Analysis of Leadership and Management in a Data Breach Incident Report

This report analyzes a data breach incident at an accounting firm in Australia, where the author served as the general manager. The incident involved a cyber-attack that compromised customer data, leading to legal and reputational issues. The report details the author's response, utilizing the POLC (Planning, Organizing, Leading, and Controlling) framework to address the crisis. This includes engaging an IT team to assess the breach, implementing system upgrades and new security measures, providing employee training and counseling on ethical operations, leading stakeholder meetings, and conducting an investigation. The author also managed media relations through a press release. The report highlights the application of leadership and management strategies in mitigating the impact of the data breach and maintaining the firm's integrity.

Running head: MANAGEMENT
MANAGEMENT
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author Note:

1MANAGEMENT
This particular incident is associated with the employee dissatisfaction in the
company where I have an experience of working for 2 years. It was a small accountant
company situated in a small city of Australia where I was designated as the general manager.
This firm had a great reputation among the stakeholders as it had been working ethically in
every manner for more than decades. The local government and suppliers had no issues with
the operation of this company and we had happy customers returning again and again for our
service. This is due to the fact that our firm had no bad reputation or any incident of
corruption regarding financial aid to the customers. The problem emerged when the incident
of data breathing through cyber hacking happened in our firm and the hackers had accessed
all the personal information of our customers. This incident within a moment was highlighted
in local media which led to have legal issues from the part of the stakeholders.
As a manager of this firm, I had to face numerous issues both from the customers as
well as the employees. I had to answer the government and media for the unethical incident
associated with my firm. In this matter I followed the method of planning, organising,
leadership and controlling or POLC to get rid of this problem and take punitive measure to
the criminal. First, I planned to engage an IT team who will let me understand how much
vulnerable these data of the customers actually were. They had also let me understand the
actual place from where the data has been hacked. Then I planned to arrange an upgrading
program of all the systems as well as employed a new kind of security measures to prevent
this issue from taking place again.
Then I organised a training process as well as counselling seminar so that the
importance of ethical operations from the part of the employees, needed in working for an
account accounted firm, can be attained. Through these, the employees will be able to
manage this data from unknowingly revealing to the third party. As a leader, I also took part
in this seminar or training process and try to motivate the employees who were losing their

2MANAGEMENT
inspiration for working in such a firm. I gave him all the needed resources as well as moral
support so that they can come out of this terrible situation. I also arranged meetings with the
board members and other stakeholders so that the company have everything transparent
before the stakeholders. To control the situation, I employed and investigation team for
finding out the employee or other persons associated with this data breach. The media was on
the other hand requesting to reveal the actual incident otherwise they would publish authentic
data each and every day. Therefore, I controlled their actions by arranging a press release
with the local journalists. Thus, I proved myself to be a potent leader and manager working
for positive outcome of an institution.