Components

Case Study

The Ransomware Case at Dish Network

Christopher A. Craig
February 15, 2024
SKU:
BUS-009884
Region: 
North America
Topic: 
Strategy & General Management, Ethics & Social Justice
Length: 
3 pages
Keywords: 
ethics, strategy, Corporate Strategy, stakeholder theory
Copyrighted by: 
Society for Case Research
Student Price: 
$4.00 (€3.71)
Average rating: 
0

On February 23rd, 2023, Dish Network CEO Carlson made two announcements on an earnings call: (1) the company improved net income from fiscal year 2021 to 2022 by $384 million, and (2) an “internal outage” occurred, leaving shareholders on the call unable to access the Dish website and customers unable to access services (e.g., customer service, streaming). On February 27th, Dish reported to the US Securities and Exchange Commission that the “internal outage” was indeed a ransomware attack, and a company spokesperson alerted the media that the breach resulted in the extraction of customer data. What would follow was an extended outage of services and a multi-month stock slide of 49.3%. In the wake of the fallout that ensued, two questions remained: (1) was it an ethical decision to frame the breach as an “internal outage” and (2) what strategies should Dish consider to recover?  

Learning Outcomes: 

In completing this assignment, students should be able to:

1. Describe stakeholder theory;

2. Apply stakeholder theory to identify relevant stakeholders;

3. Analyze if the decision to label the breach an “internal outage” was ethical; and

4. Propose corporate-level strategies in response to fallout from the ransomware attack.