Symantec's management structure and ethical responsibilities in cybersecurity

¶ … technology improved and became one of the standard paradigms for globalization, so did the idea of cyber theft and cyber-crime. Since 1985, cyber-crime has been increasing along with advances in computer technology. In fact, there is an entire new legal industry focused on uncovering and prosecuting cybercrime. Federal, State and Local Agencies are attempting to curtail Cybertheft by implementing joint initiatives. Frankly, the issue of cyber theft has the potential of affecting more individuals than any other single criminal activity since cyberspace is real -- and so are the risks (The Impact, 2010).

One company, Symantec, is a Fortune 500 organization founded in 1982 and located in Mountain View, California. The company, with revenues in 2012 of almost $7 billion, competes in the antivirus software industry, but is the most used certificate authority for software packages globally (Symantec.com; Usage of SSL, 2013). The company may be best known for its Norton Utilities and Anti-virus software since 2009, but 2/3 of the revenue is made from software designed for companies and large organizations, or enterprise software. In both cases, the overall operating paradigm for the company is quite complex. Symantec, unlike other software manufacturers, must make daily changes if not hourly in some cases as the market, threats, and virus replication and cyber-crime evolves. The work is 24/7, 265 days per year, and has the importance of keeping vast networks alive and uncompromised to the point that some say the company helps keep Internet commerce alive" (Burke, 2013).

This begs three very real questions about the company: 1) What kind of management/leadership structure most engenders optimum productivity in this type of organization; 2) What responsibilities does Symantec have as a multinational that other organizations may not; and, 3) What are the top managerial issues Symantec's executives face on an ongoing basis?

First, as a multinational, particularly as a multinational that deals with issues of global cyber-crime, Symantec has not only a responsibility to its customers, but to stakeholders globally that do not even realize their data is being protected by Symantec software. The ethical bar is higher, particularly from a utilitarian perspective, because stakeholders count on Enterprise servers, as well as home computers, to run the world of electronic commerce. In a similar way to BP or Exxon, Symantec's actions today affect millions of people throughout the world. If a threat shuts down banking for 2 million customers, then 10 times that amount are impacted -- thus the ethical bar is much higher than a word-processing software company. This ethical behavior moves from internal (micro) to its macro responsibilities (Symantec Corporation, 2013).