Wednesday, December 11, 2019

Information and Communication Integral Technology

Question: Discuss about the Information and Communication Integral Technology. Answer: Introduction Information and communication technology has become an integral part of human life. It has merged with human lifestyle making life easier. ICT is pervasive touches each and every sphere of human life which can often be unpredictable and risky and hence it is important for people to understand how much leverage people should give to IT in their lives. Not only in peoples personal lives but even in the professional world ICT has become an extremely important aspect. With the increase in the utilisation of ICT in the corporate world ethical issues have crept in. these ethical issues not only affect the operations of an organisation but it also affects the overall performance of the employees. The common ethical issues of ICT in a workplace are privacy, data security, accuracy and accessibility of information (van den Hoven et al., 2012). These ethical issues have significantly affected the operations of different organisations, and one such company that has been affected by ethical issu e related to ICT is Absus Technology. Overview of the organisation and ethical issue related to ICT Absus technology is a medium scale IT operations involved in mainly in developing websites and applications. Moreover, it focuses on providing all kinds of online marketing solutions. The company has been able to spread its business in different parts of Sydney and also working in Melbourne and Perth. The organisation has a total strength of 95 employees including the designing and developing team. In the recent past the organisation implemented an organisational audit especially on the data privacy and security section which showed that it hasnt had expected projects coming in which indicated there might be issues of data security. Data security is one of the major ethical issues attached to Information and Communication Technology. From the audit it has been assessed that data and leads are going out which might be due to the flaw in the database system or may be because of an external threat to the system. The analysis of the issue is done with the help of Doing Ethics Technique ( Stahl et al., 2012). Application of DET on the ethical issue There are several questions which are asked by DET Framework in order to understand the impact of the ethical issue and they are discussed below: The Audit body of Absus Technology has analysed the overall operations through which it has been found out that there have been significant data spillage from the main database of the organisation. The audit body assumes that either this has happened due to a flaw of the database which has been used by an individual or external threats which has helped to sale across information from the organisational database. This also questions the commitment and integrity of the employees working in the organisation (Cotton, 2014). From the audit it has been found out that the database is hacked with a separately bounced IP address that has been consistent in the last few days. There have been evidences that constantly the bounced IP has worked on the database taking considerable amount of data from the company. From initial interrogation the audit committee has been able to raise question on the database administrators as he didnt take proper approach in maintaining the security of the database which led to the theft of data. Ethical and non ethical issues Lack employee commitment is one of the key issues in this case. Threat to data security. Constant data spillage. Questioning of the role of employees (Tavani, 2011). The organisation Absus technology is majorly affected. In the last couple of years the company had generated significant amount of revenue which has helped the company to plan for further expansion but this data theft has affected the business performance of the organisation significantly reducing its revenue and profit generation. Apart from that the employees and the investors attached with the company would be affected as well. In this scenario the company might have to cut head counts as well as may be it has to shut down operations of a particular division which would affect the investment and return of the investors (Stahl et al., 2014). What are ethical issues and implications? At the present moment the main ethical issue that the organisation faces is data security for the lack of commitment of the employees working the database administration section. These employees have been non caring regarding the proper analysis of threats to the database as well as their unethical behavior towards the operations has already caused significant business loss for the organisation. Hence it could be said that loss in the data security has been the major issue for the organisation and its implications could further lead to loss clients and constant business loss and procrastination of the expansion program (Zheng Stahl, 2012). There are different steps which could be taken to resolve this issue. First of all a complete analysis of the issue will help to identify the felons and accordingly taking steps against them to understand the shortcoming of the system. Strong steps will have to be taken in order to make sure ant further issues with the database dont happen. Doing a complete revamp of the system and implementing new database with better technology. Recruitment and scanning of the employees working in the database administration section, constant analysis of the incoming data and online audit of the data transactions (Al-Saggaf Burmeister, 2013). All the above options suggested are effective to resolve this issue but doing a complete revamp of the system wouldnt solve the matter alone and it will require efficient and honest employees to handle the database and keeping a thorough check on it. It could be said that if the employees are efficient, honest and committed towards the growth and development of the company and shows ownership there cannot be any kind of issues in the organisation. It might sound to be a reactive suggestion but it could be said that going for recruitment of efficient employees in the database administration section and constantly monitoring them would be the best option for the organisation Absus Technology as it will help them to not only understand the issues with the database but also the commitment of the employees to fix it up which would definitely reduce data theft possibilities and increase data security (Burmeister et al., 2014). Conclusion The organisation Absus Technology could amend the option of recruiting reliable and efficient employees to combat the issue of data theft and security. The study highlights the importance of analysing ethical issues in the workplace as well as suggests recommendations through DET which has helped to cover up the objectives of the study. References Al-Saggaf, Y., Burmeister, O. K. (2013). A survey of Australian ICT professionals perceptions regarding the most common ethical problems they face in the workplace. InProceedings of the Seventh AICE Conference(pp. 43-48). Burmeister, O., Al-Saggaf, Y., Schwartz, M., Johnson, L. (2014). Internet resources to help Australian ICT professionals identify and solve ethical challenges. ACIS. Cotton, M. (2014). Ethics and Technology. InEthics and Technology Assessment: A Participatory Approach(pp. 25-41). Springer Berlin Heidelberg. Stahl, B. C., Eden, G., Jirotka, M., Coeckelbergh, M. (2014). From computer ethics to responsible research and innovation in ICT: The transition of reference discourses informing ethics-related research in information systems.Information Management,51(6), 810-818. Stahl, B. C., Heersmink, R., Goujon, P., Flick, C., van den Hoven, J., Wakunuma, K., ... Rader, M. (2012). Identifying the ethics of emerging information and communication technologies: an essay on issues, concepts and method.Ethical Impact of Technological Advancements and Applications in Society, 61-79. Tavani, H. T. (2011).Ethics and technology: Controversies, questions, and strategies for ethical computing. John Wiley Sons. van den Hoven, J., Helbing, D., Pedreschi, D., Domingo-Ferrer, J., Gianotti, F., Christen, M. (2012). FuturICTThe road towards ethical ICT.The European Physical Journal Special Topics,214(1), 153-181. Zheng, Y., Stahl, B. C. (2012). Evaluating emerging ICTs: A critical capability approach of technology. InThe capability approach, technology and design(pp. 57-76). Springer Netherlands.

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