Information Technology Ethics

Information Technology Ethics are very important for computer users and computer professionals. As a computer security Investigator this thing governs our conduct when we deal with computers systems data. When you are finding evidences on crime scenes or finding facts from any public or private computers. The thing required in this process is the knowledge and pass through laws and regulation and something we must follow that is ethics because it can disclose and sabotage some one’s privacy.

These days when we talk about human rights, computer privacy is also included in this campaign and this topic is getting lot of attention in computer security world. When we talk about ethics in information technology there is couple of guideline available for this.

Privacy is probably very complex issue especially when we talk about the different definition of privacy in different countries, what consider private and what consider not private. Privacy policy can be differ on social and culture bases and also base of religion but when we talk about international internet privacy policy almost all conscience are same.

When we talk about Ethics in Information Technology, Ethics mean to take the “RIGHT” course of action, whether it’s the law or not. For example law did not tell you to feed hungry people but ethically you perform this task because we all think this is right. Law did not tell you to kind with animals but ethically you have to kind with animals. Ethics don’t come from laws but laws support ethics. Ethics are depend upon our values and these values come from variety of sources like parents how they raise us, peers and friends, religion and practice of religion etc.

Information Technology has its own ethics. In Information Technology the ethics means to act responsibly. Let’s see some points of ethics in Information Technology. Ethics in Information Technology mean to act responsibly with regards to storage, transmission, access and protection of data. Several professional organizations on international standards have code of ethics that computer professional agree to abide.

You can found a document name RFC 1087 on internet and it covers internet ethics. Some of main points of RFC 1087 are following here.

Unethical and unacceptable any activity which purposely:

      1. Seeks to gain unauthorized access to the resource of the internet.
2. Disrupts the indented use of the internet.
3. Waste resources like people, capacity, computer, data though any action
4. Destroy the integrity of computer based information
5. Compromises the privacy of users

Both individual and companies must practice ethical behavior in order to

·  Maintain reputation

·  Lower risk of liability

·  Avoid breaking the law