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Ethics in Information Technology

Ethics in Information has been updated and includes new coverage on computer crime, cyber terrorism, the security risks of cloud computing, assessing the risks of IT, pros and cons of protecting government data and documents, the role of the Department of Homeland Security in securing cyberspace, computer forensics, and green computing. The fourth edition also includes new real-world examples that are presented in each chapter with new Assessment Questions, Discussion Questions, and What Would You Do exercises at the end of each chapter to confirm comprehension and understanding.

Chapter 1- An Overview on Ethics Ethics is a set of beliefs about right and wrong behavior within a society, based on individual rules fit together to form the moral code which a society lives and which organizations follow. In the business world, ethics in the work place has shot to the top of priorities due to the increase of collapses and bailouts amongst financial institutions in a result of unwise and unethical decision making in the work place. Globalization amongst organizations is leaving organizations faced with complex work environments that extents to diverse cultures and societies, making it difficult to apply principles and codes of ethics consistently. Also in the midst of the struggle of today’s economy, organizations find it difficult to maintain revenue profits which leads to the temptations of unethical behavior to maintain profits. Practicing good business ethics is only beneficial for organizations. By practicing good ethics, organizations will gain the goodwill of the community by attracting and maintaining loyal customers while supporting socially responsible activities, such as contributing to charitable organizations and providing benefits for employees. Also organization will create an organization that operates consistently by following values such as •	Operating with honesty and integrity, staying true to organizational principles. •	Operating according to standards of ethical conduct, in words and actions. •	Treating colleagues and customers with respect. •	Striving to be the best at what matters most to the organization. •	Valuing diversity. •	Making decisions based on facts and principles. Organizations also practice good ethics by fostering good business practices such as producing safe and effective products and avoiding costly recalls and lawsuits. Providing excellent service and retaining their customers instead of losing them to competitors and developing and maintaining strong employee relations which lowers turnover rates and better employee morale. Organizations want to protect the organization and its employees from legal actions. Several organizations argue that organizations should be able to escape criminal liability if they have acted as responsible corporate citizens, making strong efforts to prevent and detect misconduct in the workplace. In 1909 ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court established that an employer can be held responsible for the acts of its employees even if the employees act in a manner contrary to corporate policy and their employer’s directions. Lastly, by avoiding unfavorable publicity within the organization, the organization is also practicing good ethics. Many organizations are motivated to build a strong ethics program to avoid negative publicity.

Chapter 2- Ethics for IT Workers and IT Users The key characteristics that distinguish professionals form other kinds of workers is that they require advanced training and experience and must exercise discretion and judgment in the course of their work. Professionals work can’t be standardized. IT professional are expected to contribute to society, to participate in a lifelong training program, to keep abreast of developments in the field, and to help develop other professionals. Legally an IT professional has passed the state licensing requirements, if any, and earned the right to practice. IT workers also are not recognized as professionals because they aren't licensed by the state or federal government and aren't liable for malpractice. IT workers do still work in the professional service industry and must be aware of increased client sophistication, greater governance requirements, increased connectivity, more transparency, increased need for modularization, growing globalization greater commoditization that are now transforming the industry. While working with employers, professionals must enforce policies regarding the ethical use of IT, while working with clients the key issue usually involves defining, sharing, and fulfilling each party’s responsibility for successful completing of a project. Amongst IT workers and coworkers the key is to work together to improve the profession and demonstrating professional loyalty. Issues between IT workers and users usually involve software piracy, inappropriate use of IT resources, and inappropriate sharing of information. IT workers main goal is to maintain good relationships with employees and clients so there is nothing that can be ruled as unethical. Many people believe that the licensing and certification of IT workers would increase the reliability and effectiveness of information systems.

Chapter 3- Computer and Internet Crime Security of information technology used in business is of utmost important confidential business data and private customers and employee’s information must be safeguarded, and systems must be protected against malicious acts of theft or disruption. The balance between good business and the necessity of security is a key factor and concern due to the goal of fostering good business practices. Due to increase complexity, higher computer user expectations, expanding and changing systems, and increase reliance software with known vulnerabilities have caused a dramatic increase in the number, variety, and impact of security. Viruses, worms, Trojan horses, distributed denial- of service attacks, rootkits, spam, phishing, spear- phishing, smishing, and vishing are the most common computer exploits. Successful computer exploits can have a cost impact of more than $1 billion. Hackers, crackers, malicious insiders, industrial spy’s, cyber criminals, hacktivists, and cyber terrorists all are different kinds of computer attackers that attack for several different motivations. The USA Patriot Act, The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, The Identity Theft and Assumption Deterrence Act, The Fraud and Related Activities in Connection with Access Devices, and the Store Wired and Electronic Communication and Transaction Record Access are all laws that have been enacted to prosecute those responsible for computer related crime. The security of any system is a combination of technology, policy, and people that requires a wide range of activities such as accessing threats to organizations, computers and networks, identifying actions that address the most serious vulnerabilities and educating users about the risk involved and the actions that need to be taken to prevent security incidents. IT security groups usually include hardware and software tools to prevent security breaches. No organization can ever be completely secure from attacks because no system is perfect. Systems and procedures must be monitored to detect a possible intrusion. Organizations should conduct periodic IT security audits.

Chapter 4- Privacy Information about people is gathered, stored, analyzed, and reported because organizations can use it to make better decisions such as whether or not to hire a job candidate, approve a loan, or offer a scholarship, which affects people lives tremendously. Many people object to the data collection policies of governments and businesses on the grounds that they strip individuals of power to control their own personal information. The use of information technology in business requires balancing the needs of those who use the information that is collected against the rights desired of the people whose information is being used. A combination of approaches such as a new law, technical solutions, and privacy policies are all required to balance the scales. The Fair Credit Reporting Act, Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act, Right to Financial Privacy Act, and Gramm- Leach- Biley Act are all federal laws that provide protection for person financial data. There is no single, overarching national data privacy policy. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, The Family Educated Rights and Privacy Act, The Communications Act, Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, The Electronic Communications Privacy Act, The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, and The USA Patriot Act are all laws that protect health information, children’s personal data, and electronic surveillance. The European Union Data Protection Directive, The Freedoms of Information Act, and the Privacy Act all protect the exportation of personal data. Identity theft occurs when someone steals key pieces of personal information to impersonate a person, using data breaches, purchasing personal data, employing phishing, and installing spyware to capture personal data. Consumer data privacy has become a major marketing issue. Companies that can’t protect or don’t respect customers information have lost business and have become defendants in class in class actions stemming from privacy violations.

Chapter 5- Freedom of Expression The First Amendment protects Americans’ rights to freedom of religion and freedom of expression. The Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment also protect the right to speak anonymously, although obscene speech, defamation, incitement of panic, incitement to crime, fighting word and sedition are not protected by the First Amendment. Organizations and governments have attempted to establish policies and laws to help Internet use as well as protect their own interests. Businesses, in particular, have sought to converse corporate network capacity, avoid legal liability, and improve worker productivity by limiting the non-business use of IT resources. Freedom of Speech becomes complicated by the ease of with which children can use the internet to gain access to materials that many parents and others feel is inappropriate. It’s very difficult to limit children’s internet access without limiting adult’s access as well. Laws that made an attempt to protect children from online pornography and prohibit making harmful material available to minors via internet were ultimately ruled unconstitutional. Internet censorship is the control or suppression of the publishing or accessing of information on the internet. Speech that is annoying, critical, demeaning, or offensive are all protected by the First Amendment. Hate speech and threats result in legal actions.

Chapter 6- Intellectual Property Intellectual property is a term used to describe works of mind such as art, books, films, formulas, inventions, music, and processes that are distinct and owned or created by a person or group. If copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets are not provided, intellectual property is not protected and other companies can copy or steal them. A copyright is the exclusive rights to distribute, display, perform, or reproduce an original work in copies, prepare derivative works based on the work and grant these exclusive rights to others. The law is very flexible when it comes to new technologies such as software, video games, multimedia works, and web pages. The fair use of doctrine establishes four factors for courts to consider when deciding whether a particular use of copyright property is fair and can be allowed without penalty. The first factor is the purpose and character of the use, then the nature of the copyrighted work, the portion of the copyrighted work used, and lastly the effect of the use on the value of the copyrighted work. Patents enable an inventor to sue people who manufacture, use, or sell the invention without permission while the patent is in force. A patent also prevents copying as well as independent creation. For an invention to be eligible for a patent, it must fall into one of five statutory classes of items that can be patented. The invention must be useful, must be novel, must not be obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the same field. The trade secret law has three key advantages over the use of patents and copyrights in protecting companies from losing control of their intellectual property. With the trade secret law there are no time limitations on the protection of the trade secrets, unlike patents and copyrights, there is no need to file any applications or otherwise disclose a trade secret to outsiders to gain protection, and there is also no risk that a trade secret might be found invalid in court. Key intellectual property issues deal with plagiarism, which is to steal someone’s ideas or words and pass them off as one’s own. Also reverse engineering is the process of breaking something down in order to understand it, build a copy of it, or improve it. Open source code refers to any program whose source code is made available for use or modification, as users or other developers see fit. Competitive intelligence is legally obtained information that is gathered to help a company gain an advantage over its rivals. A trademark is a logo, package, design, phrase, sound, or word that enables a consumer to differentiate one company’s product from another’s. Cyber squatters register domain names for famous trademarks or company names to which they have no connection with the hope that the trademark owners will eventually buy the domain name for a huge sum of money.

Chapter 7- Software Development High-quality software systems are easy to learn and use. They perform quickly and efficiently to meet user’s needs. High quality software is used every day through air traffic control, nuclear power, automobile safety, health care, military and defense, and space exploration. Computers and software have become integral parts of almost every business. The demand for high quality is increasing tremendously. Since software developers are under extreme pressure to reduce the time to market in order to beat competition in delivering new functionalities to user’s, software liability claims are typically based on strict liability, negligence, breach of warranty, or misrepresentation. Software development methodology allows a manufacturer to produce high quality software, forecast project-completion milestones, and reduce the overall cost to develop and support software. It also protects manufacturers from legal liability for defective software by reducing the number of software errors and making negligence more difficult to prove. Capability Maturing Model Integration defines five levels of software development maturity which are initial, managed, defined, quantitatively managed, and optimizing. CMMI also identifies the issues that are most critical to software quality and process improvement. Its use can improve organizations ability to predict and control quality, schedule, costs, and productivity when acquiring, building, or enhancing software systems. A safety- critical system is one whose failure may cause injury or death. These systems must go through a much more rigorous and time- consuming development and testing process than other kinds of software.

Chapter 8- The Impact of Information Technology on Productivity and Quality of Life The most widely used measurement of the material standard of living is grass domestic product per capita. The standard of living has been improved over time. The United States’ rate of change varies as a result of business cycles that affect prices, wages, employment levels, and the production of goods and services. Progressive Management teams use IT, other new technology, and capital investment to implement innovations in products, processes, and services. It can be very difficult to quantify the benefits of IT investments on worker productivity because there can be a considerable lag between the application of innovation IT solutions and the capture of significant productivity gains. The digital divide is a term used to describe the gulf between those who do and those who don’t have access to modern information and technology. Healthcare costs are soaring out of control and expected to increase an average of 6.3 percent per year from today until 2019. Improved use of IT in the healthcare industry can lead to significantly reduced costs in a number of ways. Electronic health records of patients information can be generated from each patient visit in every healthcare setting, wireless technology can be used to access and update EHRs at patients bedsides, match bar coded patient wrist bands and medication packages to physician orders, and communication with healthcare employees wherever they may be are all ways technology could be used to reduce healthcare costs.

Chapter 9- Social Networking Social networking is a Web Site that creates an online community of Internet user’s that enables members to break down barriers created by time, distance, and cultures differences, and allows people to interact with others online by sharing opinions, insights, information, interests, and expressions. There is an increase in the number of business- oriented social networking sites, designed to encourage and support relationships with consumers, clients, potential employees, suppliers, and business partners around the world. Social network advertising generates conversation between viewers of ads to reach people with desired characteristics. Employers often look at the social networking Web Site profiles of job candidates when making hiring decisions. Employers are also allowed to legally reject a job applicant based on contests of the individual’s social networking profile as long as the company doesn’t violate discrimination laws. Students must be aware and review and make appropriate changes to their profiles before starting a job search. A social shopping Web Site brings shoppers and sellers together in social network environments in which members share information and make recommendations while shopping online. Cyber bullying is the harassment, torment, humiliation, or threatening of one minor by another minor or group of minors via the internet or cell phone. Approximately 20.8 percent of 10-18 year olds have experienced cyber bullying sometime in their lives. Cyber stalking is threatening behavior or unwanted advances directed at an adult using the Internet or other forms of online and electric communication. Cyber stalking is the adult version of cyber bullying. There are about 700,000 registered sex offenders in the United States and 90,000 of them were onetime members of MySpace. Many social networking Web Sites have policies against uploading violent or obscene material, however these policies are very difficult to enforce. Virtual worlds raise many interesting questions regarding what is a criminal act and whether law enforcement, real or virtual, should get involved in acts that occur in virtual worlds.

Chapter 10- Ethics of IT Organizations IT firms and organizations that use IT products and services are concerned about a short fall in the number of U.S. workers to fill these positions. As a result, they are turning to nontraditional sources to find IT workers with skills that meet their needs. Contingent work is a job situation in which an individual does not have an explicit or implicit contract for long- term employment. The contingent workforce includes independent contractors, temporary workers hired through employment agencies, on- call or day laborers, and on-site workers whose services are provided through contract firms. An H-1B is a temporary work visa granted by U.S Citizenship and Immigration Services for people who work in specialty occupations. Employers hire H-1B workers to meet critical business needs or to obtain essential technical skills or knowledge that can’t be readily found in the U.S. Outsourcing is a long-term business arrangement in which a company contracts for services with an outside organization that has expertise in which services are provided by an organization whose employees are in a foreign country. When it comes to ethics in IT, whistle- blowing is another significant topic. Whistle- blowing is an effort to attract public attention to a negligence, illegal, unethical, abusive, or dangerous act by a company or some other organization. An effective whistle- blowing process includes assessing the seriousness of the situation, beginning documentation, attempting to address the situation internally, considering escalating the situation within the company, assessing the implications of becoming a whistle- blower, using experienced resources to develop an action plan, execute the action plan, and finally to live with the consequences. The Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition has established a code of conduct that defines performance, compliance, auditing, and reporting guidelines across five areas of social responsibility such as labor, health and safety, environment, management system, and ethics.

Reynolds, George W. Ethics in Information Technology. 4th ed. Boston, MA: Course Technology, 2012. Print.