Information Security Ethics

Organizational Ethics

Organizations have been striving and scheming for years on how to best align their aims and operations. Aside from attaining their aims, one of their goals is to do business in an ethical manner. Being able to represent the company as an ethical company is a huge accomplishment that improves the company’s public relations. It provides a sense of security and dependability.

Importance of Ethics

According to Donaldson and Fafaliou (2003), ethics is a set of values that an organization subscribes to that helps the organization act in an appropriate manner while keeping the public interest in mind. It is therefore important to have every organization develop and implement ethical measures so as to safeguard stakeholder’s interest. As the business is growing and expanding it needs to develop and implement ethics so as to be able to attract and retain loyal customers and improve on the publicity of the business.

The Role of Information Technology

According to Ali, Green, and Parent (2009), information technology is one of the key pillars in the implementation of organizations. strategy. It is therefore a determinant of an organization’s success. It is therefore important to develop and implement proper ethical standards so as to ensure that organizations’ objectives are achieved in the right way. It is further noted that for ethical standards to be maintained in the organization, there should be proper communication and involvement of all the related parties within the organization.

Scenario 1

For the organization to achieve its goals and targets to serve customers, it should have a well-laid-out plan and human resources that are able and willing to implement. The organization tasks the employee with being able to serve customers in the most professional way possible. It is therefore important that the employees be accountable. The GPS system on the employee is an ethical measure as it gives the employee room to make decisions and he is able to report to the organization where he is located real time. Also, this is a good security feature that the organization could take advantage of to secure their assets and ensure that the employee is safe. Tracking also assists in ensuring that the employee is professional in all his undertakings as he knows that he will be held accountable for his actions. The unethical issue would come in if the employer uses the GPS service to intrude on the personal matters of the employee.

Scenario 2

According to the code of conduct personal data should always remain private and confidential. The main interest of this is to protect the privacy of the individuals. According to Turn and Ware (1976), security had 3 main purposes when implementing their work, to ensure that any information that they have received is in safe hands and cannot be given to third parties, to ensure that they are able to serve people as needed and to safeguard the system from any physical interference. It is therefore important that the information that has been placed in their custody by kept safe at all times. Accessing of information by a third party without proper consent would lead to a breach of security which is against the law. In this scenario, it is unethical to share the information with third parties and going against that would lead to criminal activity. I would advise my friend to consent to this before intruding. The ethical responsibility is to ensure that the information is kept private and that the system is secure. If the individual would have moved into the neighborhood I would have found a way to seek consent from the parties so as to do it in the right way.

Scenario 3

According to Chen and Popovich (2003), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a system which encourages more interaction with the customer by collecting data and analyzing the data. This is done so as to produce information which is necessary in serving the customer in a better manner and ensure customer retention and satisfaction. It is therefore ethical to collect such data so as to be able to serve the customers better. According to McKinley (2012), the CRM is a key asset to the organization because the organization can utilize this information to evaluate its performance and in product development. It is also a key asset in planning and setting targets in the organization. The ethical responsibility with the information collected is to ensure that the information remains private and confidential so that no one can access the information without consent. It is unethical to share the information with third parties without proper consent. It would be wise to seek consent so as to obtain the information in a legal and ethical manner.

References

Ali, S., Green, P., & Parent, M. (2009). The role of a culture of compliance in information technology governance. Proceedings of GRCIS, 1-14.

Chen, I. J., & Popovich, K. (2003). Understanding customer relationship management (CRM) People, process and technology. Business process management journal, 9(5), 672-688.

Donaldson, J., & Fafaliou, I. (2003). Business ethics, corporate social responsibility and corporate governance: a review and summary critique. European Research Studies, 6(1/2), 90-110.

McKinley, M. (2012). Ethical dilemmas in customer relationship management. In Ethics in Marketing and Communications (pp. 51-67). Palgrave Macmillan UK.

Turn R, Ware WH. The RAND Paper Series (1976). Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation; 1976. Privacy and security issues in information systems.