Ethics in Business Communications

Ethics in Business Communications

Jose Ortiz

COM/295 – Business Communications

05/26/14

Paul Frise

During our team discussion sessions, we covered one of the recent business communications regarding the security breach within the Target Corporation in November 2013. In reviewing our topic, we located the Target press release that made consumers aware of the security breach and how it could affect Target customers. Target initially stated that there were an estimated forty million customer records that could have been breached. In later statements, Target acknowledged that there could have been as many as seventy million customer records affected. Questions were raised in the group about whether the breach could have been prevented. These were mostly on the strength of an article we found in the Harvard Business Review that made claims that Target may have been forewarned to a possible security flaw and may have chosen to ignore it. This raised the question of whether Target acted ethically and kept customers as the top priority, making sure they were informed of any steps necessary to ensure their accounts were not compromised.

Ethics also came into question when the press releases from Target focused on alerting consumers that the breach may not have impacted very many customers, and that they were taking precautions to prevent any sort of security breach in the future. It appeared the main objective of the follow-up press releases was to keep the reputation of Target relatively intact, while downplaying the security breach. With so much emphasis on the Target brand was there enough emphasis on the effect of the security breach on consumers, and the step needed to ensure that the breach would not happen in the future?

If Target had kept the public up to date from the beginning, would there be as many updates needed? It made us question if the ethics in communication were employed....