Ethical And Social Issues In IT Network Management

Ethical Issues

Network management is one of the most important tasks of the systems administrators in most of the organizations in today’s world. Data security is an increasingly important concern for the organizations and often due to lack of improper security standards; there are huge economic losses for the organizations, which often cause them to be answerable to ethically answerable questions. There are different ethical as well as social impacts of improper information management over the networks and is of utmost importance that the organizations consider them. In the following report, the different ethical and social aspects of network management will be discussed in detail. Recommendations to mitigate the data security related threats would be provided. By the end of the report, the reader will have a clear idea on the different aspects of network management within an organization.

Some of the major ethical issues in IT administration are explained below:

• Piracy of software’s as well as company logos: Data piracy is one of the most unethical activities by the users. Often in order to save money, users download free versions of software’s from the internet instead of paying the legitimate subscription fee. In this process, they do not have to purchase the software and they use the cracked versions of the original software’s that are available over the internet [1]. Hackers also make use of advanced graphics tools to imitate the logos of the different brands across the world that look quite similar to the original company logos by which they are often successful in cheating customers.
• Data protection as well as privacy is another important ethical issue of the organizations. Hackers often hack into the internal organizational networks and gain access to the important and confidential organizational information that should only remain internal to the employees. In this way, they often take control of the important information such as financial data and annual business reports of the organizations and black mail the organizations [8]. They often ask for huge amounts of money and black mail the organizations. The hackers often carry out tax frauds and other unethical tasks [7]. The hackers also often release Trojan and other harmful virus into the networks thereby corrupting data and causing huge economic losses to the organizations that also in turn defame the brand image of the organizations.

Figure 1: Global code of ethics (Source: [10]).

• Users often share their personal information on the social networking websites and they are often misused due to the advent of technologies [2]. It network management plays an important role here and should be ensured by the Social networking companies like Facebook, twitter that the users information are not hacked or misused by the hackers.
• Due to lack of proper security policies, the economy of the companies as well as the society is affected [9]. Many employees lose their jobs due to unforeseen Situations within the organization, which adversely affects the economic condition of the society.

Children as well as adults often provide much of their personal information over the social networking sites, which are accessed by the hackers and they gain access to the pictures as well as phone numbers, addresses of the users which are often misused .they claim money from the families and black mail the users.

Devices such as Google glasses and smart watches have the capability of secretly taking photographs as well as recording meetings in the corporate workplaces therefore recording the confidential information which they also often misuse and leak in the outside world for their own personal interests.

The professional code of ethics, which should be followed in IT network management, are explained below as:

• Integrity:The employees should always bear a sense of integrity while taking any business decisions and they should be honest to themselves as well as their co-workers [3]. They should be truthful to other employees as well as the customers and the stakeholders of the organizations.
• Objectivity:There should be clear goals and objectives set for the organization and all the managers at the different levels including their teammates should have a positive mind-set that should aim to meet the common objectives of the organization.
• Professional Competence and Due Care:The employees should be technologically competent and should handle critical situations with due care.
• Confidentiality:The employees at all levels should ensure that they maintain the confidentiality of the important internal documents and other important information such as financial tax sheets etc. [4]. They should ensure that they never participate in any acts of employee vandalism.
• Professional Behaviour: The employees should always ensure that they maintain professionalism with all the co-workers as well as the stakeholders and customers [5]. They should never accept any kind of unethical gifts or bribery from the stakeholders for their own benefits, which are against the interests of the organization they are working for.

The employees should always ensure that they act ethically in any decision making process in favour of the company’s interests. They should maintain professionalism in all activities and should maintain their ethics in every processes that they are a part of.

The organizations should ensure that the government policies regarding professional ethics as well as towards the benefit of the environment are always met so that they are never a part of any kind of ethical situations [6]. They should also ensure that the databases are updated with the most recent security solutions so that their customers are highly satisfied with their services at all points in time.

Conclusion:

Therefore, it can be concluded that even though there are multiple advantages of storing information on the online databases and it can help the organization to make huge profits in the markets there are multiple data security related threats that they should also be aware of, at all Points in time. Proper antivirus solutions and network firewalls should be incorporated. This will not only ensure improved and more secure data storage and transmission but will also help the customers to gain more trust towards the management. This in turn will adversely improve the social condition and more and more customers will get attracted towards the secure services of the organizations.

References:

[1]Y. Pawar and P. Rewagad, Use of digital signature with diffie hellman key exchange and AES encryption algorithm to enhance data security in cloud computing. In Communication Systems and Network Technologies (CSNT), 2013 International Conference on. IEEE., 2013, pp. (pp. 437-439).

[2]M. Ramachandran and V. Chang, Towards achieving data security with the cloud computing adoption framework. IEEE Trans. Services Computing, 9(1),. 2016, pp. pp.138-151.

[3]K. Selvamani and R. Rao, Data security challenges and its solutions in cloud computing. Procedia Computer Science, 48,. 2015, pp. pp.204-209.

[4]R. Seshadri and H. Patil, Big data security and privacy issues in healthcare. In Big Data (BigData Congress), 2014 IEEE International Congress on IEEE.. IEEE, 2014, pp. (pp. 762-765).

[5]J. Li, K. Chen, X. Mao, S. Liu and Z. Huang, Insight of the protection for data security under selective opening attacks. Information Sciences, 412,. IEEE, 2017, pp. pp.223-241.

[6]S. Elnagdy, M. Qiu and G. K, Security-aware information classifications using supervised learning for cloud-based cyber risk management in financial big data. In Big Data Security on Cloud (BigDataSecurity), IEEE International Conference on High Performance and Smart Computing (HPSC), and IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Data and Security (IDS), 2016 IEEE 2nd International Conference on. IEEE, 2018, pp. (pp. 197-202).

 [7]”Privacy and Security in Big Data Management”, International Journal of Recent Trends in Engineering and Research, pp. 251-256, 2018. Available: 10.23883/ijrter.conf.20171201.051.rsxao. 

King and N. Richards, Big data ethics. Wake Forest L. Rev., 49. 2018, p. p.393.

[9]E. Mendonca, U. Tachinardi, N. Fost and K. Shoenbill, Genetic data and electronic health records: a discussion of ethical, logistical and technological considerations. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 21(1),. 2013, pp. pp.171-180. 

[10]R. Mason, Four ethical issues of the information age. In Computer Ethics. 2017, pp. (pp. 41-48).