Ethics for IT Professionals/What Is Ethics
What is Ethics, Morals and Laws
Ethics are a set moral principles that govern a persons or groups behavior. When someone is behaving ethically they conform to generally accepted practices of a society or group. Most ethically acceptable practices are universal such as.
Each society as a set of rules the set boundaries for accepted behavior, these rules are often expressed in statements about how you should behave. These statements come together to form a moral code in which a society live by. Morals are ideas held about right and wrong or values, these ideas sometime come into conflict with one another.
Behavior (morals) follows values (manners) contributes to the stability of society. Everyone works within their own moral code, this means you act with integrity. Laws on the other hand are a system of rules that society imposes individuals that define whether or not one is allowed to do something. Institutions like law enforcement enforce laws. Laws may or may not follow the moral code for individuals or ethical considerations.
Ethics Within Business
The corporate world has begun promoting ethics in the work place after major corporate scandals like WorldCom, Tyco and Enron. In order to be viewed credible by the public many companies have created a position called Corporate Ethics Officer or Corporate Compliance Officer who ensure ethical procedures, created and adhered to by everyone in the organizations. This decision may help the company gain goodwill and favorable publicity and protect the organization from legal action and foster ethical practices with the organization, or they may be only a public relations scheme to elude the public and avoid legislative interference that would make them comply to specific regulations.
Corporate Policies
In order to combat the recent corporate scandals and protect the companies reputation, companies have begun form more comprehensive corporate policies concerning ethics. These policies generally offers guidance to employees as well as stating the companies expectations. In order to work companies may require employees to sign a contract stating they will follow the procedures stated within the handbook.Many companies have begun to explore why employees would behave unethically.
IT Ethics
Dilemmas in the realm of information technology are becoming prevalent in the world.In order to promote ethical behavior we must lay the ground work by promoting technological literacy. This book will discusses the following issues that are related to ownership, access, privacy, community and security are becoming more prevalent in our society.
Laws and IT
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), 1933 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), 1984 & 1994 Computer Security Act, 1987 Privacy Act, 1974 Electronic Communications Privacy Act Communications Decency Act, 1995 Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act, (HIPAA) 1996 Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 Homeland Security Act of 2002 with the Cyber Security Enhancement Act