Information technology and its effects on societal ethical aspect

Describe the following points…

• Societal ethical changes caused by information technology

• The ethical usage of information technology

• The development of a code of ethics associative with these ethical issues

• Enforcement issues related to a code of ethics for information technology

• Interpret how a code of ethics would be established within an academic setting, especially with the advancement of the online educational environment?

Information technology is nothing but a term used to make integration among all the forms of technology of making, storing, retrieving, exchanging, modifying and using the information in the various form. It is most suitable term to convey the idea of involving the telephony and computing using these two words.

In today’s world IT has changed whole scenario of exchanging data with the vast application of newly invented application software and also with the wireless telecommunication system using WWW.

As far as the Societal and ethical aspects are concerned, we can see the advancement of present scenario of internet usage along with the telecommunication technology. All these aspect make the involvement of the computing device and the telephony service along with different form of exchanging data across the globe.

While societal ethical aspect is concerned, there are some rules, which are imposed on the society for providing a good environment and also to restrict unethical usage of the technological advancement (Azari, 2003).

While we are considering the usage of internet and the application software, we make ourselves vulnerable in front of the outer world. There are several malicious software and codes which affects our device for further usage and also steals data for our device. The internet aspect gave birth of the era of hackers. These hackers are involved to hack or to steal the data being hidden in the network they spray spam messages, generate phishing scam and so on. This in turn involved the side of ethical breach on the aspect of information security (Hannabuss, 2008).

While we are considering the Information technology, it comes as a part of our life. From the wireless communication to engagement of mobile computing make our life easy to deal with information and to manage them in an effective way.

There is also the usage of protocols, those provides filtering mechanism which prompts the user or guide the user to have proper usage of the internet (Kizza, 2007).

As far as the ethical usage are concerned, information technology provides such platform in the form of software application such as antivirus, firewall and the other security measure in order to protect data from the hackers or the intruders. Other than all these security measurement we should some guidelines, such as-

1. A user who is using internet should not accept the files came from the unknown person.

2. An internet user should not click on the suspicious links which are known about its source.

3. A user, who is using computer or mobile, should not left his/her device open to when he/she is not close to the device. In this case a hacker can steal data from the device or can misuse the data for stealing the identity.

4. An internet user should not reveal his personal information to any one over social networking sites (Litzky and Oz, 2008).

Information technology and its Ethical usage

Code of ethics of a particular field is designed to outline the values and the mission of an organization or of a proposal. Hence it can help the professional or any individual to approach the problems based on the values to maintain.

This code of ethic imposes some act and security measurement in order to serve protection on the public interest of using web based application by maintaining the data integrity. For this purpose there are so many acts, rules are imposed along with the usage of the protocol with some imposed security. These protocols provide filtering mechanism which prompts the user or guide the user to have proper usage of the internet (Mather, 2007).

Developments of code of ethics maintain the under mentioned criteria in order to meet the ethical principles:

• Giving protection to the public interest and well maintenance of data the integrity.
• Ability to demonstrate QOS (quality of service) and competence.
• Giving proper maintenance to the privacy of the data and proper management of the confidential information.
• Able to avoid conflict of interest.
• Maintaining responsibility related to IT profession.

If we consider the giving proper maintenance to the privacy of the data and proper management of confidential information, in this case enforcement issues are considered as follows- we can impose some guidelines on maintain code of ethics for an organization or for an individual (Tipton and Krause, 2005):

1. A user who is using internet should not accept the files came from the unknown person.

2. An internet user should not click on the suspicious links which are known about its source.

3. A user, who is using computer or mobile, should not left his/her device open to when he/she is not close to the device. In this case a hacker can steal data from the device or can misuse the data for stealing the identity (McLean, 2011).

4. An internet user should not reveal his personal information to any one over social networking sites.

5. A user can use encryption mechanism in order to restrict the unauthorized access from the middle of the channel.

6. User can enable parental control of an antivirus application, so that his child can experience safe browsing.

7. User can enable firewall application. In this scenario firewall uses protocol where filters are in use. Filters are responsible to prompt user for safe browsing and gives alert whenever a user clicked on malicious code enabled link (Tavani, 2004).

Code of ethics of a particular field is designed to outline the values and the mission of an organization or of a proposal. Hence it can help the professional or any individual to approach the problems based on the values to maintain.

Adopted as a statement of ethical guidelines and principles, Code of ethics is shared and believed among the institutional organization and having a great impact on the individual academic staff.

The code will be implemented by a working party of the staffs such as staff of the IT department of an intuition.

• While online studies are concerned, only students within that institution can access the institutional portal for the online studies.
• Web portal of a particular institution can be accessed only within the campus. Hence only the student can have the access.
• Online portal should have the secure browsing using SSL connection. So that, the intruders have less chances to occur security breaches (Zelkowitz, 2004).
• Each student should have a dedicated link to access the student section of the institutional portal. I.e. the institutional link should not be accessible by everyone.
• Dedicated link to the student form the institutional portal helps to give access of the online library, journal, previous year question, only to the intended students (Wengert, 2001).

Conclusion:

As far as the Societal and ethical aspects are concerned, we can see the advancement of present scenario of internet usage along with the telecommunication technology. All these aspect make the involvement of the computing device and the telephony service along with different form of exchanging data across the globe. Information technology provides such platform in the form of software application such as antivirus, firewall and the other security measure in order to protect data from the hackers or the intruders. Adopted as a statement of ethical guidelines and principles, Code of ethics is shared and believed among the institutional organization and having a great impact on the individual academic staff, students and among all the department of an institutional organization.

References

Azari, R. (2003). Current security management & ethical issues of information technology. Hershey: IRM Press.

Hannabuss, S. (2008). Ethics and Technology: Ethical Issues in an Age of Information and Communication Technology, 2nd edition20083Herman T Tavani. Ethics and Technology: Ethical Issues in an Age of Information and Communication Technology, 2nd edition . Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Inc. 2007. xxviii + 396 pp., ISBN: ISBN 10: 0â€ÂÂ471â€ÂÂ99803â€ÂÂ6, ISBN: ISBN 13: 978â€ÂÂ0â€ÂÂ471â€ÂÂ99803â€ÂÂ7 paperback £29.99. Library Review, 57(3), 253-255. doi:10.1108/00242530810865538

Kizza, J. (2007). Ethical and social issues in the information age. London: Springer-Verlag.

Litzky, B., & Oz, E. (2008). Ethical Issues in Information Technology. International Journal Of Information And Communication Technology Education, 4(2), 67-83. doi:10.4018/jicte.2008040106

Mather, K. (2007). Ethics and Technology: Ethical Issues in an Age of Information and Communication Technology20071Herman Tavani. Ethics and Technology: Ethical Issues in an Age of Information and Communication Technology . Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Inc. 2007. J Of Inf, Com & Eth In Society, 5(1), 43-44. doi:10.1108/14779960710822683

McLean, A. (2011). Ethical frontiers of ICT and older users: cultural, pragmatic and ethical issues. Ethics And Information Technology, 13(4), 313-326. doi:10.1007/s10676-011-9276-4

Tavani, H. (2004). Ethics and technology. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Tipton, H., & Krause, M. (2005). Information security management handbook. [London]: Taylor & Francis e-Library.

Wengert, R. (2001). Ethical issues of information technology. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science.

Zelkowitz, M. (2004). Information security. Amsterdam: Elsevier Academic Press.