Business Plug-In B7 Ethics

LEARNING OUTCOMES Explain the ethical issues in the use of information technology. Identify the six epolicies organizations should implement to protect themselves.

INFORMATION ETHICS Ethics—The principles and standards that guide our behavior toward other people Information Ethics—Govern the ethical and moral issues arising from the development and use of information technologies, as well as the creation, collection, duplication, distribution, and processing of information itself Important ethical concepts stemming from IT: Intellectual Property Copyright Pirated Software Counterfeit Software

INFORMATION ETHICS

INFORMATION DOES NOT HAVE ETHICS, PEOPLE DO Information Management—Examines the organizational resource of information and regulates its definitions, uses, value, and distribution ensuring it has the types of data/information required to function and grow effectively Information Governance—Is a method or system of government for information management or control

INFORMATION DOES NOT HAVE ETHICS, PEOPLE DO Information Compliance—Is the act of conforming, acquiescing, or yielding information Ediscovery—Refers to the ability of a company to identify, search, gather, seize, or export digital information in responding to a litigation, audit, investigation, or information inquiry

DEVELOPING INFORMATION MANAGEMENT POLICIES Organizations should develop written policies establishing employee guidelines, employee procedures, and organizational rules for information Epolicies—Policies and procedures that address the ethical use of computers and Internet usage

ETHICAL COMPUTER USE POLICY Regardless of what business a company operates the company must protect itself from unethical employee behavior Ethical Computer Use Policy—Contains general principles to guide computer user behavior The users should be informed of the rules and, by agreeing to use the system on that basis, consent to abide by them

ETHICAL COMPUTER USE POLICY

INFORMATION PRIVACY POLICY Information Privacy Policy—Contains general principles regarding information privacy In a large majority of cases, the unethical use of information happens not through the malicious scheming of a rogue marketer, but rather unintentionally

ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)—A policy that a user must agree to follow in order to be provided access to a network or to the Internet Nonrepudiation—A contractual stipulation to ensure that ebusiness participants do not deny (repudiate) their online actions Internet Use Policy—Contains general principles to guide the proper use of the Internet

EMAIL PRIVACY POLICY Email Privacy Policy—Details the extent to which email messages may be read by others. One major problem with email is the user’s expectations of privacy Spam—Is unsolicited email Anti-Spam Policy simply states that email users will not send unsolicited emails (or spam)

SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY Social Media Policy—Outlines the corporate guidelines or principles governing employee online communications Social media policies a company might choose to implement include: Employee online communication policy Employee blogs Employee social network websites Employee Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook Corporate YouTube policy

WORKPLACE MONITORING POLICY The dilemma surrounding employee monitoring in the workplace is that an organization is placing itself at risk if it fails to monitor its employees, however, some people feel that monitoring employees is unethical Monitoring—Tracking people’s activities by such measures as number of keystrokes, error rate, and number of transactions processed Employee Monitoring Policies—Explicitly state how, when, and where the company monitors its employees

WORKPLACE MONITORING POLICY Common Internet monitoring technologies: Key logger or key trapper software Hardware key logger Cookie Adware Spyware Web log Clickstream