Legal, Social, Ethical Challenges in Information Technology Practice

This essay delves into the critical legal, social, and ethical issues encountered by IT professionals in their practice. It highlights ethical concerns such as cybersecurity threats and the importance of implementing risk management strategies to protect sensitive data and information systems. Social issues, particularly generational differences in the workplace, are examined for their impact on collaboration and communication. Legal issues, with a focus on data privacy and the need for robust information management strategies, are also discussed. The essay emphasizes that a comprehensive understanding of these ethical, professional, social, and legal contexts is essential for every IT professional, advocating for their integration into daily practice to ensure responsible and effective use of technology. Desklib provides access to this essay and a wealth of other solved assignments and study resources.

Professional Practice in IT 1
Professional Practice in IT
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Professional Practice in IT
In the field of Information Technology IT, every IT professional is bound to come across
various issues which have to be dealt with professionally. It is important that an IT professional
be cognizant of these potential issues that are likely to be faced by the IT expert during his/her
professional career. As such, the intent of this particular article is to throw light into some of the
legal, social, ethical as well as professional issues that are likely to be faced by an IT
professional during his/her professional career in the field domain. The article will further
explore possible consequences of the issues.
Ethical issues
Ethical issues is one critical challenge that is likely to be faced by an IT professional. The
main ethical issue is security. Javaid, Sun, Devabhaktuni, and Alam (2012, pp. 585-590)
provides cybersecurity threat analysis. According to the authors, cyber-crime is now a big threat
to the survival of organizations in the current generation. Security issues have various
consequences including but not limited to the loss of an organization’s sensitive data, it may as
well compromise the organization’s information system thus leading to system failure. The sharp
rise of this crime should be a wakeup call that IT professionals should focus on how these
security breaches can be mitigated by implementing risk management strategies among other
mitigation techniques.
Social issues
IT professional will have to come across various social issues that have to be dealt with
professionally. Generation in the workplace is a critical issue that an IT professional may come
across while exercising his/her profession. Morioka (2009, pp. 1-2) provides an insight into how

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generation grows and how professionals will get connected and collaborative in the workplace.
The author expounds that by the year 2020, there will be five generations in the field domain,
which is a serious issue that has to be dealt with by IT professionals. The consequences that will
be faced by IT professional due to this issue are collaboration and communication. It is therefore
imperative that an IT expert takes into account this issue and be part of the generation network
and work effectively with the generation’s network.
Legal issues
The most important legal issues that an IT professional must prepare to face during his
profession is privacy. This has become one of the hottest topics in information technology in the
21st century. Personal information is collected, swapped and sold as a commodity and many
people are looking towards protection of personal information (Armando, Bezzi, Metoui, and
Sabetta, 2019, pp. 567-586). The main consequence of this security threat is that it may affect the
image of the organization which may lead to loss of customers. IT professionals should,
therefore, put into practice various information management strategies in order to mitigate this
risk as suggested by Ilvonen, Jussila, and Kärkkäinen (2019, pp.308-325)
Overall, this article has analyzed various issues faced by IT professionals during their
profession. The issues are important for every IT professional. It is therefore important to
understand that working with technology and ethical, professional, social as well as the legal
context is like a hand and a glove.

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Reference list
Armando, A., Bezzi, M., Metoui, N. and Sabetta, A., 2019. Risk-based privacy-aware
information disclosure. In Censorship, Surveillance, and Privacy: Concepts, Methodologies,
Tools, and Applications (pp. 567-586). IGI Global.
Ilvonen, I., Jussila, J. and Kärkkäinen, H., 2019. A Business-Driven Process Model for
Knowledge Security Risk Management: Tackling Knowledge Risks While Realizing Business
Benefits. In Effective Knowledge Management Systems in Modern Society (pp. 308-325). IGI
Global.
Morioka, T., 2009, July. New generation optical infrastructure technologies:“EXAT initiative”
towards 2020 and beyond. In OptoElectronics and Communications Conference, 2009. OECC
2009. 14th (pp. 1-2). IEEE.
Javaid, A.Y., Sun, W., Devabhaktuni, V.K. and Alam, M., 2012, November. Cyber security
threat analysis and modeling of an unmanned aerial vehicle system. In Homeland Security
(HST), 2012 IEEE Conference on Technologies for (pp. 585-590). IEEE.