The article is an example of a letter from a company informing a customer about a potential leak of their personal information. Two economic theories that can be reflected in this article are the Marxian economic theory and the Laissez-fair economic theory. In terms of the Maxian theory, the ones with the power in this situation are the hackers who have already compromised the system with their knowledge, capitalizing on the victims, who are the customers, who have unknowingly had their information stolen. The power dynamic forms as the customers’ only way to respond to the unknown threat is to do damage control on a situation that has already put them in a vulnerable position months prior. The Laissez- fair theory applies when law enforcement gets involved. The data involved turns from a proponent of being used in supply and demand formula since the customer willingly gave that information up, classical economic theory, to the data being a right to privacy that the government must be called in to intervene in.

The two social theories that relate to the articles are Behavioral theory and Cognitive theory. Behavioral theory shows that criminals will often weigh risk and reward. Since it took the company almost a year of time to discover the vulnerability it can be surmised that the risk for the attackers was minimal since they were able to accomplish such a stealthy attack. This denotes experience in the hacking group gained from learning about other similar vulnerability manipulations in the space or from other hackers. Secondly, Cognitive theory can be used to explain the excuses of the hackers for committing this crime. They could rationalize that no one is physically being hurt since it is just their data being stolen or that the customer can learn to stay away from companies who offload their sensitive data to third parties.   

References

• Umphlet M. (2024, July 14) CYSE201S Module 11[Power Point Slides]. School of Cybersecurity. ODU. Canvas.
• Umphlet M. (2024, June 9) CYSE201S Module 5[Power Point Slides]. School of Cybersecurity. ODU. Canvas.
• Umphlet M. Sample Brief Notification. School of Cybersecurity. ODU. https://dojmt.gov/wp-content/uploads/Glasswasherparts.com_.pdf.