Case Study: After a Crisis, Who Should Take the Fall?

by 亚娜·赛吉斯（Jana Seijts）

The four weeks since hackers had attacked his company had been the most stressful of Jake Santini’s career. Sitting at his kitchen table after another long day of meetings and interviews, the CEO read the e-mail from his board chair again, this time out loud to his wife, Fleura:

“It’s the strong feeling of the board that someone needs to be held publicly responsible for what happened. While we’re confident that the issue has been handled, we feel this is a critical step in making amends with our customers and restoring our image in the public eye.”

公司遭到黑客攻击后的四个星期，是CEO杰克·圣蒂尼职业生涯中最难熬的一段日子。又一个被会议和访谈塞满的漫长工作日过去，杰克坐在厨房桌旁，又一次读起公司董事会主席写来的电子邮件，这次他是大声读给妻子弗洛拉听的：“董事会强烈感到须有人出面公开表示为此事负责。我们相信问题已得到解决，但我们认为，为弥补与客户的关系、重建公众形象，公开表态十分必要。”

The board chair, Carly Elliot, had been a director at SimplePay, an Austin-based mobile-payment processor, since its days as a start-up. She and Jake had always worked well together, so he was a little taken aback that she was sending an e-mail about something so sensitive rather than calling him.

SimplePay公司位于美国奥斯丁市，经营手机付款业务。公司现任董事会主席卡莉·埃利奥特自初创之日起便担任董事，已与杰克共事多年，合作愉快。这次她选择发电子邮件而非打电话讨论这样敏感的事，令杰克有些吃惊。

Fleura shook her head. “When she says, ‘someone,’ does she mean you?”

弗洛拉摇摇头：“她说‘须有人出面’是指你吗？

“I don’t know. When the hack first happened, she made it clear that she didn’t want me to resign,” Jake said.

“She just wants someone to,” Fleura said, yawning. He felt bad about keeping her up—she had to catch a plane early the next morning—but she’d insisted on staying up a few more minutes and talking it through.

“她就是想找个人辞职顶罪而已。”弗洛拉打了个呵欠。杰克有些愧疚：弗洛拉明天要早起赶飞机，不该耽搁她休息的。但她坚持要把当下的问题讨论清楚再去睡觉。

“Whether or not you have a job next week matters to me,” she said, only half joking. “Seriously, why is Carly blowing this out of proportion? This isn’t a Target situation.”

“下星期你失没失业，对我来说很重要，”弗洛拉半开玩笑地说，“说认真的，卡莉干嘛这么大动干戈，又不像Target那次那么严重？”（2013年12月，美国大型连锁零售商Target数据库安全漏洞被黑客利用，导致众多用户银行卡及其他个人信息泄露，受影响用户逾7000万人——译者注）

She was right. Although SimplePay processed millions of credit card transactions a day through an app that enabled merchants to accept payments by tablet or phone, the hackers had infiltrated just one database, which held only consumers’ e-mail addresses. They hadn’t gotten financial details or any other identifiers.

弗洛拉说得没错。SimplePay应用软件让商家在手机或平板电脑上接受付款，每天处理上百万笔信用卡转账；黑客入侵的只是一个保存用户电子邮箱地址的数据库，财务及其他认证信息并未泄露。

Still, it had been an alarming security breach.

尽管如此，这次事件依然暴露了一个令人担忧的安全漏洞。

The company had been forced to take its system down for 42 hours, notify all 10 million affected consumers, and issue a public apology. Tech bloggers had jumped all over the story; many speculated that SimplePay had begun to slow its hiring and scrimp on security investments in an effort to spiff up its balance sheet for a potential IPO. Some of that was true. The plan was to go public next year, and Jake and his CFO had been trying to cut costs, but they had mostly spared the IT group. They knew that technology (and the staff to support it) was the company’s bread and butter. His head of PR, Michelle Perez, had issued statements to that effect but had trouble controlling the story.

公司被迫将系统关闭42小时，向1000万受影响用户发布通知，并且公开道歉。技术行业博主纷纷就此事大做文章，不少人推测SimplePay开始放缓招聘速度、缩减安全开支，借此粉饰资产负债表，准备上市。这种猜测并不全错。公司计划明年上市，这段时间杰克与首席财务官一直致力于缩减开支，可是并未压缩IT部门预算。他们深知技术及相关支持人员乃是公司命脉。公司公关主管米歇尔·佩雷斯已发表声明表达了这样的意思，却难以力挽舆论狂澜。

Twitter trolls had piled on, mocking SimplePay for taking nearly two days to recover from a simple hack, but Jake’s CIO, Jesse Gladstone, insisted that his team needed that much time to fully patch the vulnerability and close any access the hackers had. The IT group had been working around the clock ever since to locate and fix any other potential holes and implement new security measures.

推特上炸开了花，群嘲SimplePay居然花了快两天才从一次小小的黑客攻击中缓过劲来，但公司首席信息官（CIO）杰西·格拉德斯通坚持表示，他的团队就是需要这么长时间来关闭黑客持有的所有权限，并对安全漏洞进行全面修复。IT部门自遭受攻击以来便加班加点，寻找并逐一消除隐患，实施新的安全措施。

“She’s making a big deal of it because it was serious,” Jake said.

“她把这事看得很大，因为情况很严重。”杰克说。

“I know that,” Fleura said. “But insisting on a scapegoat seems over the top. If she doesn’t want you out, who is she talking about then? Jesse?”

“我知道，”弗洛拉说，“但非要找个替罪羊好像也过分了吧。要是她不想让你走，那她说的是谁？杰西？”

Jake cringed. The idea of asking his CIO to leave under these circumstances was untenable. Besides, he was proud of how Jesse and everyone else at SimplePay had handled the situation. Perhaps the response had been a bit slow, but they’d all done the best they could with the team they had and the money available.

杰克无言以对。在这种情况下，让CIO辞职谢罪是说不通的。况且这次杰西和公司其他人对事故的处理颇令他感到骄傲。响应速度也许是有点慢，但他们在现有人力物力条件下竭尽全力做到了最好。

“Chances are that Carly’s just the designated messenger for the rest of the board. I’m sure someone else is behind this,” Jake said.

“可能卡莉只是替其他董事传个话。这肯定是别人的意思。”杰克说。

“Like Theo,” Fleura said, getting up from the table. Ever since Theo Conrad, a prominent tech investor, had joined the board, he’d been a thorn in Jake’s side, challenging him on all but the most routine decisions. At the most recent emergency board meeting, he wouldn’t stop harping on the fact that 30% of SimplePay’s customers hadn’t used the app since the hack.

“比如特奥。”弗洛拉说着，从桌边站起身。特奥·康拉德是一位杰出的技术投资人，自从加入董事会以来就一直跟杰克作对，几乎时时质疑杰克身为CEO做出的决定。上次董事会紧急开会的时候，特奥反复唠叨着有30%的用户自黑客事件后便不再使用SimplePay应用这一事实。

“They simply don’t trust us anymore,” he’d said. “And Wall Street won’t either unless we’re completely clear about what we’re changing to make sure this never happens again.”

“他们不再信任我们了，”特奥在会上说，“华尔街证交所也不会相信我们了，除非我们彻底搞清楚要采取什么措施才能保证以后永远不再发生这种事。”

Jake turned from his laptop to watch Fleura as she headed upstairs. “Say something else,” he called after her. “Theo’s name can’t be the last thing I hear tonight.”

“Try to get some rest, honey,” she said from the stairs.

杰克将目光从笔记本电脑屏幕上移开，看看弗洛拉，她要上楼去了。“说点儿别的，”他在她身后叫道，“我可不高兴今晚听到的最后一句话是特奥的名字。”“尽量休息一下吧，亲爱的。”她在楼梯上说。

Jake smiled but knew he probably wouldn't.

杰克笑了笑，心里却知道自己休息不了。

It's All Under Control Now

回归正轨？

The next morning, Jake met Michelle and Jesse at Bouldin Creek Cafe at 7:30 am.

次日清晨，杰克在博丁溪咖啡店同杰西和米歇尔会面，时值7点30分。

“You don’t look good, Jake,” Michelle said when she sat down. “It’s time to start sleeping again. The worst is behind us.”

“你脸色不太好，杰克，”米歇尔落座时说，“别熬了，该睡一觉了。最糟的已经过去了。”

“I'm afraid that might not be the case,” he said, stirring two packs of sugar into his double caffè macchiato. “We’re not yet back to our prehack transaction numbers, and new customer acquisitions have all but halted. I know it’s only been a month, and things were slow before the breach, but we need to get things back on track soon.”

“恐怕还没有，”杰克边说边往自己的双份咖啡玛奇朵里加了两包糖，“我们的交易量还没有回到黑客事件前的水平，新用户数也停滞了。我知道现在才不过一个月，而且为了修补漏洞，其他事务都暂且放缓。但我们得尽快回到正轨。”

“As far as PR goes, we've got it under control now,” Michelle said. She ticked off all the things the company had done right since the breach: immediately contacting people whose information had been compromised and presenting a clear, consistent message to customers, social media, and the press. Michelle had recommended that the company apologize but focus on the hackers as the ones responsible. Within the organization, she'd also started to downplay the severity of the breach, but Jake had told her to stop. He worried that the sentiment was leaking into her external messaging. “We just can't forget that this was a big deal, Michelle,” he said.

“就公关而言，现在我们已经掌控了局面。”米歇尔说。她简单讲了公司对黑客事件的妥善应对：迅速与信息安全受损的用户取得联系，并向用户、社交媒体和评论界传达清晰一致的信息。此前米歇尔建议公司道歉，但要着重强调责任方是黑客。在公司内部，她也试图淡化事件的严重程度，不过被杰克叫停，因为杰克担心那种轻描淡写的态度会反应在她对外传达的信息中。“我们不能忘了这是件大事，米歇尔。”他说。

“Of course, it was,” Michelle responded. “But I really think it’s almost over. My phone isn’t constantly beeping at me anymore. And Kara Swisher told me yesterday that, in one sense, we should think of the hack as a badge of honor. We’re now big enough to be considered an attractive target.”

“当然是大事，”米歇尔答道，“可我真的觉得这件事差不多已经过去了。我的电话不会再响个不停。昨天卡拉·斯威舍还跟我说，从某种意义上讲，我们应该把被黑看作一种荣誉。现如今我们公司已经大到能被黑客当作攻击目标了。”

She smiled; Jake and Jesse didn't.

米歇尔笑了，杰克和杰西却没有笑。

“And Jesse's on top of security,” she continued. “We've got the 'latest, and most comprehensive, data security measures.’ Right?”

“而且有杰西主持安全事宜，”米歇尔接着说，“我们就能得到‘最新、最全面的数据安全保障’，对吧？”

“We're getting there,” the CIO answered, staring into his coffee. Jesse had been sleeping at the office. He was a perfectionist, which made him good at his job, but in the wake of this crisis, his insistence on getting everything just right was stalling their response. While Jake and Michelle were chomping at the bit to promote the new security upgrades—a hasty yet significant and necessary investment—Jesse was still in testing mode.

“我们在为此努力。”杰西盯着自己的咖啡回答。这几天他都睡在办公室。他是个完美主义者，工作出类拔萃，但在这次危机中，他对完美的执着拖慢了反应速度。杰克与米歇尔急着推动新的安全措施升级，在这方面投资虽操之过急但实属必要，而杰西却仍在做测试。

“When will the new features be up and running?” Jake asked.

“We need another day or two,” Jesse answered.

“新性能要等到什么时候才能正式推出？”杰克问。

“我们还需要一到两天。”杰西回答。

“Perfect,” Michelle said, a forced cheerfulness in her voice. “We can issue the release by the end of the week and include an update on the FBI investigation, too. And then our sales team can start to work their magic, and we can get back to business as usual. We’ve got an IPO to prepare for, after all.”

“很好，”米歇尔的声音强作欢喜，“我们可以在本周末发布新版本，还能顺带给FBI调查提供新信息。然后就看销售团队大显神通，我们马上就能回归正轨。毕竟还要准备上市呢。”

Jake wondered if that was why the board was pushing so hard for a resignation: Wall Street needed a pat ending to SimplePay’s hacking story before the company could embark on a road show.

杰克想，这大概就是董事会急着逼人辞职顶罪的原因：在SimplePay上市亮相前，这次黑客事件要有个利落的结尾给证交所看。

Heads Must Roll

必须要有人谢罪？

“I'm sorry that so much of this is playing out over e-mail,” Carly said to Jake when they met at her office later that afternoon. “I know this isn't easy.” She explained that a significant majority of the board members felt that a public gesture was necessary to demonstrate how seriously SimplePay took the breach.

“真是抱歉，这次很多事都用邮件说，”当天下午杰克去卡莉的办公室，卡莉如此说道，“我知道很不容易。”她解释说，绝大多数董事认为有必要公开表态，表现出SimplePay对待安全漏洞问题的严肃态度。

“But we've done that. We explained exactly what happened and how we/re responding.”

“但我们已经做到了。我们清楚解释了黑客事件始末以及我们的应对措施。”

“It's that last part that the board is concerned about. What changes are we making to ensure that our customers trust us completely again? At Target, the CIO and then the CEO resigned. When TJX had its breach in 2007, it was a director and an SVP. They've set the precedent. We need to do something similar so that we can put this episode behind us. SimplePay is—was—the market leader in the mobile-pay space because of its reputation for being reliable and secure. Our success is based on trust. This incident has completely eroded that.”

“董事会关心的不是解释，而是我们要做出怎样的改变才能保证重新赢得用户全然的信任。Target那次，CIO和CEO都辞职了。2007年TJX公司爆出安全漏洞，也有一名高管和一位高级副总裁引咎辞职。有这些先例在前，我们就得采取相似的措施才能了结这件事。SimplePay一直是手机支付领域的佼佼者，迄今为止这份成功全是靠着我们安全可靠的声誉得来的。我们成功的根基是信任，而这次事故毁了这份信任。”

She wasn't wrong. The customer service department had been flooded with questions about security, and although the company had expected some level of merchant attrition, defections had been much greater than expected. And they weren't tapering off.

卡莉说的没错。对安全问题的质疑已经淹没了客服部门。公司预料到会有一部分商家退出，但实际损失的用户早已大大超出预想，而且仍然在继续流失。

Carly pulled out her phone. “Did you see the study from this group, Interactions, that Theo sent around last night? ‘Twelve percent of customers say they would stop shopping at a retailer that had a security breach; about 36% say they would be less frequent patrons. About 85% of shoppers who have had their personal information stolen say they tell others about the incident; 34% complain on social media, and 20% comment directly on the company’s website.’”

卡莉拿起手机：“你看到交互团队做的调研结果了吗？特奥昨晚发的。‘12%的用户说他们会停止在有安全漏洞的零售商处购物，约36%的人表示他们会减少去购物的次数。在个人信息被盗的购物者中，约85%的人说他们把这件事告诉了别人，34%的人会在社交媒体上抱怨，20%的人直接在公司网页上发表评论。’”

“And all that goes away if we fire someone?” Jake asked, getting annoyed. “That’s not what happened with Target. Their stock dropped 3% the week that Steinhafel resigned.”

“那炒掉个把人就能把这些问题都解决了？”杰克开始不耐烦了，“Target炒了人也没解决，他们的股票在斯坦海佛辞职的那个星期下跌了3%。”

“They acted too late. He should've left much sooner. Besides, the shares have now jumped 30% under the new CEO, to all-time highs. Everyone loves a fresh start after a disaster—analysts, pundits, customers,” Carly responded.

“他们动作太慢了。斯坦海佛应该早点走。而且现在他们的股票在新CEO带领下飙升了30%，创历史新高。经历过一场灾难后，分析家、评论人、客户等等都想有个全新的开始，大家都这么觉得。”卡莉说。

“But that's not always necessary. Look at Zendesk, LivingSocial. They survived hacks without firing anyone.”

“但也不一定总得这样吧。瞧瞧Zendesk和LivingSocial，他们没炒人，照样度过了黑客风波。”

“But our business isn’t recovering. We need to make a statement—not just new technology, new people.”

“但眼下我们的情况没有好转。我们需要公开表态，只是启用新技术、新人员还不够。”

“So heads must roll?” Jake asked.

“Just one head.”

“所以必须有人牺牲？”杰克问。

“一个就够了。”

“Well, then, it should be me,” Jake said, unsure that he believed what he was saying. “We’ve got a strong team in place. I leave, the statement is made, loud and clear, and then you all can get things back in order in time for the IPO.”

“好吧，那理应是我，”杰克并不确定真的相信自己所说的话，“我们已经有了强大的团队，只要我一走，公司态度明明白白摆出来，你们就能重新回到正轨，赶上公司上市的时间。”

“It doesn’t have to be you,” Carly responded.

“If not me, then who?” Jake asked.

“不一定非得是你。”卡莉说。

“不是我，那还有谁？”杰克问。

She told him that Jesse's name had come up first; after all, it was his systems that had been breached and his team that had been so slow to get the service back online. As a leader, Jesse had been a bit shaky under all the pressure. But a few board members had also pointed to Michelle; had she immediately grasped the severity of the situation and gotten out well ahead of the story, trust in SimplePay might not have dipped so low.

卡莉说，第一人选是杰西，毕竟是他做的系统有漏洞、他的团队修复速度太慢。身为领导者，杰西在面临压力时不够沉稳。也有一些董事提出，米歇尔应当负责，假如当初她能迅速意识到事态严重性，赶在起风波前迅速采取措施，SimplePay也许就不会遭遇如此严重的信任危机。

“How would firing Michelle help fix anything? She may have not handled this perfectly, but letting her go won't allay any customer concerns. And you know as well as I do that Jesse isn't fully to blame for the situation. No IT team can predict every vulnerability or patch every hole. He did his job as best he could.”

“解雇米歇尔能解决什么问题？她可能是处理得不够妥当，但让她离职根本于事无补。至于杰西，你我都清楚，现在的情况不能怪他。IT团队不可能预先把系统做得滴水不漏。他为工作尽职尽责了。”

“Listen, you've been a great leader, sticking up for them all along, even when they didn't deserve it,” Carly said. “But the board has made up its mind. Someone's got to go.”

“听我说，你是一位非常杰出的领导者，始终如一地维护他们，无论他们是否值得你这么做，”卡莉说，“可是董事会已经做了决定。必须有人离职。”

Take One For the Team?

注定要牺牲？

Jake typed the letter out on his phone:

Please rest assured that this decision was not easy, but in light of recent events, I have decided that my stepping down is in the best interest of SimplePay and its customers.

杰克在手机上写了这封邮件：

这个决定并非轻率之举，请各位放心。鉴于最近事态发展，为维护SimplePay公司及客户的利益起见，我已决定离职。

While I cannot take any personal responsibility for this incident, it happened on my watch. As the company's CEO, I am ultimately responsible and thus resign from my position, effective immediately—mostly because the board is making me do it.

我诚然无法为此次事故负任何个人责任，但此事乃是在我任职期间发生。身为CEO，我理应为此负责，并就此辞去职务，即时生效——当然我这么做主要是屈从于董事会的意思。

He pressed send, and 20 seconds later his phone rang. It was Fleura, calling from her hotel room in San Francisco.

杰克按下发送键，过了20秒，手机响了。远在旧金山的弗洛拉从酒店房间打来电话。

“Why in the world are you up at midnight writing a fake resignation letter?” she asked. “I do love the last line, though. If only every shamed CEO admitted that the board made him do it. But seriously, honey, you're not resigning, are you? You love your job.”

“大半夜的你搞这么一封假惺惺的辞职信干嘛？”她质问道，“虽然我很喜欢你写的最后一句，要是所有颜面扫地的CEO都承认是被董事会逼迫辞职的就好了。不过说真的，亲爱的，你不会辞职，对吧？你热爱你的工作。”

This was true. At the helm of SimplePay, Jake was happier than he'd ever been, and he certainly didn't want to give up the opportunity to lead his first IPO. But he couldn’t imagine making anyone else the scapegoat.

是的。领导SimplePay为杰克带来前所未有的愉悦，而且他当然不想放弃第一次带领公司上市的大好机会。可是他无法想象让其他任何人做替罪羔羊。

“How did it feel typing it out?”

“Terrible,” he admitted. “I’m not ready to go, but maybe I have to take one for the team.”

“这么写出来感觉怎么样？”

“糟透了，”杰克坦言，“我不想离开，但为了整个团队，我大概不得不让某个人离开。”