Speaker: David Nowak

Abstract: The public sector is increasingly targeted by cyber-attacks resulting in cyber crises disrupting public services. This talk presents a study on how a large-scale cyber crisis impacted trust relationships between a breached IT provider and its customer base of public sector organizations. We present results from 42 interviews across three waves in affected municipalities and the breached company. Through a comparative case study, we explore the interplay between cyber crisis and trust across time. We investigate how the breached IT provider utilized trust repair tactics to mitigate the negative impacts of the cyber crisis on relations to customers. We posit that cyber crises should also be viewed as trust crises and that activities to manage the cyber crisis need to occur simultaneously with trust repair activities. Results show how trust impacts evolve over time as organizational responses to the cyber crisis may provoke new negative responses. Furthermore, a lack of preparedness, overstretched customer service and conflicts of interest in the customer base exacerbated the negative impacts of the cyber crisis on relations to customers.

Short Bio: David Nowak is a PhD Candidate at the Chair for Digital Innovation and the public sector working as a part of the DFG Research Group “Digital Towns of the Future”. His research focusses on trust in the context of (digital) public services.