Acireno Case Study
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School
Columbia Basin College *
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Course
410
Subject
English
Date
Dec 6, 2023
Type
docx
Pages
5
Uploaded by CorporalStingrayPerson587
Brenden Acireno
English 410
Original Case Study
Joe Hallard’s Training Program Due to Department Funding Cuts
Joe Hallard is a senior manager of staff for the cyber-security department at a medium-sized
company called Newgen Energy. Newgen’s primary goal is to work with city planners as well as
private contractors to either build or maintain a wide variety of electrical systems, all of which
are vital for the daily lives of everyone in the city. They are near a large river which flows
directly into the center of the city and are not a far drive from it. Joe has worked at this company
now for over 20 years, starting at the company through an internship and eventually finding his
way into a managing position in the last 5 years. Through these 20 years of experience, he has
learned that every decision is final. When something needs to be fixed, it is his responsibility,
and he cannot try to bark up the chain for help. The company and especially the Board of
Directors who put him in his position expect great things from him. Therefore, he has adapted a
“solve the issue” mentality. Before his work with Newgen, he had little to no experience in
related fields. He was studying in college at the time and took the internship as a program for his
school to not only finish his degree faster but land a comfortable job right out of school. While
comfortable, he is not lazy. Joe wishes to work his hardest and continue to grow as a person and
grow the company Newgen.
A couple of years after Joe was elected for a managerial role, he has noticed a new
company culture developing. Higher-ups have been disregarding and putting less interest into the
cyber-security division of the company. Much of his work which goes into preventative measures
against cyber breaches as well as developing new strategies for breaches goes under-appreciated
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at the company. This is largely due to a lack of attacks, which to those higher-ups in the company
is perceived as a misuse of resources. This is rather untrue, there has been evidence that their
measures have stopped breaches, but this has been overlooked. To make matters worse, the city
began contracting with other companies. Due to the company’s poor marketing efforts, they have
also received fewer private requests for the establishment of systems such as solar panels or
other grids. With little to no choice, the Board of Directors for Newgen have decided to cut
funding for their cyber-security department by a sizeable amount. Joe is contacted on the phone
about this and is absolutely furious with the Board of the company. These funds have instead
been reallocated directly to marketing, with about 20% going to both development and
manufacturing.
With their funding cut, Joe must make several important decisions which will impact
their ability to maintain secure networks for their home offices as well as their contractors.
Therefore, Joe must create a new budget and a plan on how to effectively spend the money that is
available to his department. This issue affects the entire department and the reputation of the
company. If he cannot effectively use the money available to the best of his abilities, the risk of
their services being breached increases. In the worst-case scenario, the entire company could
collapse given the legal liability that they have for their service and the information they hold
and collect. As head of his department, Joe announces to the office that their funding will be cut,
and therefore there will be many changes to their department. He states that he will work to find
the most cost-efficient and effective practices to prevent potential cyber-security risks. Joe states
that he will be working on finding a solution to the issue, and in the meantime, employees can
help if they wish by indicating the best way in which they are able to learn. Joe’s solution is to
purchase new systems, software, and tools which are cheaper to meet this budget. The current
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available resources which they use were paid for monthly, due to being used for business
practices. These tools have become too expensive for his new budget; therefore, he has had to
gut these systems and make deals with new distributors and vendors to get new tools. The
process of establishing these new systems took about a week, but once they were installed the
office was ready to go.
After installing these new systems, his employees were completely lost. While they did
already have experience in the field, there were some attributes that came with older and less
modern software which they could not understand. Unable to understand these new systems,
Joe’s staff were unable to conduct their job. This presents a new issue, now that he has dealt with
the new budget changes, his solution has presented an even newer issue which could prove to be
much more problematic. Joe must professionally train and manage his staff on these new systems
and provide them with guidance through the process. This is not an easy process. There are some
employees who learn differently from others. For example, one of these employees Jacob is a
visual learner. He cannot sit at the computer and read all the manuals and content of the new
systems and be able to apply that knowledge or even retain it. Other employees such as Emily
are more hands-on and need to type or write what they read and make notes to understand and
retain information. While Joe has managed his staff for a while, he has not established true
personal connections with them, and therefore does not understand how each of them learns.
Joe decides to create a training and development program for the new systems inside the
company. Considering his budget, Joe tries his best to use the cheapest though most effective
options at his disposal. He pays for a training software known as TestOut. TestOut is an online
training guide for software that uses methods to keep their customers engaged and to efficiently
learn. The content of the courses consists of several chapters which use articles, videos, and
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practice questions to engage the customer and regularly measure and improve their knowledge.
Joe purchases accounts for his staff and requires that they regularly use the program to
understand the new systems both while at work and while at home. This approach is much more
hands-off for Joe. It delegates the learning of the new systems to the whims of each employee
and disregards their learning styles. Joe only understands a bit of this, so using both his personal
knowledge as well as several online guides, Joe provides in person guidance of the new systems
about once or twice a week. This is done through meetings which PowerPoint and other forms of
visual learning to better engage them in the new software. Some of these meetings though are
conducted through zoom, where it is easier for staff to disregard and fail to fully engage
themselves in the meeting and the importance of learning the new systems.
Despite their efforts, a few weeks after this decision the company experiences a cyber-
breach within their services. The breach has affected their offices, the information of their
contractors and electrical systems. Information such as names, age, addresses, phone numbers,
social security numbers and credit card details were obtained by criminals who managed to
breach their servers. Information gathered by the breachers ranged from normal workers in the
company all the way to their Board of Directors. Due to these developments, Newgen’s recent
efforts to broaden their marketing campaign have failed due to the media’s coverage of the
incident. Additionally, they have received several fines, litigation and at risk of potentially losing
the right to own and operate a business.
Questions for Analysis
1.
What is the best approach which Newgen can take in order to mitigate the effects of
which the breach will have on the stability and reputation of their company?
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2.
Do you think Joe should have brought the issue of his budget with the Board of
Directors?
3.
Do you agree with Joe’s philosophy, that it is his responsibility to fix the issue? Or do you
think he should have received outside help?
4.
In your own opinion, did Joe make any poor decisions? If not, provide details as to why.
If so, how could he have handled the budget or his training of the employees differently?
5.
Was the result of the data breach due to his poor management, or do you believe that it
was inevitable since the cut to the department?
6.
What are some effective strategies which Joe could have used to prevent any of these
issues?
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