Some of the main ethical issues facing information technology (IT) are: On the other hand, some developed countries are also known for software piracy, with Russia and the United States being the two most notorious. A crippling factor of software piracy is felt not only by software companies such as Microsoft, McAfee or Apple, but also by the users themselves. Most reverse engineering software contains Trojans and viruses that create security holes and generally make it difficult for IT security professionals to understand where an attack is coming from. As a result, business emergency locations such as business continuity plans and backup procedures may take a different turn and have higher failure rates as the software may not work as expected. IT emergency planning can also seem like an inviting attempt for IT professionals to back up or hack important software, which is illegal and still has legal implications despite the non-malicious intent. The business community is committed to ensuring that its activities are fully compliant with legal and ethical regulations. As the latter is very versatile and unpredictable, a rather delicate situation arises, which does not guarantee a fine line between good and evil. The issue of surveillance and violation of workers` right to privacy has been derailed, when a person signs a contract, it implies that during working hours, all personal motives must be changed, paying full attention to professional goals. Therefore, everything that is done during working hours must be in the interest of the organization and not the individual. As a result, it is therefore very justified for companies to use monitoring methods to track what each employee is doing. This can range from using surveillance cameras to check people`s physical availability to using application software that monitors computer activity via audit trails. Such software may have an incident alert feature that can alert the response team in the event of an adverse event. Technological innovations have significantly enhanced the workforce by simplifying everyday tasks.
The complexity of managing information security is that it poses an insider threat. The information explosion means that people have huge amounts of information at their fingertips, allowing an ordinary person to pose a threat. Using a Google search can lead to security hacks of specific software/hardware that has been implemented to enhance security. Who is wrong here, the publisher of this information or the person who uses it to his advantage? Where should the line be drawn? Information technology specifies the components used to store, retrieve, and manipulate information at the minimum level, with the server having an operating system. Information technology has a wide range of applications in education, business, health, industry, banking and large-scale scientific research. With advanced advances in information technology, it is necessary to have the knowledge about security issues, privacy issues and the main negative effects of computing. In order to deal with these issues in the IT society, it is important to learn about ethical issues. When it comes to copyright infringement within the workforce, organizations are obligated to ensure that none of their employees violate intellectual property laws in order to support their personal tasks or efforts. This ranges from downloading music, e-books, podcasts, movies, and other digital media from websites that don`t comply with copyright protection. In most cases, the culprits of such unruly behavior are the IT professionals themselves, it is much easier for an IT professional to illegally obtain digital content while ensuring complete camouflage during the act. By using their skills to bypass enterprise detection systems, IT professionals can cause more damage in terms of ethical and legal violations. A perfect example is downloading software that has been adapted to certain preferences.
This violates both copyright and intellectual property law and can be very costly once authorities discover such acts. Therefore, it is imperative that individuals and the organization they work for comply with legal and ethical regulations to the highest standards. The biggest information security issues that raise legal and ethical concerns are primarily insider threats. Employees of organizations must be well informed about the impact and preventive measures involved in work ethic. By demonstrating to the masses the knowledge needed to maintain acceptable behavior, financial costs can be significantly limited by internal sources and external parties. Training employees on a company`s security policies and how they can influence their behavior at daily work is useful for optimizing the company`s core values with personal and professional activities. An important but often overlooked aspect of ethics in the workplace is the cultural factor. As the world is a global village and people from developing countries travel to the West, issues of culture and automated business environment have raised major concerns.
This diversity of workforce backgrounds further complicates the question of what is ethical and what is not. For example, in the eyes of Western culture, most Africans and Asians use pirated software. Among Asians, their traditions of collective ownership clash with intellectual property laws. Mentioned in African National Reporter (2011), “The commercial value of unlicensed software installed on PCs in East and Southern Africa (ESA), excluding South Africa, reached $109 million in 2010, with 83% of software deployed on PCs during the year being pirated.” One of the factors behind this high rate of piracy is that most African countries are relaxed with restrictions on copies of intellectual property. For example, it is common in Zambia to find pirated application and system software that works as a result of illegal reverse engineering optimizations that bypass registrations or subscriptions for activation. Zambian regulators such as the Government`s Ministry of Information Technology, the Zambia Information and Communication Technology Authority (ZICTA) and the Computer Society of Zambia have failed to ensure that piracy is eliminated at the national level. As a result, the few masses who master computers have illegitimate software used for commercial purposes. This creates a problem when these people work in the diaspora, where serious consequences are imposed for personal and corporate violations. As for pirates; The business community should ensure that its IT staff is adequately trained to implement world-class security measures. A comprehensive risk assessment and emergency response team must be available to minimize the after-effects of an intrusion, which may have legal implications. Hospital information systems that contain large amounts of confidential patient information are required by law to secure their information.
In other words, any disclosure of unauthorized patient information through unforeseen events is always detrimental to health care providers. PART OF THE NEW JONES & BARTLETT LEARNING INFORMATION SYSTEMS SECURITY & ASSURANCE SERIES! Network. There are also live online events, interactive content, certification preparation materials, and more. Get full access to legal issues in information security and 60K+ other titles with O`Reilly`s 10-day free trial.