Public Relations Campaign Overview
September 18, 2007
Company Overview and PR Issue
Riordan Manufacturing is a wholesale manufacturer that sells plastic to government agencies, car manufacturers and beverage companies among others. Currently, Riordan Manufacturing is an industry leader not only because of its extensive book of business but also because of its cutting edge designs and high quality.
The company was founded in 1991 by Dr. Riordan, a professor of chemistry who had previously worked with plastics and had several patents under his belt. By 1992 Riordan had acquired a couple of contracts which continued to expand to where the company stands today. By 2000 the company went global with a new production facility in China.
The company has facilities globally and conducts business primarily via the telephone and internet. Riordan has a team of sales people that handle specific contracts and has free reign on how to maintain and grow their accounts. Each facility holds their own customer information in a separate data base. Clients are given a log on and passwords to access the Riordan website and place orders, change orders, pay invoices, and update their information.
This year, Riordan began a customer information consolidation project that took all the information from the separate data bases and places it all into one central holding tank to make data tracking easier. The objective was to be able to run company wide reports for sales numbers and ordering history among others.
Unfortunately, during the transfer of this information there was a leak. Some customer information was stolen. Sign on and passwords, credit card information, and customer’s personal information. As an immediate fix, a new security patch was added to the database and customer’s were not notified of the issue but were advised to change their passwords as a preventive measure. After a few weeks sales representatives began getting calls regarding...