Week Five Questions

Explain the ethical issues surrounding information technology.

The first thing one must understand is what ethics relates to. It is the standards and principles which determine how one will behave.


In regards to ethical issues which are affected by the advance in information technology, there are many examples. These include:

• Intellectual property
• Fair use doctrine
• Pirated software
• Counterfeit software
• Copyright issues

In reference to property, the ethical issues relate to who owns that creative or intellectual property. Pirated software relates to software which is being copied and/or distributed to others. Counterfeit software relates to a 'fake' program which is made to exact to or similar to the original software.

An example would be a non-genuine program of Microsoft Word.

Other major issues includes privacy as many users do not know the privacy regulations of each organisation, and how much the organisation can use or distribute. This also includes how much surveilance can be used through content filtering, security auditing or cookies. An example here would include Facebook as most users do not know that the organisation owns all the photo's which are uploaded and can use these at their disposal, it also includes employers scanning potential employee's facebook profiles before hiring them for a position.

Describe a situation involving technology that is ethical but illegal.

This refers to when a person believes they are acting in an ethical manner but in turn are acting illegally. The person may feel they are sharing with others, allowing for easy access to music etc in a youtube to mp3 converter.Although this is illegal, in their eyes it may be ethical.

Describe and explain one of the computer use policies that a company might employee

The anti-spam policy is a policy which enforces an organisation not to send unsolicited emails to customers in their database. Any organisation which uses spam will be blacklisted as it costs the customer money when they open the spam mail.

What are the 5 main technology security risks?

1. Human error – inefficient employees who do not finish or effectively complete their duties and requirements.


2. Natural disasters – This can leads to a destruction of the physical data or the computer systems which hold that information. For example the Japan earthquakes.


3. Technical failures – When the technology has a problem and ceases to work. This can be caused by software bugs and hardware crashes


4. Deliberate acts –  ‘White Collar Crime’ such as fraud can affect this.


5. Management failure – lack of procedure, documentation and training in the management sector as it can not be conducted efficienctly (especially when training new employees)

Outline one way to reduce each risk.

Human error - proficient training to avoid employees losing data records etc

Natural distasters - the introduction of external back up of the files included in the system

Technical failures - Anti Virus programs such an Norton Anti-Virus which protects your computer from viruses and bugs. The following website is the Norton Anti-Virus website which includes many attributes of the product. http://antivirus.norton.com/norton/ps/3up_au_en_navnis360.html?om_sem_cid=hho_sem_ic:au:ggl:en:e|kw0000056684

Deliberate acts - Strong penalties need to be imbedded in an organisation to reduce the probability of these security risks

Management failure - Training programs need to be efficient and reviewing employees regularly is of upmost importance to ensure they are working correctly.

What is a disaster recovery plan, what strategies might a firm employee?

Once a disaster has occured, organisations will hopefully regain access to computer systems and data. This process is called the disaster recover plan. Thus it is important that all organisations have a disaster recovery plan available to them in order to help them recover the data lost in a disaster. The plan should include:

• Communications plan – The methods and guides which an organisation needs to follow needs to be communicated within the organisation and externally.

• Business continuity – outline what would or could happen in a disaster and include how to deal with this.

• Location of Backup data – recovery testing needs to occur regularly and well documented procedures need to be included.