How to communicate during a security breach

With data theft on the rise, internal communicators must develop a crisis plan that includes a security awareness program

Recently, an e-mail post to the University of Missouri alumni listserv caught my eye. Usually, I ignore the posts that tend to read something along the lines of “Searching for editorial assistant at the Podunk Times.” But this e-mail—titled, “Database Hacked”—got my attention. In a few short sentences, a fellow subscriber informed the members that thousands of names and personal information of current and former Mizzou students and employees had been compromised. This led me to do a bit of research to answer the following questions:

The Missouri crisis was both an internal employee communications matter and an external public relations matter—a crisis communications doozy. So how did my dear alma mater respond in its time of crisis communication? Apparently not very well.