Two 150 Word Discussion Responses

Do not grade or critique work only add to conversation

First response to Timothy

Moment of Crisis: Hostage Negotiators on the Job Discussion Post

The video, “Moment of Crisis: Hostage Negotiators on the Job Discussion Post,”

shows hostage situations being handled by law enforcement professionals who work to stabilize volatile situations (ABC News, 2014). The lessons this video conveys include keeping one’s cool and being able to determine then implement crucial decisions that involve high risk factors including kidnapping, various forms of violence, and even murder. While most businesses organizations do not face these kinds of stark realties, they do face crisis situations that demands negotiation skills and strategy and that is why these video offers something for everyone in terms of negotiation and strategy.

It is vital that all organizations remember that their number role is to survive by making a profit. (Bundy, Pfarrer, Short, & Coombs, 2017). This is true no matter the industry. This is the same philosophy that the law enforcement professionals in this video have, albeit they must also save the life of any and all hostages plus others (ABC News, 2014). As such, the law enforcement, the hostages, nearby citizens and even the criminals are stakeholders in this situation (ABC News, 2014). Therefore, the law enforcement does its best to maintain the safety of all. But if they cannot, they will be able to make the hard decision to kill or severely injure the criminal or criminals which provides a better outcome for the majority of stakeholders. This is what an organization in crisis must do, too.

One absolute that an organization can take from this video (ABC News, 2014) is that it must have a crisis management strattegy in place before the crisis hits. It can be adjusted as needed when a crisis occurs, but an organization should be ready to move into action when it finds itself in a precarious situation. The SWAT team does not just show up without training, hoping that everything will turn out okay. An organization should adopt that same strategy so that it is not caught off-guard and we

References

ABC News (2014, January 15)  Moments of crisis: hostage negotiators on the job. [Video].

YouTube.Retrieved from:

Moment of Crisis: Hostage Negotiators on the Job (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Bundy, J., Pfarrer, M. D., Short, C. E., & Timothy Coombs, W. (2017). Crises and crisis

management: integration, interpretation, and research development. Journal of   Management, 43(6), 1661–1692. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206316680030

Second response to Alana

Discussion Question 3:

In 2017 the credit reporting agency had a database breach due to hackers that caused the release of 143 million people’s personal identifying information including credit card numbers, social security numbers, drivers licenses, email, and phone numbers to be released (Fleishman, 2018). Equifax did not notify the public of the breach till 6 weeks after it occurred, and the breach was blamed on out of date software that was not detected for 76 days, and it was noted that the software that was supposed to prevent hackers was not working for ten months prior to the attack (Fleishman, 2018). Not only did they know about the hack and waiting as long as they did to report it, but three of the company’s executives also sold 2 million dollars of their stock before the breach occurred  (Hao, 2017).

Due to the breach, the President of the United States signed a bill in May the allowed consumers to freeze their credit, to prevent fraud, at the three largest credit reporting agencies including Equifax  (Fleishman, 2018).

According to Fleishman’s article, Equifax’s CEO Richard Smith testified before Congress that it was a single employee’s fault for not updating the software. At this hearing, Senator Elizabeth Warren told Smith that “At best you are incompetent; at worst you were complicit. Either way, you should be fired”, Smith already read resigned a week prior to the hearing and was followed by the Cheif Information Officer and the Cheif Security Officers (Fleishman,2018).

According to both are text and lecture by Mitroff Equifax did nothing right. They wait over a month to address the breach when they knew about it and then the CEO blamed the breach on a single employee. I don’t think that a company as big as Equifax would have a single employee that was the only person responsible for keeping web security up-to-date.

However, the one thing they did that might be considered right but really is not, is Equifax set up a website for potential victims that allowed the victims to monitor their credit and file for identity protection (Hao, 2017). But they should have notified the victims of the breach, it is said that this website also had problems as well it did not work properly and potential victims had to wait for days to see if they were one of the people affected (Wiener-Bronner 17). Personally, if I was a victim I would not trust this website, as they had a breach before, this site could as well.

References:

Fleishman, G. (2018). Equifax data breach, 1 year later: Obvious errors, no fixes. Fortune Magazine. Retrieved from: http://fortune.com/2018/09/07/equifax-data-breach-one-year-anniversary/  (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Hao, K. (2017). Everything you need to about Equifax breach. Quartz. Retrieved from: https://qz.com/1079253/the-complete-guide-to-the-equifax-breach/ (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Wiener-Bronner, D. (2017). Equifax breach: How a hack became a public relations catastrophe. Retrieved from: https://money.cnn.com/2017/09/12/news/companies/equifax-pr-response/index.html