Ethical Issues Facing IT Managers and Security Professionals

Most of the IT professionals are facing the problem of ethical issues in their workplace and as they carry on their various duties. Some of the practices that were considered as being appropriate in the past may tend to be unethical in the current world that we are living in. Five main ethical issues that are currently affecting the security professionals and IT managers include security, accuracy, control, privacy, and ownership.

Security is one of the ethical issues that significantly compromises the manner in which IT managers operate. Technology tends to pose significant challenges to the IT professionals. Through the use of technology, data can be easily accessed by third parties illegally. The network can be breached which can result in financial loss, and identities can be stolen as well as hacking of systems that can lead to confidential information being accessed and especially information concerning the secrets of a government can be stolen from online systems when the security of those particular systems is not tight. The IT managers are required to ensure that strong security is set up to ensure that information is only accessible to the right people. Strong passwords should be used as a form of security and also the different information technologies are only accessible to specific people. This will help the Information managers to be in a position of tracking the people who accessed a given system at a particular time and to know who should be held liable if there is leakage of any confidential information. The information managers face the risk of being held liable personally when the security of the systems is compromised in any way. This is because when there is the compromise of the security the customers of the organization may have their personal information being accessed by third parties which may cause harm to them either physically, emotionally or financially. The IT managers should ensure that an organization has set up the right policies that will help them to deal various securi9ty breaches and also deal with the individuals who are caught interfering with the security 9installed in the systems of the organizations (Carbo, & Almagno, 2001, P.23).

The IT professionals are required to ensure that they control what the employees of the organizations are doing and also how they are using the information systems that have been installed in the organization. The IT managers have the responsibility of informing the employees in the organization their privacy is limited while using the organization's assets such as the information technology systems. It helps the IT managers to control the activities that the employees do and to ensure that they only use the systems to perform the operations that are related to the organization. It is the right of the Information managers to access all the systems at any time without having to inform the employees about it since informing them can only make them restrict their use of the systems for other activities for just that given time. The control of how the systems are used helps monitor the information that the employees shares with others and ensure that they do not share information that is confidential to the organization. It as well increases the productivity of the organization and offering of high quality services (Mason, 1995, p.56).

Privacy is also an ethical issues that faces most of the IT managers in an organization. Organizations and also the government usually have large amount of data and information that they collect and store in different technology systems. The data collected is used to serve different purpose. When such data is not safeguarded adequately it results in massive loss and also have negative effects on a country and as well as on an individual. For example when an employee have access to personal information about his colleague it may result in conflict in the organization. When the wrong people access information that is confidential to a country, it can lead to terror attacks which can cause great harm to a country. The IT managers should that operational procedure and policies are put in place so as to enhance the privacy of data and information .They should measure that they are in charge of the information that is shared with other organizations or between departments. The managers should ensure that the data is only accessed by the right parties through use of strong passwords and fingerprints to unlock the systems.

The information managers have the responsibility of ensuring that the data shared using the information systems is accurate. The managers should ensure that various practices are carried out to help in the removal of inaccurate data and information from the systems of the organization. The managers should ensure that they set up a technology that reports an error that occurs in the systems as that is prone to happen due to the complex interactions of systems and creation of large databases in the modern world Beghtol,2005,p.910).

The IT managers are faced with the issue of ownership. Most of the employees are required to sign non-disclosure agreements with the management of an organization. It helps to regulate the kind of information that they share with the public.

In conclusion, The IT managers tend to face various ethical issues. These ethical issues include privacy, ownership, security, control, and accuracy. They should ensure that they set up the right policies and procedures to ensure that data and information are secured and only accessible to the right people and they as well act as per the set policies in a manner that is ethical.

References

Beghtol, C. (2005). Ethical decisionmaking for knowledge representation and organization systems for global use. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 56(9), 903-912.

Carbo, T., & Almagno, S. (2001). Information ethics: the duty, privilege and challenge of educating information professionals.

Mason, R. O. (1995). Applying ethics to information technology issues. Communications of the ACM, 38(12), 55-57.