Computer security poses ethical issues. Ethics have concerned with interests, harms, and rights. Governments tend to get control over people through monitoring private emails of individuals and businesses. Internet providers are legally required to wire tape and store record of electronic users to make it available to law enforcement agencies when needed. Ethical issues also arise when countries deal with each other so that no classified, electronic data is leaked or compromised leading to any security threat.
Any breach of information security can cause major income loss in the shape of damaging the expensive hardware or corrupting the software. Each day we read stories of worldwide hacking of websites resulting into a loss regarding resources, earnings and valuable time. Any such practices violate intellectual property rights. Plenty of time and resources are needed to restore the system back to its place (BRITZ, 1996).
Individual rights to liberty have always considered when doing any legislation since they both can only work together. The majority of democratic states constitutionally protect the right to privacy of an individual such as Privacy Act of 1974 in the USA. Other examples are Data Protection Act in Great Britain, Privacy Charter 1994 in Australia and Open Democracy Act 1996 in South Africa (Philip, 2007).
Data security or information security has become imperative over time due to increased dependence on the computer. Protection of all work data that rests on computers or hard disks and transmitted through systems is key to information security. The integrity, access, and confidentiality of all such data has protected through information safety in the workplace.
Society stands profoundly affected due to increased use of computer technology as the legislation is not sufficient to protect the privacy of individuals. According to a survey conducted by Equifax in the USA in 1990, 79% of people felt nervous and unsafe when processing their personal data on a computer. Privacy is considered vital to individuals as it protects them from harassment, blackmail, manipulation, defamation, theft, exclusion and subordination. The right to privacy should never take as absolute and it ought to have balanced against such rights like national security and maintenance of public order (Philip, 2007).
References
Philip, B. (2007). Ethical Aspects of Information Security and Privacy. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 21-36. Retrieved from https://www.utwente.nl/bms/wijsb/organization/brey/publicaties_brey/brey_2007_information_security.pdf
BRITZ, J. (1996). TECHNOLOGY AS A THREAT TO PRIVACY: Ethical Challenges.Web.simmons.edu. Retrieved 30 January 2016, from http://web.simmons.edu/~chen/nit/NIT'96/96-025-Britz.html
