While sometimes controversial, whistleblowers have the potential to save an organization from millions of dollars in losses, public backlash, or government regulation—unless they are treated with disrespect and not taken seriously.
In September 2021, a senior employee at Volkswagen tried to be the good guy after discovering possible security vulnerabilities in the German auto maker’s payment platform, Volkswagen Payments SA.
The employee alerted the appropriate people that the system was “open to fraud” following a cyberattack, and claimed that $2.6 million could be stolen from company accounts, according to the Financial Times.
