breach will affect
Equifax’s position relative to those of its competitors? How might it affect
the future success of the company? Was it sufficient for Equifax to offer
online privacy protection to those whose personal information was hacked? What
else might it have done?
Apart from providing answers to the required questions, I will also
provide conclusion based on my understanding about this week’s topic related to
the issue that Equifax engaged into.
Main Topic
The elements of this case might involve issues but not limited to data
privacy and the company’s failure to implement and invest in a secured system
to protect the consumer’s personal identifiable information that they stored in
their system. The risk of stolen identity which can be used for fraudulent
transactions like taking out loans and abuse of credit cards are higher and the
compony should be liable for that. Equifax failed to adhere to IT and legal
ethics which cost the company and its consumers a huge amount of damage from
the stolen data.
Another element would be the selling of stocks when the issue has been
found internally to safe keep their investments but prior to publicly advise
that there had been a breach of information in which they have projected that
the stocks will definitely go down and that it will result to huge loss to its
investors, executives and CEO.
Although, the company complied to its legal obligation to announce the
security breach, it is obviously unethical and suspicious because they announce
it at a later date. This only shows the public that the company have been
keeping the issue behind the public which is unethical because it is the
public’s personal information involved in the issue.
Being caught in the same situation is unimaginably terrible as thousands
of personal information has been stolen but the company should have adhered to
legal and ethical actions like informing the public about the breach and invest
into technologies which will strengthen the security of the information that
are safe and to retrieved those that are stolen. Providing compensation to the
stolen data and consumers that their data has been used for fraud.
The fact that Equifax’s stock rapidly went down after the issue has been
publicized, it is very evident that its competitors has gain more consumers and
earned more because of this issue. The loss of its consumers and their trust
are the biggest factors that the competitors had to take advantage in order to
increase their profit and expand their consumers.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Equifax will definitely feel the impact of this issue in
the future. The public may not focus on this issue in the next few years but
definitely, they will remember why they shouldn’t trust their personal information
to the company – it is very hard to rebuild the trust especially when you had
experienced it or you had witnessed it happening to your friends and neighbors.
The company offering online privacy protection to the information who were
stolen and hacked is not enough to please these consumers. I thought it would
be best that the company will compensate possible damages to the affected
consumers and provides a strong promise to better their system by investing
into technologies that provide strong security in terms of protecting its
consumer’s personal identifiable information.
References:
Who we are (n.d.). Equifax. https://www.equifax.com/about-equifax/who-we-are/
Leopard, A. (2017). Legal Implications and Initial Takeaways from the
Equifax Data Breach. Bradley. https://www.bradley.com/insights/publications/2017/09/legal-implications-and-initial-takeaways-from-the-equifax-data-breach
Bryars, M. et al, (2018). Business Ethics. OpenStax is licensed under
Creative Commons Attribution License v4.0. ISBN-13: 978-1-947172-57-9. https://openstax.org/books/business-ethics/pages/1-2-ethics-and-profitability
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