Page 8 - Short Cases 1 PWC Bullying an interesting approach to cyber bullying Teaching Note

Q3 PricewaterhouseCoopers acted in a short-sighted
fashion in trying to thwart the publication of ESNC’s

findings.

A3 ESNC operates to a responsible disclosure policy

publicly credited by SAP. A cease and desist order

and the implied threat of being sued, would in-of-

itself negate the raison d’etre of ESNC.

PWC seems to have acted in a knee-jerk manner,

seeing only the immediate potential impact on the

company rather the potential time-bomb waiting to

go off. Moreover, if it did explode it would have far

greater consequences on PWC as the company had

prior knowledge of its existence.

It may well be that the actions of PWC were based

on ESNC not being a company that had

authorisation or access to a license to use PWC’s

software and that ESNC were not entitled to warn
PWC. Moreover, the problem was hypothetical and

an unlikely scenario.

PWC did not sue ESNC

Q4 At the heart of the case study is the freedom of

security researchers publishing their findings.

A4 The World Wide Web Consortium standard,

Encrypted Media Extensions aimed at integrating

globally Digital Rights Management into browsers

carries with it the threat that if security researchers

come forward with reports of defects, they may be