Importance of Privacy and Digital Security in Information Technology

This essay discusses the importance of privacy and digital security in information technology, including the concept of digital privacy, ways to ensure security, and the comparison between privacy laws in the European Union and Australia.

It Profession and Ethics
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Introduction
Information technology is used to store, retrieve and transmit the data. It is a subset
of information and communication technology. In this essay the importance of privacy and
its use in various sectors are discussed. The concept of digital privacy and ways to ensure
security are also discussed. From the analysis, it was found that it is the duty of an individual
to take care of all the information (Kangasniemi, Pakkanen & Korhonen, 2015). Information
technology has a very important concept that is security that assures that integrity, privacy
and availability of data is maintained. The comparison between law of European Union and
Australia are discussed. From the analysis it was also found that individual should bear the
responsibility of protecting their data. Privacy can be considered as a fundamental right of
an individual by allowing them to deal with the entire power imbalance. The privacy of
sensitive information means that data is been collected, stored and shared in an appropriate
way.4d
Privacy is a fundamental right that make sure that data is protected from all the
unwanted interferences and allows only valid user to access the data. It helps in establishing
the boundaries so that privacy is maintained. Privacy can be considered as a fundamental
right of an individual by allowing them to deal with the entire power imbalance. The privacy
of sensitive information means that data is been collected, stored and shared in an
appropriate way (Rendtorff, 2015). In general privacy is the ability to keep the data
protected and assure that security is not breached. It is important to maintain privacy of data
as it limits the power and gained by offering respect to an individual. It also enables people
to manage their reputations. It is important as it maintains autonomy and individuality of a
person. Privacy can be considered about an individual, an organisation or data

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(Kangasniemi, Pakkanen & Korhonen, 2015). It also offers some functional benefits by
maintaining people in all social boundaries. Privacy offers a freedom to perform any social
or political activity without the fear of information being leaked. To be more presided digital
privacy is also important as cybercrimes and use of internet have increased. It takes into
account information privacy, communication privacy and individual privacy (Xia, Wang,
Zhang, Qin, Sun & Ren, 2016). The information privacy deals that all the information is
only accessed or modified by the valid user. There are privacy laws developed by all the
countries to regulate the collection and consumer information. The communication privacy
is also considered as a part of digital privacy it is concept that allow an individual to
communicate with each other digitally via a secure platform. Individual privacy on the other
hand is a right to access the data freely over the internet and takes care of all the unwanted
spams and viruses (Sulaiman, Zaharim, Mastor & Basri, 2016). Thus, privacy deals with
protecting the information offline also wherein digital privacy protects the personal
information over the internet.
If discussing the privacy of Australia many laws are enforced like Australian Law Reform
commission that takes in account digital privacy of the company. The privacy amendments
are updated every year and describe privacy remedies for serious issues (Parent, 2017). It
strengthens the functions to resolve complaints and use external services to promote
compliance. They also create new provisions for binding agencies and organisation and
making sure that integrity, confidentiality and availability is met. Australian privacy
principals manage all the personal information and keep the communication channels
transparent (Coulson, 2017). There are various issues related to the digital material like the
information can be accessed by an unauthorised user or anyone can modify the data in
between. Additionally, accessing the digital material can also lead to viruses in our system if
it is accessed from non-certified certificates (Lindell, Yehuda, 2018). There are various

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options available through which digital privacy can be attained like it is suggested that it is
suggested that all the information should not be mentioned on social media platforms like
Facebook, Instagram and other such mediums. The transactions should be done only through
secure channels otherwise it can cause security breach or loss of sensitive information. It is
also suggested that digital privacy can be maintained by turning on private browsing that do
not allow anyone to track the activities one is performing over internet. Most of the crimes
that are observed these days are sue to platforms like Facebook, Google and iCloud. These
platforms can be protected by using two way authentications that lock down these accounts
and require login every time one feel like accessing it. Two way authentications is a best
way from keeping others away from accessing the personal information. Some other ways
through which these platforms can be secured is by setting up a Google alert that keeps eye
on the web in absence of you.
Privacy differs from one person to other as it completely depends upon the type of
information and nature of an organisation. Thus, it can be stated that all people do not need
same level of privacy it depends upon the type of work. Some are vulnerable to more crimes
and contain sensitive information which should not be leaked in that high security measures
are taken (Coulson, 2017). Apart from that in some cases only individual privacy is
important and data can be published publicly. So t completely depends upon one person to
other and the form of information they contain.
There should be new laws and policies defined as everyday there are new
technologies coming up. The information should be protected by defining new legislation to
protect information (Davies, 2017). The new laws can make compulsory for downloading
antiviruses in the system and making sure that information is accessed only by valid or
authenticated web. People are more concerned in breaking others privacy and stealing their

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information this can be controlled by defining an access control list so that only valid users
gets the access (Post, 2017). The new legislations should be defined to protect social media
platforms and allow accessing of data from anywhere securely. This could be done by
establishing virtual private network by an organisation so that all the communications and
transactions can be completely easily (Bennett & Raab, 2017).
It is the responsibility of an individual to protect their information and assure that
privacy is maintained. There are various mediums that can offer privacy but it is the duty of
an individual to take care of it (Moore Jr, 2017). It is a shared responsibility but an
individual should be aware about all the policies and steps they should be taken. It is the
responsibility of an individual to monitor all activities and safeguard their system from all
the unethical means. This could be done by downloading antiviruses and keeping the system
and software’s updated (Acquisti, Brandimarte & Loewenstein, 2015). The information
should only be posted on a channel which is secure otherwise it could be used by
unauthorised users.
From my experience, i don’t think that people understand the way in which their
information is accessed, collected or used online. This is lack of awareness which also
increases the chances of security breaches (Benn, 2017). The greatest victim of privacy issue
is due to lack of knowledge. Thus, there should be a proper medium through which an
individual can track where there information is collected and accessed. The information
should be stored over a place where it is secure. Thus it is important for an individual to be
aware about the data set and where they are stored. It should be collected and tracked over
all the targeted advertising, credit risk assessment, and direct marketing.
Every country has different privacy laws, now discussing the online privacy law used
by European Union and Australia. There is a difference in these laws, Federal Trade

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Commission Act is a protection law that prohibits the unfair practices and apply online
privacy for data sets. The primary motive of this law is to apply online protection of the
information from children (Benn, 2017). On the other hand European federal have
developed general data protection regulation by updating and modernizes the principals.
They make sure that transparency and fairness of data is maintained. It minimizes the access
of data to only authorised users.
Conclusion
It can be concluded that privacy plays a significant role and it is important to protect all the
personal and sensitive information. Privacy is no only restricted to information but it deals
with an individual privacy also. Maintaining privacy and protecting personal data of the
customers is important for all the organizations. Thus, privacy management should be strong
and new laws should be implemented according to the advanced technology. The measures
should assure that financial losses and loss of revenue are minimised.

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References
Acquisti, A., Brandimarte, L., & Loewenstein, G. (2015). Privacy and human behavior in the
age of information. Science, 347(6221), 509-514.
Benn, S.I., 2017. Privacy, freedom, and respect for persons. In Privacy and Personality (pp.
1-26). Routledge.
Bennett, C. J., & Raab, C. D. (2017). The governance of privacy: Policy instruments in
global perspective. Routledge.
Coulson, S. (2017). Normative ethics and the changing face of legal technology: or how to
stay relevant in a transformed profession. Advocate, 75(2), pp-89-110.
Davies, A. (2017). Ethics, professionalism, rights, and codes. Language testing and
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Kangasniemi, M., Pakkanen, P., & Korhonen, A. (2015). Professional ethics in nursing: an
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Lindell, Yehuda. "The Security of Intel SGX for Key Protection and Data Privacy
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Parent, W. A. (2017). Privacy, morality, and the law. In Privacy(pp. 105-124). Routledge.
Post, R. C. (2017). Rereading Warren and Brandeis: Privacy, property, and appropriation.
In Privacy (pp. 125-158). Routledge.

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Rendtorff, J. D. (2015). Case studies, ethics, philosophy, and liberal learning for the
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