Reflective Journal: Ethical Practises in IT - ISY1000

This reflective journal examines ethical practices within the field of Information Technology, focusing on the moral principles guiding IT professionals and their interactions with stakeholders. The journal discusses key ethical considerations, including software licensing, trade secrets, and the protection of user information, highlighting the importance of ethical conduct for IT workers such as programmers, database administrators, and software engineers. It explores ethical issues between IT workers and their employers, as well as between IT workers and clients, such as conflicts of interest, fraud, and breach of contract. The journal emphasizes the rise of technology-related crimes, such as cyberbullying and hacking, and stresses the need for security policies and procedures like firewalls and antivirus software to protect against breaches. Finally, it notes the industry's efforts to ensure trustworthy computing and the importance of collaboration between IT workers and users to maintain system security and encourage usage, referencing key sources for further study.

Ethical Practises 1
PROFESSIONAL AND ETHICAL PRACTISE
by (Name)
Course Name
Professor Name
Institution
Institution Location
Date

Ethical Practises 2
According to the 4 weeks study, ethics are the moral principles, which guide and
determine how people execute their duties, relate with each other as well as with the
environment. They are the rights and wrongs firms or people must put into consideration,
when operating to avoid conflicts of interest. Therefore, it is clear that all firms stakeholders
for example managers, corporate ethics officers, employees must be ethical in their
operations and decision making process to ensure ethical programs are implemented
((Markham and Buchanan 2015).
Information Technology entails the use of systems such as computers to store, retrieve
and be able to send information from one person to another. However, there is increased
internet crimes globally aimed at enabling unauthorised people access certain information.
The perpetrators of these crimes include criminal doing it for financial gain, thrill seekers
wanting challenge, terrorist seeking to cause harm to the people or industries spies aiming at
getting competitive advantage in the market. The internet crimes such as cyber bullying,
identity theft, attack on computer systems, hacking, email spam and phishing, online frauds
have been on the rise increasing vulnerability of the users. Therefore, firms and people must
institute security policies and procedures such as install corporate firewall, antivirus software
and intrusion detection systems to protect both software and hardware from security breaches
by criminals.
Since the systems, deal with confidential and private information of the parties
involves, ethics for workers, and users are essential for regulation. The workers include the
programmers, database administrators, software engineers, local area network administrators,
chief information officers, who ensure that the systems are in the best working conditions.
They provide the software, hardware and services to the systems users at a certain cost. The
users include students, firms’ employees, and governments among other parties give the IT
workers their terms and afterwards compensate them for their goods and services.

Ethical Practises 3
Some of the ethical issues between IT workers and their employers includes software
policy, which is the use of software without proper licensing. Trade secret is to ensure
secrecy of information obtained from the systems especially and are IT workers should not
disclose its secrets to third parties. The IT workers should ensure the employers’ get value for
their money through availing better systems like computers. Ensuring users’ information is
secure for only intended persons. Systems pricing must be reasonable to the users and not
exploiting. Another ethical issue is whistle blowing, which entails employees raising
concerns about firms’ acts threatening the public interest because of illegal, negligent and
unethical actions (Lavorgna, 2015).
Technology insecurity has been on the rise with most of crimes planned and executed
on online platforms. Ethical issues between IT workers and clients include conflicts of
interests. The workers offer services and expect high compensation, which might not be the
case. Fraud and misrepresentation is common as both parties want money or goods and
services they do not deserve. In other occasions, breach of contract is common, when a party
fails to meet the terms of contract. Finally, material breach of contract may happen, when a
party performs certain obligations thus destroying the essence of the contract like the IT
workers giving out information to other unauthorised parties for more personal gains (Tuffley
and Antonio 2016)
Finally, from the study I have noted that despite the challenges, IT vendors are
striving to ensure trustworthy computing, which focuses on security, reliability, business
integrity and privacy of the systems in order to maintain customer loyalty (Adebayo, 2014).
However, both IT workers and users must work in collaboration to ensure that the systems
are secure in order to encourage usage.

Ethical Practises 4
References
Adebayo, A.O., 2014. Ethics Towards Secure Computing Environment. Researchjournali‟ s
Journal of Computer Science, 1(2), pp.1-7.
Tuffley, D. and Antonio, A., 2016. Ethics in the information age. AQ-Australian
Quarterly, 87(1), p.19.
Markham, A. and Buchanan, E., 2015. Ethical concerns in Internet research. The
international encyclopedia of social and behavioral sciences, pp.606-613.
Lavorgna, A., 2015. Organised crime goes online: Realities and challenges. Journal of
Money Laundering Control, 18(2), pp.153-168.