Interactive Activity: Navigating an Ethical Dilemma

This activity presents you with a series of realistic management scenarios involving human, legal and ethical dimensions of cyber security. For each scenario, you are asked to work through a structured analysis before sharing your conclusions in the discussion forum. The goal is not to arrive at a single correct answer but to develop the habit of ethical reasoning that is essential for responsible management in a digital environment.

The Scenarios

Scenario A: The Oversharing Employee

Tariq is a manager at a retail organisation in the Middle East. He discovers that a member of his team, Layla, has been using her personal WhatsApp account to share customer order information with colleagues when the company’s internal messaging system is slow. The information shared includes customer names, addresses and order details. Layla has been doing this for several months. She is a well-regarded and genuinely helpful team member who sees the practice as a practical solution to a real operational problem.

• What are the legal and regulatory implications of Layla’s practice? Consider data protection law, the principle of purpose limitation and the obligation to report a potential breach.
• What are the ethical dimensions of this situation from Layla’s perspective, from the perspective of the customers whose data has been shared, and from Tariq’s perspective as her manager?
• How should Tariq address this situation with Layla? Consider how to balance accountability with fairness, and how to avoid creating a precedent that deters others from raising similar issues in future.
• What systemic issues does this situation reveal, and what should Tariq escalate beyond his immediate response to Layla?

Scenario B: The Monitoring Proposal

Selin is a mid-level manager at a financial services company in Turkey. Her organisation’s security team is proposing to deploy a software tool on all employee laptops that will capture screenshots every ten minutes, log all website visits, monitor all email content and track application usage, in response to a recent insider threat incident that resulted in a significant data breach. The proposal will apply to all employees regardless of their role or seniority. Selin has been asked for her views before the proposal goes to the board.

• Apply the ethical framework from Step 4 of this week’s learning to evaluate the proposal. Is the monitoring proportionate, transparent, purposefully limited and respectful of dignity?
• What are the legal considerations that would apply in your jurisdiction or in a jurisdiction you are familiar with? Are there data protection law requirements that would affect how this monitoring could be implemented?
• What would you recommend Selin say to the board? Draft the key points of her input, addressing both the security case and the ethical and practical concerns.
• Is there an alternative approach to insider threat management that would achieve the security objective more proportionately?

Scenario C: The Departing Employee

Jonas is a manager at a manufacturing company in Germany. A senior member of his team, Maria, has just resigned to join a direct competitor. Jonas is aware that Maria has had access to commercially sensitive pricing models, customer contracts and supplier agreements throughout her employment. On her last day, Jonas notices that Maria has saved a large number of files to a personal USB drive and has forwarded several documents from her work email to her personal email address.

• What immediate actions should Jonas take, and what should he not do? Consider the principles of evidence preservation from Week 4 alongside the ethical dimensions of the situation.
• What are the legal dimensions of this situation, both in terms of data protection law and in terms of Jonas’s obligations as a manager?
• How should Jonas approach the conversation with Maria? What tone is appropriate, what should he say, and what should he avoid?
• What does this situation reveal about the organisation’s offboarding processes and access management controls, and what should Jonas recommend be changed?

Sharing Your Analysis

Choose at least one of the three scenarios and work through the questions in writing. Share your analysis in the course discussion forum. As you engage with other learners’ responses, pay particular attention to how cultural context, national legal frameworks and organisational norms shape different approaches to the same ethical questions. The diversity of perspectives in this global learning community is particularly valuable in a week that addresses the deeply contextual dimensions of human, legal and ethical responsibility.