Part 1: Case Analysis
Equifax is one of the United States’ prime consumer credit reporting organizations. In September 2017, Equifax reported a breach of its systems that led to the compromising of sensitive private information of 148 million individuals (Fruhlinger, 2019). The data breach entailed names, date of birth, phone number, home address, driver’s license numbers, and social security numbers. According to Fruhlinger (2019), approximately 209,000 customers also had their credit card numbers breached. Other companies have previously experienced more significant security breaches, but Equifax held sensitive and personal information, which made the case unprecedented.
Learning Organizations
Organizations are consistently adopting improvement programs to better themselves and earn a competitive edge. Learning organizations have a scholarship culture and even embrace slip-ups as opportunities to attain knowledge. Peter Senge coined the term Learning Organization to describe the organizations that understand that learning plays a significant part in developing organizational efficiency (Pokharel & Ok Choi, 2015). These firms exhibit this by creating a motivating learning vision and a strategy that will push the company into realizing its vision.
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Learning the organization's management is dedicated to the significance of learning and openly communicates that learning is crucial to the success of the organization. The management identifies the essence of giving the drive, ways, and openings for learning (Pokharel & Ok Choi, 2015). The organizational structure identifies the importance of enabling individuals to continue to expand their capability of creating their desired outcomes, cultivating new and extensive thinking patterns, and allowing people to continue learning together as a team.
With technology advances, tougher competition, and changing consumer preferences, it is very crucial that firms become learning organizations. According to Serrat (2017), in learning organizations, workers are always generating, attaining, and transferring knowledge, which helps the organization to adapt to any unpredictable events faster. For Equifax, the company failed to protect the customers’ data (Fruhlinger, 2019). The company had a legal obligation to protect sensitive consumer data. Equifax needs to understand that in order to maintain its reputation, it has to secure the consumer’s data. According to Fruhlinger (2019), the Equifax breach is a representation of a turning point in the collective dialogue surrounding information security. The incident unites government officials, IT experts, corporate leaders, and victims of cybercrimes to assess the magnitude of privacy violations and the best practices that should be adopted.
Equifax lacks efficiency as the company let the breach extend from March to August 2017 without ever notifying the public (Fruhlinger, 2019). The two main reasons for Equifax's breaches include inferior security management and a lack of hygiene in systems. The company needs an effective raising security awareness strategy within the organization to sustain a business culture based on privacy and best practices.
Part 2: Recommendations and Action Plan
Construction of a learning organization is a continuous process (Serrat, 2017). Equifax requires committing to taking on the learning organization strategy. Execution of a learning organization needs time and requires communication between all stakeholders. Leaders should establish better approaches to leading the team, and every employee must be committed to the learning task.
Equifax identifies that the company needs to improve its security awareness strategy. The company needs to develop a plan to maximize its potential and avoid future security breaches (Fruhlinger, 2019). The plan should implement and create an organizational culture that promotes learning. Senge developed a plan for personal learning in five disciplines that, when the organization supports them, will result in learning organizational. The five disciplines are Shared Vision, System Thinking, Team Learning Mental Models, and Personal Mastery (Pokharel & Ok Choi, 2015).
Personal Mastery
Personal mastery is reported when a person has a well-established goal in combination with a precise observation of reality (Pokharel & Ok Choi, 2015). It entails permitting creative tension to motivate people to work towards realizing their grander visions. The gap that separates reality and vision pushes the employee to practice all the essential events needed for the vision to be realized. Personal mastery assists in promoting a well-established vision for the company and directs focused energy in attaining this vision (Gil & Mataveli, 2017). As such, Equifax leaders should dictate their vision, and every other person in the team must collaborate in creating a unified vision.
Shared Vision
When creating a shared vision, the team should ideate on the kind of vision that they want (Gil & Mataveli, 2017). Having a sense of inherent drive is not enough. Individuals must recognize where the organization’s vision is leading them. A unified vision that permeated the organization gives the power to the team members (Pokharel & Ok Choi, 2015). For instance, the entire Equifax team should understand that the company’s permissive access controls, poor data hygiene, and open network infrastructure allowed hackers to assess the system. As such, the team's vision is to improve the security processes, strengthen access control protection, and vulnerability management.
Learning processes entail generating, collecting, interpreting, and disseminating information (Pokharel & Ok Choi, 2015). Equifax should focus on developing, testing new data protection products, training, and educating the employees on the changes and details on the company’s shared vision (Pokharel & Ok Choi, 2015). For maximum impact, the knowledge should be shared in a clearly defined and systematic manner. Knowledge can move both horizontally and vertically in the firm.
System Thinking
System thinking does not focus on individual aspects but echoes the observational course of the whole system (Gil & Mataveli, 2017). Leaders have to understand the correlation between every action and consequence. In most cases, you find managers concentrating on individual activities and forgetting about the bigger picture. When they comprehend the association, it enables them to see the interrelationships and patterns of change in a particular situation. Thus, they can determine the cause and effect. According to Fruhlinger (2019), Equifax should look at the company’s system and prioritize enhanced data protection through its whole infrastructure, combined with better discovery and response plans to handle new complications more quickly if and whenever they happen.
Leadership influences organizational learning. When the leaders are actively listening to and questioning the team members, it can provoke conversations and debates that provide opportunities for learning (Serrat, 2017). Leaders should not be so uptight in their roles and create a distinct hierarchical barrier between them and the team. If leaders focus on spending time on transferring knowledge, identifying problems, and reflective post-audits, these events will grow, and the organization will establish and learning culture (Gil & Mataveli, 2017).
Mental Models
The employees need to establish the firm’s values and goals. A good understanding of the establishment’s identity will empower the employees to envisage the direction of the company and how best to attain the objectives (Pokharel & Ok Choi, 2015). The business should demonstrate flexibility in accommodating modifications to new mental models and the firm’s new image. The most prosperous organizations are those that continue to learn and espouse new models quicker than the rivals.
Equifax should build a first-class security program and share what it has acquired from its experiences to empower the industry to protect and defend against cyber-attacks in a better manner. The team at Equifax should understand that data security is a longstanding battle that needs continued attention and innovation (Fruhlinger, 2019). Data security remains the company's top priority. As such, it is the company's responsibility to develop formal processes for developing the employees' skills, experimenting with new data protection products, and identifying and solving problems.
Team Learning
To achieve significant functional dynamics, team learning is important because shared vision and personal mastery are linked. It is vital for the workforce to regard its coworkers as team members and not competitors. Gil and Mataveli (2017) note that organizations should create safe working environments where employees are allowed to be themselves, make mistakes, and learn in the processes. Employees should not feel disparaged or disregarded when they differ with authority or peers, own up to blunders, ask naïve questions, or present a minority standpoint (Gil & Mataveli, 2017). The team should appreciate different perspectives, be open to new ideas, and take time to reflect before picking the best ideas.
For instance, Equifax needs to have open conversations about the company’s data security fiascos and the fundamental mistakes and oversights that led to the breach. According to Fruhlinger (2019), some of the errors include legacy systems with serious security problems, lack of a software inventory and PCI compliance of critical applications, and poor breach notification preparation. Others include lack of certificate management programs, inefficient IT management configuration, poor information security policies, poor patch management, inefficient security infrastructure and strategy, and legacy systems with severe security problems. For these challenges, the teams at Equifax should incorporate regular monthly debriefing meetings. The team members should go through their short-and-long-term objectives regarding data protection determines the progress and setbacks experienced within the month and layout the objectives for the next month.
References
Chai, D. S., & Dirani, K. (2018). The dimensions of the learning organization questionnaire (DLOQ) A validation study in the Lebanese context. The Learning Organization , 25 (5), 320-330.
Fruhlinger, J. (2019, Oct 14). Equifax data breach FAQ: What happened, who was affected, what was the impact? CSO . Retrieved from https://www.csoonline.com/article/3444488/equifax-data-breach-faq-what-happened-who-was-affected-what-was-the-impact.html
Gil, A. J., & Mataveli, M. (2017). Learning opportunities for group learning: An empirical assessment from the learning organization perspective. Journal of Workplace Learning , 29 (1), 65-78.
Pokharel, M. P., & Ok, Choi, S. (2015). Exploring the relationships between the learning organization and organizational performance. Management Research Review , 38 (2), 126-148.
Serrat, O. (2017). Building a learning organization. Knowledge solutions (pp. 57-67). Springer, Singapore.
