Legal and Ethical Obligations

Instructions

Read Chapter 3 of the textbook.

Analyze this case Download this casefound in Chapter 3, Chapter Review, 3-7e Case Exercises.

Answer the following questions included as part of the case:

Should Iris have approached Henry directly, or was the hotline the most effective way to take action? Why do you think so?

Should Gladys call the legal authorities? Which agency should she call?

Do you think this matter needs to be communicated elsewhere inside the company? Who should be informed and how? How about outside the company?

Chapter 3, Chapter Introduction Henry Magruder made a mistakehe left a flash drive at the coffee station. Later, when Iris Majwubu was topping off her mug with fresh tea while taking a breather from her current project, she saw the unlabeled drive on the counter. Being the helpful sort, she picked it up, intending to return it to the person whod left it behind. Expecting to find a program from someone on the development team or a project management schedule, Iris slotted the drive in her computer. The system automatically ran a virus scan before opening the file explorer program. She had been correct in assuming the drive contained SLS company data files. There were lots of them. She opened a file at random: names, addresses, and Social Security numbers appeared on her screen. These were not the test records she expected; they looked more like confidential payroll data. The next file she picked was full of what seemed to be customers credit card numbers. Concerned, she found a readme.txt file and opened it. It read: Iris realized that someone was selling sensitive company data. She looked back at the directory listing and saw that the files spanned the range of every department at Sequential Label and Supplyeverything from customer financial records to shipping invoices. She opened another file and saw that it contained only a sampling of the relevant data. Whoever did this had split the data into two parts. That made sense: just a sample to see the type of data and then payment on delivery. Now, who did the drive belong to? She opened the file properties option of the readme.txt file. The file owner was listed as hmagruder. That must be Henry Magruder, the developer two cubes over in the next aisle. Iris pondered her next action.

Chapter 3, Chapter Review, 3-7e Case Exercises Iris called the companys security hotline. The hotline is an anonymous way to report suspicious activity or abuse of company policy, although Iris chose to identify herself. The next morning, she was called to a meeting with an investigator from corporate security, which led to more meetings with others from corporate security and then with the director of human resources and Gladys Williams, the CIO of SLS.