Privacy from a Multi-National Corporation Perspective
In the digital world, any corporation that seeks to join the multi-national circles must review its ethical standing and responsibilities. Privacy is one of the ethical issues that multi-national corporations must uphold. The ethicality of privacy is linked to the kind of information that individuals or associations reveal to others and the related revelation conditions and safeguards. They must also identify the kind of information that people can keep to themselves without being forced to reveal. Privacy issues are hard to control ranging from the increased surveillance in buildings to the internet (Mason, 1986). Additionally, the internet harbors plenty of information that can be easily retrieved without considering whether the information is private or public. As such, multi-national corporations such as banks must devise ways to protect the information entrusted to them by clients.
Multinational and Global Aspects on Privacy
There are two most important aspects related to multi-national and global privacy. First, the growth in information technology has increased the amount of surveillance, retrieval, storage, computation, and communication (Shoaff, 2015). Corporations must, therefore, factor in the elements to prevent infringing on their clients’ privacy at any stage of information handling. Second, there has been an increased value of the information used in decision-making. With the increase in the value of information by policy makers, corporations must man the acquisition of the information to prevent privacy invasion (Shoaff, 2015). Most of the privacy invasions are non-dramatic and invisible. For instance, integrating a lot of files concerning an individual in a single database increases the chances of revealing intimate details of the person depriving them of professional and personal relationship prospects.
Critical Questions
With the privacy concerns for the multi-national companies that seek to uphold ethicality in this digital age, the following questions would help the corporation have a clearer approach to handling private information.
What ways are the best to handle the privacy policies that can be acted upon across the engagement channels? With the question in mind, corporations can look into synchronizing their real-time data, centralizing their data management, as well as segmenting their granular data.
What privacy choices does the new technology give to customers? Considering this question helps the corporations to transfer most of the liabilities resulting from privacy invasion to the customer (Fagan, Garland, & Wimmer, 2015).
How will collaboration with the IT departments help in minimizing privacy invasion? The question helps the corporations acquire new solutions as well as be able to enforce the policies involving customer engagement to uphold privacy ethics.
References
Fagan, D., Garland, J., & Wimmer, K. (2015, February 19). 5 cybersecurity questions in-house counsel should consider in light of the Sony breach. Inside Counsel. Retrieved from http://www.insidecounsel.com/2015/02/19/5-cybersecurity-questions-in-house-counsel-should
Mason, R. O. (1986). Four Ethical Issues of the Information Age. Management Information Systems Quarterly, 10(1). Retrieved from http://www.gdrc.org/info-design/4-ethics.html
Shoaff, S. (2015, September 10). Three Ways Privacy Pros Can Harness Technology to Strengthen Digital Privacy. International Association of Privacy Professionals. Retrieved from https://iapp.org/news/a/three-ways-privacy-pros-can-harness-technology-to-strengthen-digital-privacy/
