Essay: Problems of security, privacy and ethics for businesses

Adaptation of technology in the real life has increased along the widespread of information through Internet in these past years. The Internet is a worldwide system of computer networks where the users can share information easily between them.  However, the control of Internet has been misused by the current generation in which could be a threat to the current and future computer users systems. As lots of people are using the Internet for its many functional purposes, some computer users used this value to manipulate other people private information. This has eventually initiated a problem of security, privacy and ethic in individual or business organization.  Therefore, it is crucial for individual and business organization to differentiate security, privacy and ethics in order to enhance knowledge about the potential threats and resolutions needed to overcome the problems from being occurred again.
Security is the state of a computer system being secured to guard against criminal activities and threats such as unauthorized access, data corruption, data destruction and data loss. Ineffective security systems will cause computer users, such as a small to a medium business administrator, to have a high possibility of information intrusion into external users, competitors. This occurs because of the computer systems have become a legitimate target in the vulnerability of knowledge through Internet. Therefore, it is important for computer users to secure their systems by using security systems in order to reduce the risk of internal threats and external threats. Examples of internal threats are intentional malicious behaviour and careless behaviour while external threats are intrusion threat, phishing, malicious code and denial-of-service attack. The real life example of a security problem that has increased along the world modernization is phishing. Phishing is a cyber crime where scammers are falsely claiming to be legitimate institutions by contacting targets using electric communications such as email or text message. Their aim is to get the individuals personal information, for instance, bank account number, credit card or password that will be resulted in identity theft and financial loss. An example can be taken when a spam message from an anonymous sender is claiming to have a transfer pending payment to the user’s bank account with a considerable amount of money. This is a threat from the anonymous to steal the individual bank account number and password to gain money illegally. Thus, all businesses particularly small to medium businesses are required to take security measure by securing their data in the best possible way. Some key security measures are by establishing strong passwords, protecting networks with a strong firewall and planning regular backups into external hard drive (“10 Data-Security Measures You Can’t Do Without”, 2010).
Privacy is the state of control for individual’s protection into the terms and conditions under which their personal information is collected, utilized or managed. Therefore, organizations have responsibilities to protect the information given from being revealed to other external users by following the organization’s guideline, which is a privacy policy. The privacy policy will protect the privacy of the organization employees, clients and customers as well as offer them certain preferences in which their information will be managed in the organizations. Also, an individual could have greater control over how their personal information is being handled by individuals and businesses by using privacy act (Grey Et Al., 2015). Therefore, individuals who are complying with privacy act should update their information regularly to avoid inaccurate information is being used by individuals and businesses. This shows that privacy is important to help an individual maintain their autonomy and individuality from being used in the public without permission. The example of individual privacy being exploit in term of the organization success in real life situation is when a business mistreated a picture of their customer using their products as their advertising photo without requesting the customer permission. Consequently, this action has created a violation to the customers’ privacy. The violation of privacy could also occur in businesses especially small to medium business where business are competing intensely with other competitors to dominate the market. Small to medium businesses are required to improve their privacy by enhancing their data collection process, data accuracy and data confidentiality (Grey Et Al., 2015).
Ethics is the state of guide for an individual between the principle of right and wrong in making decisions. In forming ethical decision-making, people have to consider four ethical standards, which are the utilitarian approach, rights approach, fairness approach and common good approach. The principle of ethics is important in emphasizing leadership ethics and employees’ ethics in the organizations as well as reinforcing values and integrity in the workplace as ethical cultures.  An example of ethical dilemma in life is when people are assessing to neighbour open Wi-Fi network deprived of authorization. This action seems legal as it does not harm any parties but it is actually unethical. Also, people should follow the common good approach where people should respect others welfare and should not take advantage of the openness of others in the community.
In conclusion, each individual and business have high possibility to get security breaches, privacy problems or ethical issues in the current world modernization of information systems technology. People should have known about security, privacy and ethical to prevent violation of their private information to external users as well to create right and wise decision-making in daily life. Thus, effective solutions to security, privacy and ethical problems of individuals and business are needed to enhance the users’ computer systems.