The Responsibilities Of An It Professional

Confidentiality is the protection of information from unauthorized access. This is the assurance that information provided has not been made known to unauthorized persons, processes or devices. The application of this security service suggests information labeling and need-to-know imperatives are core aspects of the system security policy. Information, in today’s world, has value and everyone has information they wish to keep secret. Information such as credit card details, trade secrets, personal information, government documents, and many more. It was stated (Securitas Operandi™, 2008) that, we are bound to keep many secrets – corporate, staff, and personal secrets. We must keep this confidential information under wraps and earn the trust of employers, colleagues, and regulators every day. Mechanisms to enforce this include cryptography, which is, encrypting and decrypting data, access controls such as

In addition, whistleblowers should be portrayed as being good in order for society to begin seeing them in a positive way. Furthermore, the government should make this type of crimes a public matter. Allowing the public to be able to see all charges and outcome regarding these cases could bring out other wrongdoings in other organizations. The government should also impose greater punishment such as jail time for these types of crimes rather than imposing fines that they are able to

Review “Just pucker and blow: An analysis of corporate whistleblowers” in Chapter 2. Please respond to the following:

Whistleblowing encourages and enables employees to raise serious concerns within the company rather than overlooking a problem or 'blowing the whistle' outside. Employees are advised to speak to their designated senior CareGiver or a member of the

-Whistleblowing: Whistleblowing is a way in which you can make other members of staff/managers aware of any poor practice, concerns or illegality. It’s important that anyone concerned about issues surrounding safeguarding should be able to report them in a confidential way which has no repercussions towards the individual who reported it. All members of staff should feel that they are able to raise concerns without any fear of discrimination or victimisation.

In today’s IT world every organization has a responsibility to protect the information and sensitive data they have. Protecting data is not only responsibility of security and IT staff but every individual is involved in protecting the information. The risks to information security are not digital only, but it involves technology, people and process that an organization may have. These threats may represent the problems that are associated to complex and expensive solution, but doing nothing about these risks is not the solution.

There are many careers and professional roles that have access to a staggering level data that is private in nature, or sensitive. This data is necessary to perform to function of the profession, but the expectation and trust is that it will not be disclosed without individual consent. While each profession has data access concerns, with major ethical implications, the majority of this data can be guarded and monitored by technological means and enforced with legal policy. As an information technologist it is often within your purview to employ these protections, and also to monitor that these safeguards are effective, and not being violated. There are two avenues that I believe can be approached when it comes to ethics in IT: unauthorized disclosure, and

The continuous proliferation of information facilitated by the advancement in technology is a constant and continuous threat to information security and privacy. The various schemes and acts by the various government agencies in sectors such as health, finance and so on amongst other acts have constituted to information vulnerability and enhanced the breach of information security. Many people are of the opinion that the government has legalized spying on them, acquiring and using their private data at will. The confidentiality, Integrity and Availability of information has been greatly affected and many private information have been released to the public domain either

Whistle blowing in organizations can be an outstanding source of needed information to the organization. On the other side, that same information that is delivered can have a negative effect on the employee that has decided to take matters in to their own hands and inform management of potential unethical behavior. An article called “Nonprofit whistle-blower employee nets $1.6 million retaliation award” written by Tricia Gorman is in reference to an employee whistle-blower that her place of employment violated the New Jersey Conscientious Employee Protection Act, which is part of the organizations policy for hostile work environment.

Jackson and Raftos (1997) referred to whistle blowing as an avenue of last resort. Employees find themselves in these situations when the authorities at their organisations have failed to take actions on reported issues affecting that organisation. Wimot (2000) likened whistleblowing to a spectrum. At one end of this spectrum whistleblowing would only cause minimal pain and scars on the stakeholders and organisation while on the other end is the worst scenario where the whistleblowing effects are turbulent and often experienced to be negative to all those involved (ibid).

In an age when accelerated communications contribute to growing perceptions of organizational improprieties, the ethical and legal implications of whistleblowing have become a major topic of discussion. According to Lawrence and Weber (2014), whistleblowing is an employee disclosing apparent organizational misconduct to the government or media; however, this reporting of information should come after attempts at going through proper channels in order to persuade the organization to take appropriate actions has been ineffective.

As technology grows and information has become a critical asset companies currently are devoted their resource and money to protect their data as important as their finance and human resource assets.

Well, according to Miceli, Nearand and Dworkin (2008), whistleblowing is an act of revealing wrongdoings in an organization by the former or current employees of the very organization. As such, a whistleblower is an individual who reveals wrongdoings within an organization to the public or the senior management. The key characteristics of a whistleblower include, but are not limited to, dissent, accusation, breach of loyalty, altruism, sportsmanship courtesy, conscientiousness and civic culture (Miceli, Near & Dworkin, 2008).

“The cyber security landscape has changed in the past couple of years – and not for the better” (Steen, 2013). Banks are faced with attacks to retrieve customer account information, the military battles with attempts to obtain secrets. These attacks are not just committed by induvial hackers but entire countries. Data privacy rules differ from country to country. For example, Fisher, 2014 states individual search engine access is restricted in different ways depending on the country. China along with other countries restrict access to politically sensitive information, while the United States protects the free flow of information (Gonzalez-Padron, 2014). With companies relying more on technology such as cloud computing and virtual storage their level of vulnerability rises. IT personnel have the difficult task of protecting company data, this is why it is vital to have an ethical compliance program in place protect the organization from internal and external threats.

The whistleblower him or herself must be carefully scrutinized. What are the personal and the professional reputations of the whistleblower? What is the motive driving the whistleblower? Is it to benefit the client or the organization, or is it a need for attention or revenge? Is the whistleblower's cause seen as legitimate and significant by trustworthy colleagues and friends? Is the whistleblower aware of the potential consequences of blowing the whistle and still willing to accept responsibility for actions taken?