Two days ago I see a blog entry by Kathleen Edmond, Chief Ethics Officer for Best Buy (NYSE:BBY) and I called my Director of Operations to see if we could make contact for an interview with Ms. Edmond for my blog…little did I know that two days later she and I would be bonded by the same event – hacking! Several weeks ago I found it difficult to access my site and after a phone call or two found that my site had been hacked. Now, honestly, I can kinda understand someone finding it a challenge to hack an officer of Best Buy’s site, but mine? What was there to gain? But then again, to us all…it is important to take our roles seriously and precautions appropriately.
Evan Schuman writer for Storefront Backtalk wrote the following:
This isn’t something one sees every day. A senior Best Buy (NYSE:BBY) executive, instructed to create a blog to conduct Best Buy business, goes outside the Best Buy IT infrastructure to set it up herself—along with some colleagues in HR—using freeware and a $30/month hosting service. If the story stopped there, it wouldn’t be that unusual, as frustrated managers have gone outside the corporate structure for decades, not wanting to wait for their project to rise to the top of someone else’s priority list.
In this case, though, the executive was Best Buy’s chief ethics officer, who wanted to have a site outside the direct control of corporate. And she learned a lesson about why one wants to be within the protection of a multibillion-dollar chain’s IT department. She learned that when her Best Buy blog was shut down, possibly due to a cyberthief attack.
Posting a note this week, Best Buy Chief Ethics Officer Kathleen Edmond—whom we profiled a few years ago—apologized to the blog’s readers that her ethics commentary had gone silent. “I’m sure some of my peers in the industry suspected Best Buy finally clamped down because my posts had become too risky. The truth is much more ironic and mundane: I was hacked.”
So…here’s a question that has an ethical flair – Is it ethical, as a corporate officer, to work outside of the corporate structure (IT in this case) in order to have autonomy in your expression or voice? Schuman’s article goes on to say:
“The freeware and $30 per month hosting service I used worked great until the site was suddenly victimized by a nasty virus sometime in March. Thankfully, my friends in IT stepped in. They quickly took my URL under their wing and helped me shutter the corrupted blog while they built a new KathleenEdmond.com site on an ‘official’ Best Buy server. I now have the best of both worlds. My blog still functions independently and is freely accessible on the Internet but is backed up by the full IT horsepower of Best Buy Co., Inc.,” she posted, adding: “Of all the websites to become the target of someone’s misguided talents, they chose a freeware blog about business ethics? Nonetheless, that is exactly what happened.”
The honesty is refreshing and appreciated. Likewise, because of Edmond’s transparency we can learn a valuable lesson. Thanks to Kathleen Edmond for her honesty and the willingness to be open about the lessons learned. While many may not like the seeming limitations of corporate IT control…it is clear that they are there for a reason and following policy is – in the end – the best best!
YOUR COMMENTS ARE WELCOME!
Read more: http://storefrontbacktalk.com/securityfraud/best-buy-exec-sets-up-a-retail-site-outside-it-gets-hacked/
