Ethical Issues, Threats, and Security in Information Technology

This report delves into the ethical issues prevalent in IT systems, focusing on privacy and digital ownership, and analyzes the organizational approaches to identify and address these concerns. It highlights the threats to information security, including malware, hacking, and phishing, and reviews how companies like Facebook have faced and attempted to resolve security breaches. The report emphasizes the importance of training employees on legal and ethical considerations, implementing robust security measures, and learning from past incidents to create a more secure and ethical IT environment. It also outlines strategies for data backup and incident response to mitigate potential damage from security threats, providing a comprehensive overview of the challenges and solutions in maintaining ethical and secure information systems.

Running head: Ethics and Information Security
Ethics and Information Security
Name of the Student
Name of the university
Author note

1ETHICS AND INFORMATION SECURITY
Table of Contents
Ethical issues in IT system..............................................................................................................2
Analyze the issues............................................................................................................................2
Organizational approach to identify the ethical issue......................................................................3
Threats to information security........................................................................................................4
Organizational review......................................................................................................................5
Learning experience.........................................................................................................................6
References........................................................................................................................................7

2ETHICS AND INFORMATION SECURITY
Ethical issues in IT system
In an organization many issues can be occurred in respect of ethics. There are so many
ethical issues that can arise. They are Privacy, Digital ownership, Data Gathering, Security
Liability, Access Costs. The report will discuss on two main ethical issues among above. First
one is Privacy and the next one is Digital ownership.
Privacy is a feature of Information Technology (IT) which deals with the strength of the
organization and also defines what are the data that can be shared with the clients or third parties.
Each and every company has some privacy policy, which can be threatened due to ethical issues.
The digital ideas of any company that can be copied by other company is an ethical issue
of Digital ownership (Van De Walle,Turoff & Hiltz,2014).
Analyze the issues
In this tech growing world each and every person is related with IT. Their data are stored,
manipulated on some IT platforms. Users’ personal information is more reliable than Name,
address. The habits of users, driving record, work history, credit score are also a part of privacy
issues. Privacy is a fundamental right to all the users. If it is harmed by the company at any cost
they might show some disrespect to all the laws. Users’ data, managing information and personal
details should be keep safe by the company. Data are also managed by them. So each and every
user should be concern over their privacy which is an ethical issue of the IT system (Smith &
Wong,2016).In this case the IT platforms performs some tasks to secure users’ data. The
computers of the employee are also being tracked. The platforms has some responsibility to drive
away those issues.

3ETHICS AND INFORMATION SECURITY
Digital ownership means that the organization has the permission to access or use the
data, information, knowledge about ourselves. We can also grant or revoke rights on these data.
Digital ownership is a layer of Internet of Things (IoT). Digital ownership is a helpful way to
gain control on the huge data. This also includes data, internet accounts and other rights in the
digital world (Goetsch & Davis 2014).
Organizational approach to identify the ethical issue
In the workplace there are so many ethical issues that can occur. The company should
take some action to identify those issues. In that case the company should follow the below
processes.
Develop a workplace where the philosophy of the company should be based on the
privacy policies.
Train the employees about the legal and illegal issues. They should be careful enough to
handle those issues and if any mistake is done, earliest action should be taken.
Some senior or experienced employee should be in charge on this issues. They must take
serious action if any illegal action is done. They should also provide all information, possible
chances of ethical issues to the employees (Vandekerckhove, 2016).
Organizational Scenario
Ethical issues are which occurs when a given decision of any organization make some
conflicts with the social morality. Individuals and companies both can be a part of it. The conflict
became dangerous in some situations. In some cases there may be no legal result but can have
negative reflection from third parties. As example for a company if any senior employee are sent

4ETHICS AND INFORMATION SECURITY
for any business meetings or else, they are provided some money to expense. But when all the
provided amount is not spend then the ethical rule is to handover the remaining amount. If they
show some illogical reasons and spend the remaining amount, it will be an ethical issue (Jouini,
Rabai & Aissa, 2014).
In the IT companies privacy is one of the most important ethical issue. The private mails
and messages should have higher privacy. Just because they came in same network connection
that does not mean they do not have privacy. The official mails which are for business purposes,
they are to be checked but not the private ones. The documents that are needed for business
purpose can be checked but not the private documents (Gordon, Fairhall & Landman,2017). The
graphics files also can be checked. The individual users’ visited websites should not be tracked
but obviously not the banned websites. Network administrator or security professionals have the
authority to check the same. But the thing is that the above mentioned points are not about legal
or illegal, it is on doing the same is ethically right or wrong. The point is to secure the ethical
sides (Kasmi & Esteves,2015)
Threats to information security
In information system several threats can be occurred. This includes malware, hacking,
phishing, and information loss.
Malware means several viruses, warms, Trojans that can harm the system. Various
attacks are password attack, cross-site scripting attack, SQL injection attack, eavesdropping
attack (Trim & Upton, 2016).

5ETHICS AND INFORMATION SECURITY
Hacking is one of the dangerous threat to any information security. This technique is to
access the users’ unauthorized data. The persons who done this are known as hackers. The only
and best way to prohibit hacking is to use good antiviruses.
Phishing is the technique to get the sensitive information like bank card details,
passwords of several accounts of the users.
Data loss or information loss is a situation where the data is not saved and somehow lost.
This can happen because of negligence in storage, transmission. The only way to stop this
problem, data backup should be implemented (Refsdal, Solhaug & Stølen,2015).
Organizational review
Several companies has faced some security issues from very past. After that they became
successful in finding some solution to get out of the issue. Among the companies there are so
many big names are included. The report will focus on the security issues of ‘Facebook’. On the
year 2018 Facebook had identified some security issues that allowed the hackers to get access
the users’ data quite easily. Facebook has almost 2.13Billion active accounts in all over the
globe. It makes a bad impression on companies’ reputation. For the security issues there are
almost 50Million accounts that were affected. It was suspected that the hackers used the API that
are generally used by the Facebook developers. The hacking was so dangerous that the intruder
can track the users’ details as well as change their information on Facebook. Millions of
account’s password were changed as well as exposed. The whole thing was kept internal
(Bandara, Ioras & Maher,2014).The security system of Facebook was unable to protect the data.
The mainly affected persons were those who used ‘Facebook Lite’ which is preferred to use in
low network coverage area.

6ETHICS AND INFORMATION SECURITY
Facebook had taken some steps to improve data security as well as prohibit hacking. The
developers has made the system more reliable and hacking proof. This would help the user as
well as this will be tough for the hackers to access the users’ data. Verifications are stronger than
previous.
‘Facebook’ had many issues regarding threats. There were so many reasons behind the
loss. It has noticed that the company had not tried hard to stop the data leakage, when the blunder
came in front then they starts focusing on the problem.
Learning experience
Much learning are gathered through this report. The report focused on several ethical
issues as well as some information system threats in any company. The threats that occur in the
organization and how they are resolved are discussed. It is also came in front that what are the
different threats and possible ways to solve them. When the threats are occurred what strategies
are taken are also a learning experience. How to tackle those situation are also a good
experience. In case of any negligence what would happen with the company, is also a learning
experience as well as we has a good example of ‘Facebook’.
The ethical issues that occurred in the system are described as well. The analysis of those
issues are also discussed which were a great learning experience. The possible ways to find out
those issues as well as the responsibilities of the company in this process are also very important.

7ETHICS AND INFORMATION SECURITY
References
Bandara, I., Ioras, F., & Maher, K. (2014). Cyber security concerns in e-learning education.
Goetsch, D. L., & Davis, S. B. (2014). Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper
Saddle River, NJ: pearson.
Gordon, W. J., Fairhall, A., & Landman, A. (2017). Threats to information security—public
health implications. N Engl J Med, 377(8), 707-709.
Jouini, M., Rabai, L. B. A., & Aissa, A. B. (2014). Classification of security threats in
information systems. Procedia Computer Science, 32, 489-496.
Kasmi, C., & Esteves, J. L. (2015). IEMI threats for information security: Remote command
injection on modern smartphones. IEEE Transactions on Electromagnetic
Compatibility, 57(6), 1752-1755.
Refsdal, A., Solhaug, B., & Stølen, K. (2015). Cyber-risk management. In Cyber-Risk
Management (pp. 33-47). Springer, Cham.
Smith, L. C., & Wong, M. A. (Eds.). (2016). Reference and Information Services: An
Introduction: An Introduction. ABC-CLIO.
Trim, P., & Upton, D. (2016). Cyber security culture: Counteracting cyber threats through
organizational learning and training. Routledge.
Van De Walle, B., Turoff, M., & Hiltz, S. R. (2014). Information systems for emergency
management. Routledge.

8ETHICS AND INFORMATION SECURITY
Vandekerckhove, W. (2016). Whistleblowing and organizational social responsibility: A global
assessment. Routledge.