MGS 3040 CHAPTER 5 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS GROUP B Kimberly Matt Shawn Ashley

1. Where did Kelly go wrong? When he copied the database backups to acd When he brought them home. Also when he began to look through the personal data of his co-workers customer relationships.

2. Do you think it was illegal, unethical, or neither for Kelly to take the database home and query the data? Yes, it was both illegal and unethical for Kelly to take the database home. Unethical because these files were not meant to take home and review during Kelly’s private time. Illegal, because there's personal information stored on the database that shouldn’t be exposed outside of the workplace. Kelly had no rights to look up the personal information he saw whether it was client or employee information.

3. Does the company share culpability with Kelly? If the company knew that Kelly took a copy of the database home, then yes they are partly to blame as well. If the company was unaware Kelly took a copy of the database home, then they shouldn’t be held responsible To prevent such incidents from happening again the company needs to make it so that database’s can not be copied by anyone.

4. What do you think Kelly should have done upon discovering the odd pattern in Jason’s orders? Kelly shouldn’t have mentioned anything to Jason about seeing the discount because he wasn’t suppose to have the database files to begin with. What Kelly should have done once he discovered he was in personal information, was get out of it and get rid of the information. Instead he choose to mention it to Jason, and lost his job because of it.

5. What should the company have done before firing Kelly? Before firing Kelly, the company should have at least confronted him. Find out why he had the database information, and made a decision from that point. Also if Kelly has never had any problems in the past, the company could have gave him some sort of warning as opposed to firing him. Another option would have been to maybe suspend him as a consequence of his actions.

6. Is it possible that someone other than Jason is involved in the arrangement with Valley Appliances? What should Kelly have done in light of that possibility? It could have been possible that there was permission given for Jason to give these discounts to this particular company for unknown reasons to Kelly. Its also possible that Jason was doing this on his own, however the fact remains that Kelly had no business backing up the database and going through personal information. So in light of it, he should have kept quite because he didn’t know what the reason is for those discounts.

7. What should Kelly do now? The first Kelly needs to do is learn from his mistakes! Kelly needs to understand that even though he likes his work and he’s enthused about his career choice. He can’t snoop around in personal information just because he wants to. Lastly Kelly needs to go look for another job involving computers since that’s what he knows best but maybe a job that involves something else other then database files!

“Metadata make databases easy to use-for both authorized and unauthorized purposes.” Explain what organizations should do in light of this fact. Organizations should make it so that metadata isn’t easily accessible for employees to get unauthorized information. If it is necessary for employees to access the information, the should have to get some sort of authorization from a company head. This way they can keep track of whose looking at the information and why. Furthermore they should let it be known that there are severe consequences for tapping into unauthorized databases or any other personal files, without the permission from a company head.