Can Businesses Keep Your Personal Information Safe?
Is your personal data safe from theft and fraud? Both ethical and legal questions are mounting after security breaches such as these:
- CitiFinancial, a loan company, shipped a computer tape containing data on 3.9million customers, but it never arrived.
- Bank of America shipped a tape containing records of 1.2 million federal employees, but it never arrived.
- Ameritrade, a brokerage firm, shipped tapes containing account information on 200,000 clients, but they never arrived
- CardSystems, which processes credit-card transactions, found that hackers accessed computer data on 240,000 account.
- DSW Shoe Warehouse, a shoe retailer, found that hackers stole 1.4 million customer's credit card numbers from its system.
Experts advise businesses to encrypt data for secure storage, change passwords frequently, hold data no longer than necessary, and disclose security breaches promptly. as lawmakers address this growing problem, you can protect yourself by checking bank and credit records and reporting any unauthorized activity
How Much Is Too Much?
In November 1997, Robert Allen retireed at the age of 65 as chair of AT&T, one of the world’s largest and most visible businesses. In the last few years of his tenure, he had been acritized for his personal compensation package. Here is why.
In 1995 AT& T eliminated 40,000 jobs and still barely broke even. For that year, Allen received a salary of $1.2 million. In addition, stock options, and other incentives. The entire compensation package carried a present value of nearly $11 million! Was he really worth that much? Even more puzzling, from an ethical perspective, was whether this lofty compensation package was fair.
Fairness is difficult to assess even when objective evidence exists. Consider the evidence. AT&T’s performance under Allen has been decidedly average. Since he assumed the chairmanship in 1988, AT&T’s stock price has kept pace with Standard & Poor’s 500 average, but it has not excelled. Some see the massive and painful downsizing activities as evidence of poor use of investors’ capital. Yet Allen was in the hot seat. He made tough decisions and boldly moved AT&T to change, which is never easy. For example, he moved the company away from its equipment and computer businesses and positioned it for growth in the telecommunications industry.
As with any values-based decision, there is no easy way to evaluate the ethics of Robert Allen’s compensation. And as with any values-based decision, there are many advocates arguing strongly on both sides of this issue.
Figuring Out What to Do?
As the examples here show, it is often quite difficult to know what to do. Even weighing the perspectives of different moral theories helps only so much. However, businesses can guide their employees to determine what is right and proper.
Many businesses include their ethical intentions as part of their mission statements. For example, Hallmark specifies “ethical and moral conduct at all times and in all our relationships,” Southland Corp. (7-Eleven stores) says it will “conduct its business in an ethical in all our business dealings.” While such statements are broad and general, they do signify that the practice of ethical behaviour is fundamental to the business. This underscores the tone of ethics that the business believes is important.
Some businesses go a step beyond the mission statement by defining a set of core values, those specific beliefs that the business makes part of its operating philosophy. These statements of core values typically cover honesty, respect, trust, and the overall moral tone of the business. For example, giant advertising agency Leo Burnett provides employees with 10 core values, which it calls operating principles. Included is the principle of integrity, which extolls employees to operate at all times in an ethical and moral manner. Boeing and Kellogg both have integrity statements. Such statements of core values are becoming increasingly popular.
