Ethics and the IT Professional

IT PROFESSIONALS
AND
ETHICS
Privacy in Digital Era

1
Privacy is an essential aspect in the age of digital world as it is somehow the right of the
people to safeguard their personal details (Bélanger & Crossler, 2011). Protecting
information related to who we are, what we think, what we do or what we believe in. The
content and the boundaries of what is considered as privacy differ according to individual,
culture or region. Privacy is a sensitive issue and inherently special to someone. The privacy
domain mainly overlaps confidentiality that involves appropriate utilisation or protection of
data. There are many laws that have been made in different nations so as to protect them.
These are made for in some way to limit privacy. Privacy is sacrificed voluntarily sometimes
for the sake of any perceived benefit or in the case of loss or danger. The idea of universal
privacy is a modern construct linked with western culture as it was not seen in many of the
societies in other parts of the world till recent times.
The dependence of people on technology for their day to day activities has increased
considerably. The connection of privacy and digital mediums is known as digital privacy. In
other word digital privacy is linked with privacy of digital data (Brand & Todhunter, 2016). It
has become one of the leading social concerns. It specifically refers to data or information
concerning individuals identity shared over public networks. With the increasing cyber-
attacks on the systems in various parts of the world, digital privacy has become a very serious
concern in all around the world. Data leaks and data stealing have enhanced this data leaks.
There are larger numbers of people whose data have been leaked through various sources.
This has forced the companies and people to be more concerned about the digital privacy.
There are larger set of people who have faced the issues related to digital privacy.
In the developed nation like Australia where the Information technology has taken deeper
presence in the society and communication mediums have become powerful (Williams &
Hossack, 2013). It has increased the chances of data leaks or enhanced cybercrimes. The
Australian Society is very much concerned about the privacy and hence the governments
have also taken huge amount of steps to reduce the digital privacy threats. Since Australian
society is highly active on digital platforms like social media hence the digital privacy has
become difficult. With the increasing use of cloud services by the Australian business houses
maintaining privacy is not an easier job. Apart from this in Australia the concepts like IOT
have reached to various organisations. Since IOT is a very large network with huge number
of nodes connected with it hence keeping data safe is not easier. Attorney-General
department in Australia has announced that they are considering opening up the access to
individual’s personal telecommunications metadata in civil proceedings.

2
There are several privacy threats that are present when a person or an organisation utilises IT
mediums for their operations. First and foremost threat to digital piracy is Cookie
Proliferation. There are many invisible cookie software agents that are able to track the
browsing habits as well as personal data (Bennett & Raab, 2017). This is a serious threat as
the cookie owners have a large set of data regarding a person’s habits or preferences on the
internet. Second very common type of privacy threat is Seizing Cloud. Today almost 40% of
the organisation or individual is associated with Cloud. Since cloud network is having lot of
loopholes hence it becomes easier for the hackers to grab the data from this network. There
are various kinds of data that is getting stored at servers and if that data goes into the hands of
unauthorised people, then there is a chance that privacy could be breached. Google’s
transparency report suggests that there is around 70% enhancements in law enforcement
agencies making a cloud based data with enhanced frequency (Warren Lippert, Walby &
Palmer, 2013). The rise in such requests over the past three years climbed up to 21,389 in last
six months of 2012 to 12,539 to last six months of 2009. Third biggest threat to privacy is
Location data betrayal where the location of an individual is taken up by different sites. Any
firm can track a parson down where ever he or she may wander all around the world. This is
happening because of the internet connectivity through phones and other mediums. With Geo
location targeting advertisers can send promotional contents regarding the businesses that are
running in the nearby locality (Deng, Wuyts, Scandariato, Preneel & Joosen, 2011). Forth in
this count is face recognition data breach. In order to make the social networking sites more
unique generally the data related to face is stored by the social media owners like Facebook.
Posting and tagging has become a trend but whenever a person does that he or she is inviting
the firms like Facebook to collect their personal data regarding their face orientation. If such
data gets sold to other organisations, then there is a chance that they can utilise it for their
personal benefit. This is extremely dangerous in the case of national security since it can be
utilised for the purpose of making official documents. The last and most crucial cyber
security threat in this regards is that unauthorised scanning in the name of cyber security. It is
seen that governments usually scan the online mediums so as to gather the data regarding
what a person does (Nicholls, 2012).
In the expanding use of IOT over different networks has raised the concerns related to the
cyber-security. Many a time IT is considered as the worst enemy of the privacy. This is due
to the reason that IOT infrastructure has many devices connected with each other and are
sharing data related with each other (Harvey, 2015). There is a larger chance that weak link

3
exist in the IOT infrastructure. This has enhanced the privacy threats linked with use of IT
mediums. It is also to be understood that IOT has different level in its infrastructure and if
any one device in any one layer gets hacked there is there is chance of data draining through
that unprotected link. Most of the researches also indicated the same way as IOT is a very
large network and giving protection to ach of the node in equal amount is not easier. Another
view point regarding this is the fact that many a time it is seen that data is send to many nodes
at a single go and it is hard to track that which path is having malicious content (Kumar &
Patel, 2014).
The popularity of Internet and its access is increasing at much faster rate (Lee & Lee, 2015).
It is expected that almost all the people gets connected with the internet by 2025. It is also
expected that world will be more connected with each other especially with the increasing use
of IOT. The challenges in the digital infrastructure will increase by 2025. The future of
security, privacy and accountability seems to be more challenge full. There is a need of
highly secured network as well as more informed civil communities so as to prevent such
type of threats. By 2025, more number of people is going to get connected with the internet
and hence digital literacy becomes the most essential aspect of the world. It is not that all
negatives exist in terms of Cyber security till 2025. As the governments all around the world
are making so many laws regarding the data breaches hence there is a chance that a better
network security can be provided. According to various researches in many parts of the word,
it is seen that the number of hackers are increasing (Guo, Yu, Zhou & Zhang, 2012). This has
enhanced the chances of data being stolen. In the country like Australia it is expected that
almost everything will be connected with Internet by 2025 hence the cyber security laws have
to be made and enforced in a better way.
Apart from this there are many privacy solutions that are required and are in use in various
parts of the world. These are necessary for the increasing security challenges in the IOT
(Caron, Bosua, Maynard & Ahmad, 2016). The first requirement in this regards is making
polices regarding the ways in which the data must be kept safe. With the use of firewalls at
each node, there is an increased chance that data can be secured from getting beached. Apart
from this the timely inspection of the IOT infrastructure is required which must be done by
the IT professionals. This will help the company to find the weak links in the infrastructure
and strengthen. Apart from this it must be taken care that any cookie or spam must not be
entertained. More knowledge must be provided to the users so that accidently they do not
give loop holes to hackers using which they can attack (Riofrio, 2013). A more serious

4
attention must be given to the mobile devices and hence IT professionals must not allow any
device to get attached with the network that is not authenticated.
In the concluding remark it can be said that internet has expanded at much faster rate and it is
expected to increase at much faster rate. This calls for a better secured network that respects
privacy of an individual.
REFERENCES
Bélanger, F., & Crossler, R. E. (2011). Privacy in the digital age: a review of information
privacy research in information systems. MIS quarterly, 35(4), 1017-1042.
Bennett, C. J., & Raab, C. D. (2017). The governance of privacy: Policy instruments in
global perspective. Routledge.

5
Brand, J., & Todhunter, S. (2016). Digital Australia 2016.
Caron, X., Bosua, R., Maynard, S. B., & Ahmad, A. (2016). The Internet of Things (IoT) and
its impact on individual privacy: An Australian perspective. Computer law & security
review, 32(1), 4-15.
Deng, M., Wuyts, K., Scandariato, R., Preneel, B., & Joosen, W. (2011). A privacy threat
analysis framework: supporting the elicitation and fulfillment of privacy
requirements. Requirements Engineering, 16(1), 3-32.
Guo, B., Yu, Z., Zhou, X., & Zhang, D. (2012, May). Opportunistic IoT: Exploring the social
side of the internet of things. In Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Design
(CSCWD), 2012 IEEE 16th International Conference on (pp. 925-929). IEEE.
Harvey, R. (2015). The Last Decade of Digital Preservation: A Personal View from
Australia. Preservation, Digital Technology & Culture, 44(1), 22-30.
Kumar, J. S., & Patel, D. R. (2014). A survey on internet of things: Security and privacy
issues. International Journal of Computer Applications, 90(11).
Lee, I., & Lee, K. (2015). The Internet of Things (IoT): Applications, investments, and
challenges for enterprises. Business Horizons, 58(4), 431-440.
Nicholls, R. (2012). Right to privacy: telephone interception and access in Australia. IEEE
Technology and Society Magazine, 31(1), 42-49.
Riofrio, M. (2013) Retrieved from: https://www.pcworld.com/article/2031908/the-5-biggest-
online-privacy-threats-of-2013.html
Warren, I., Lippert, R., Walby, K., & Palmer, D. (2013). When the profile becomes the
population: Examining privacy governance and road traffic surveillance in Canada
and Australia. Current Issues Crim. Just., 25, 565.
Williams, P. A., & Hossack, E. (2013, June). It will never happen to us: the likelihood and
impact of privacy breaches on health data in Australia. In HIC (pp. 155-161).

6