Ethical Dilemma In Workplace Information Security: A Discussion

Ethics and its Relevance

Professional Ethics Perspectives

• Manual handling of data: the handling of some information is done manually in the ABC organization. The data that are manually handled in the organization are registers that are maintained for various purposes like noting down the number of workers in the employees, collecting the resumes of new joiners and many more. Manual handling of data may cause many ethical issues such as misplacing of information, which leads in a mishap occurred in the organization (Ortmeier, 2017). This process consumes a lot of time, which might create a negative impact on the operations of the organization. The issue faced by the organization is that, the data that are handled manually could be done through a machine but it would involve a huge amount if investment and the manual handling crates problem for the organization.
• Loyalty of employees: in some of the organizations, employees are required to sign a nondisclosure agreement paper. This maintains a security of information regarding the organizations. According to the principles of this paper, the employees are not allowed to share any information about the organization or its operations to anyone (Chu, Chau & So, 2015). In some organizations, they do not have any such agreement such as the company ABC. The employees might share the important information with people who do not belong to the organization. This might harm the organization in various ways and the data obtained can be used for illegal purposes.
• Brand image: the leakage of information from any source of the organization might lead in affecting the brand image of the company. The customers would not feel safe to purchase services or products from the organization. Any purchase done from the organization would include financial transaction (Hsu, Shih & Hung, 2015). The customers would not agree to provide their bank details for any kind of transaction because the leakage of bank details of a customer would not only affect the organization but also the customer. A company spends a lot of time in creating a good brand image and it takes hardly five minutes to destroy it irrespective of the reason.

Philosophical Ethics Perspectives

• Customer dissatisfaction: one of the most effective ethical issues faced due to improper security of the organization is customer satisfaction. If the personal information regarding a customer were leaked by the organization through any means would lead in customer dissatisfaction (Blythe, 2015). Dissatisfaction among customers would result in loosing loyal customers.
• Mishaps due to leakage of information: leakage of information causes mishap in the organization as well as among the customers. This creates an ethical issue in the organization (Grunwald, 2015). The leakage of data regarding customers and employees might cause a problem to both of them.
• Clients’ loyalty: the loyalty of the client is affected if data regarding personal information of customers is revealed by any means. Sometimes customers go through financial transactions through their atm cards that are carried out by the organization. After transaction is over, customers are given an opportunity to save their details for further use (Arnold, 2014). Most of the times customers agree with the terms because saving the details allow them to pay directly for the products or services enjoyed by them. Access of bank details of the customers to an outsider would have a negative impact on the loyalty of the clients.
• Use of social media: use of social media in organization has become an emerging trend to gain information for various purposes. The use of social media itself results in creating ethical dilemmas in the organization. Leakage of information through social media creates worse ethical issues that affect the organization and the customers as well (Gritzalis, Kandias & Stavrou, 2014). Many customers share important information regarding the organization through social media such as sharing about their working schedule or the project that they are working on presently and many more. This information is accessible by everyone because these posts are kept public. Information gathered from social media might be used for ill purpose, which might harm the organization.
• Angry customers: an organization holds various categories of customers. A particular category of customer might be satisfied with a product or service provided by an organization but the same product or service might not satisfy a different category of customers. Sometimes customers might get furious due to some problems occurred in services provided by organization (Kosinski, Matz & Gosling, 2015). This might lead the customer in damaging the image of organization by posting the problems on their site or on the official site of the organization. Outsiders might take advantage of this and damage the image as well as the customer base of the organization.

Sociological/Descriptive Ethics Perspectives

• Data breaches: official site of the organizations often ask various security questions to the users while logging in to their site. These questions are used when the user losses or forgets his password. This is done in order to recognize weather the user is the one who he claims to be. Organizations follow these steps for protecting the personal details of their customers (Chang, Liu & Lin, 2015). The ethical issue here is that the security questions are asked by website of the organization in order to maintain privacy of their account and the website saves this information to authenticate the user later. If data breach takes place, this information might be stolen and the account of the customer might be used for ill purposes.
• Access control: most of the time organizations have various departments that perform their individual tasks. Department that is responsible for tasks such as handling the personal information of the customers, looking after whether the organization is operating well or deals with financial transactions done by the customers have access to the detailed information regarding the customers. The members of that particular department have access to this information (Gritzalis, Stavrou & Kandias, 2014). This multiple access of the information regarding the customers might result in leakage of data. The data leakage would cause great damage to the customers as well as the organization. In order to maintain privacy the organization should provide access of personal information about the customers to limited number of employees. Here occurs an ethical issue that the limited number of employees might not be able to handle the information of all the customers. An organization holds a customer base of around lacks (Gritzalis, Stavrou & Kandias, 2014). A big team is required to handle the detailed information of customers. Just couple of people would not be able to do it.
• Social influence: the influence of social media has affected social medial, stakeholders as well as the customers. Organizations have been integrating social media into their business for growing their customers and revenue. This has resulted in social engagement of the employees. Employees post regarding every activity in their job (Hajli & Lin, 2016). This allows the outside world to get access of the whereabouts of organization. The revealing of internal information about operations of organization might cause harm to the organization as well as customers. Lack of privacy in the social usage of employees may lead to disastrous changes in the organization.
• Use of big data: there has been huge number of privacy concerns related to big data. The use of big data allows organizations the right to track every online activity of the customer. This helps the customer to fulfill his needs by not wasting much time (Kosinski, Matz & Gosling, 2015). Online habits reflect various details regarding the personality of the user such as the type of products preferred by the user, the sites preferred by him and many more. Some breaches occurred in the organization’s system might cause stealing of information related to the customers.

Introduction:

Ethics can be described as a set of principles that are to be followed by an organization, society or an individual. The law of the nation does not bind these principles. Some principles might be legal according to the law of nation but it might not be ethical for an organization. IT organizations face various ethical dilemmas such as dilemma in decision-making, security issues and many more (Ifinedo, 2014). The dilemma that would be discussed in this essay is security of information in a workplace of company ABC. Nowadays employers are able to monitor the use of technologies like social media, emails and many more by their workers. Monitoring their activities lead to several ethical problems faced by the employers. These problems might be from the perspective of the profession, philosophical or sociological. These issues are mentioned in details in the discussion part of the essay.

References:

Gritzalis, D., Kandias, M., Stavrou, V., & Mitrou, L. (2014). History of information: the case of privacy and security in social media. In Proc. of the History of Information Conference (pp. 283-310).

Arnold, D. G. (2014). Ethical theory and business. T. L. Beauchamp, & N. E. Bowie (Eds.). Pearson.

Blythe, J. (2015). Information security in the workplace: A mixed-methods approach to understanding and improving security behaviours (Doctoral dissertation, Northumbria University).

Chang, S. E., Liu, A. Y., & Lin, S. (2015). Exploring privacy and trust for employee monitoring. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 115(1), 88-106.

Chu, A. M., Chau, P. Y., & So, M. K. (2015). Explaining the misuse of information systems resources in the workplace: A dual-process approach. Journal of business ethics, 131(1), 209-225.

Gritzalis, D., Stavrou, V., Kandias, M., & Stergiopoulos, G. (2014, March). Insider Threat: Enhancing BPM through Social Media. In NTMS (pp. 1-6).

Grunwald, A. (2015). Technology assessment. In Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology, Third Edition (pp. 3998-4006). IGI Global.

Hajli, N., & Lin, X. (2016). Exploring the security of information sharing on social networking sites: The role of perceived control of information. Journal of Business Ethics, 133(1), 111-123.

Hsu, J. S. C., Shih, S. P., Hung, Y. W., & Lowry, P. B. (2015). The role of extra-role behaviors and social controls in information security policy effectiveness. Information Systems Research, 26(2), 282-300.

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Kosinski, M., Matz, S. C., Gosling, S. D., Popov, V., & Stillwell, D. (2015). Facebook as a research tool for the social sciences: Opportunities, challenges, ethical considerations, and practical guidelines. American Psychologist, 70(6), 543.

Ortmeier, P. J. (2017). Introduction to security. Pearson.