Stealing an individual’s information online is one of the most sought-after objectives of a hacker. It can be through targeting a single person or affecting a whole group such as a company. Hacking a company creates a domino effect where everyone involved with them is now exposed. Credit companies like Equifax are a prime target for data breaches because consumers rely on them by giving them their personal information in exchange for credit monitoring. Their data is constantly being monitored so Equifax can report a score that determines either higher or lower interest rates. This credit monitoring, unbeknownst to them, increases their chances of their data being exposed because their information is put into a high-target database where hackers try to target, creating a data breach. “Why the Equifax Breach Stings So Bad” by Ron Lieber tells more on the disaster data breach that compromised consumers. In this Case Analysis, I will argue that Confucianism shows us that the Equifax breach harmed the consumers by exposing the information of millions and that this was morally bad.

In a business, everyone has a role in helping the company succeed. The employees are part of a clockwork-like system in which individuals or maybe groups are assigned to their own responsibilities, often times through an interdisciplinary system that compliments the company’s framework. “The Social Responsibility of Business” adds on to this by explaining how the corporate executive has a responsibility as well like all others to serve for the purpose of business.  “He (corporate executive) has direct responsibility to his employers. That responsibility is to conduct the business in accordance with their desires” (Friedman 51). They also have to lead the business whether that be through profits or development purposes. Everyone in the business altogether are there with a responsibility to perform what they are assigned and to help the business succeed.

Corporate executive has to combat the common issues of operating a business. These issues include understanding what is the best paths to take for this business. Friedman develops on another concept that corporate executives have to rely on paths that are important to the success and productivity of the business. Their paths involve deciding: will their price listing affect the pressures of inflation? Will producing less of their product because of low prices create shortages? How much cost is ok to be imposed on consumers and stockholders? (Friedman 53). These are all considered paths because each are a means of towards developing the business decided by the corporate executive. Good overview of Friedman.

Both of the concepts developed by Friedman represent the mishandlings of Equifax. The role of the corporate executive, as described through the first concept, is to bring leadership and decide what’s best for the business while also not harming the growth of the consumer-base. The corporate executive is expected to be the one to announce such incidents as the Equifax data breach, which is part of the role of being a corporate executive. Equifax made failures of like what Brian Schill in Lieber’s article described, “They have taken our information to sell it for their own profit” (Lieber 2). This involved them choosing the wrong paths prioritizing their business growth rather than focusing on the consumer which resulted in this data breach. 

The tool of Confucianism is important to the case article because the situation was caused by Equifax not properly doing their job. The whole assessment of Confucianism involves understanding that it deals with properly performing their role or responsibility and choosing the right path that compliments this role. Everyone has a role in life, and they must play that part.  According to this, it is Equifax’s responsibility to perform their role and take the right actions that fulfill it through Confucianism. They failed to fulfill it by taking great protection into the consumers data and essentially in a sense, putting the data up for sale to the hackers and exposing the data of millions of people. To the consumers, it is a disappointment to them because they trusted Equifax to deliver on their role of protecting their information while at the same time reporting their credit. This is morally bad because it damages Equifax’s reputation and is a lose-lose situation for everyone. In this situation, the right thing to do would be based on the concepts of Friedman concerning the corporate executive needing to bring businesses on the right path and taking responsibility for what happen to the consumers, and also the role fulfillments desired by Confucianism. Equifax should have taken notes from the Wells Fargo and Volkswagen scandals so they could have made quality-of-life changes that would have prevented this data breach from happening. Making these changes would have helped them fulfill their roles more of protecting the consumers while also doing their credit reports. This ultimately would appeal more to the philosophy of Confucianism and the concepts of that Friedman has emphasized on. 

Consumers are the essential component that businesses thrive on. Without consumers, businesses aren’t able to profit or develop into the great upheaval they hope to achieve in the market. Whether it’s through listening to their feedback or creating features that appeal to them, businesses have to maintain their interest into being trusted to continue their development. This creates an interconnected relationship between the business and the consumer as described in the “Changing the Social Contract: A Role for Business” by Melvin Anshen. Anshen tells of how “economic growth was viewed as the source of all progress. The clear assumption was that social progress was a by-product of economic progress and impossible to achieve without it” (Anshen 9). In a sense, this concept gives the perspective that businesses need consumers to even become a business through means of social growth. This is still a relevant algorithm today as businesses often listen to the consumers on what they think should be improved on the business’s platform. This in turn helps the businesses experience economic growth and success. 

The slow responses and incompetence of a business can end up damaging itself. If an incident such as a hacking occurs, consumers will turn to the business to deliver on stopping the threat and bringing compensation for the disturbance. Another concept by Anshen expands on how a businesses approach to an incident or threat can impact the ability to keep the consumers. Business leaders recognize the idea that a passive response can bring more harm to the company than what the threat has already caused rather than a more proactive response (Anshen 11). Given this concept, a passive response can show incompetence and worsen the situation by letting the threat continue for longer than it should. Businesses who also leave their consumers in the dark about what happen, in other words not giving much information, is also considered a passive response and can bring worry to the masses.

The explanation of an interconnected relationship through Anshen’s first concept tells of how neglected Equifax was be aware of the situation and what it means to keep the trust with the consumers. The customer frustrations, such as non-existent phone calls, as described in Lieber’s article are very understandable as Equifax haven’t signaled any response to the data breach or that they are doing anything to help the consumers (Lieber 6). This leads into the second concept of Anshen where a passive response can be near as harmful as the hacking itself. Equifax chose the path of issuing a passive response to the incident by refusing to freeze credit files for a while. This created a domino effect of harming the consumers even more because Equifax was reluctant on being proactive towards the hacking. 

Confucianism is represented through Equifax’s mistakes. The signs of slow responses or incompetence in Anshen’s second concept describe of how a business is not properly fulfilling their role of protecting the consumers. This hurts the philosophy of Confucianism as well because it involves businesses playing the role that they have in the first place. Part of following Confucianism is choosing the right path for a role. The response against a threat of a company, like Anshen’s second concept, should be a proactive response. A passive response is morally bad and can show that the business is unsure what to do in the situation and also prolonging the path they take can worsen the situation. The path Equifax by affecting millions of people’s data does not abide by the ideas of Confucianism because they weren’t making the important effective paths their role should have taken. The right course of action through assessing the case and the ideas of Confucianism like already previously mentioned is by being proactive in thwarting the threats against the business, quickly alerting and freezing consumer data, and improving security infrastructure. All of these factors are what Equifax has failed to do as part of their role to the consumers. 

To wrap up, the Equifax data breach highlights on the concepts given by Friedman and Anshen about fulfilling the role a business has and should follow. The ideas of Confucianism well describe Equifax’s failures of handling the data breach and how it was morally bad to the millions of consumers who had their information exposed. Equifax could have prevented or at least lessened the situation by the corporate executive following his role effectively, choosing the right paths that also help the consumers, developing an interconnecting relationship, and being proactive against threats. Albeit, with a situation that Equifax dealt with as large scale as this, any business would have at least some sort of confusion or panic if they were having a massive data breach. Hopefully this is a lesson for any businesses in the future to take these concepts into consideration, so they don’t fall into turmoil like Equifax.

Works Cited

Lieber, Ron. “Why the Equifax Breach Stings So Bad.” The New York Times, 2017.

Friedman, Milton. “The Social Responsibility of Business.” The Purpose of the Corporation, 2001.

Anshen, Melvin. “Changing the Social Contract: A Role for Business.” 2001.