Security of Information in a Workplace: Three Distinct Perspectives of Applied Ethics

SCHOOL OF COMPUTING AND MATHS, Charles Sturt University
Security of information in a workplace
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Security of information in a workplace
1. 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.
2. 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
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Security of information in a workplace
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.
3. 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
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