Ashley Madison Security Hack could Destroy Business | Crisis Communications

Ashley Madison Security Hack could Destroy Business | Crisis Communications

Ashley Madison, a website created to facilitate secretive and adulterous relationships, just had the data on its 37 million users stolen.

Oops!

It’s hard to imagine how this breach of security won’t destroy the company, which had been planning on going public within the next year.

If your brand stands for protecting privacy of users in order to make sure no one else knows what they’ve been up to, then you’d better deliver.

I would hate to be head of corporate communications, investor relations, or client relations at Ashley Madison on the day all the names and address are released.

So how would a savvy CEO at Ashley Madison spin his way out of this one? I frankly don’t know. I think the site would have to essentially start from scratch and build an entirely new clientele made up of people who don’t read the news.

In the modern day, only a fool would trust his/her data to remain secret, if that secret is considered interesting to anyone else.