Call it a stealth attack: Attendees at this month’s AusCERT information security conference in Australia received an apologetic e-mail last week from IBM warning them that gratis promotional USB thumb drives the company distributed came installed with an unintended freebie: malware.
Talk about a crisis management case..this quote from an InformationWeek article describes a situation which has the potential for significant reputation damage to IBM. The computer giant quickly notified attendees via email, but considering that the malware in question was a key logger, a program commonly used to capture sensitive passwords, it’s unlikely that the owners of any computer where the drives may have been used will be pleased with the company. While the notification was a good start, IBM would have appeared more human and therefore reached more sympathetic ears if they had issued a public apology for the slip up.
The BCM Blogging Team
https://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/