Information Technology Essay

A number of professions in our society be required to meet by a certain erect of rules that regulate their actions due to the nature of deform they ar engaged in. Examples argon those of lawyers, doctors, accountants, who play along enrolls of morality that define acceptable and punishable behavior to patients and clients. Now, as we are pitiful towards the nurture age, more and more organizations are evolving to governing body automation as they defect old manual methods of data memory board and maintenance.The field of selective information Technology has truly changed the way people work. As associations blue-chip information and data are stored, IT security professionals, just equivalent doctors and lawyers are tasked with important functions, they hold responsibilities that are concerned with the protection of data and systems from un rancidicial external and internal access, prevention of perturbation especially from software and hardware attacks, limiting and destruction of networks. By handling these clear information they posses a great postulate of power that may be abused.The number 1 issue that highlights the need for a code of ethics for IT professionals is that of privacy, one of the hottest topics in information security. These professionals are able to access critical information which may be round customers, industries, government agencies, corporations, people and networks, that if used wrong will result to serious jural implications. An good example of which is an IT security personnel, in transmit of regulating website access of employees of a company.During the hightail it of blocking off sites and programming firewalls, they net install key loggers that enables them to view any(prenominal) a person types on a keyboard, these may include credit posting numbers, personal information, notes and emails. Release of much(prenominal) critical information potty provide the indispensable tools for individua lity theft, fraud, misrepresentation, blackmail and commission of numerous more crimes. Another issue colligate to privacy of information, is confidentiality.Company information such as new products, financial reports, intercommunicate plans and researches can be sold off to competitors, this can lead to serious demarcation damage such as nonstarter of a business. Third, is the monetary benefit that may be derived from the manipulation of a system. apart from actual theft of information, IT security professionals can alter programmed security measures and charge superfluous fees for something that they themselves maneuvered.They can make a system appear to be vulnerable to threats created by them. (Whitman and Mottard, 2007, p. 0-99) Moving forward, a number of companies are able to recognize the need to project by honourable practices. An example of an honorable security practice is that of Cisco Systems Inc. , a multinational IT corporation that designs and sells network talk technology and services. They once encountered a vulnerability that the company felt would affect the health of the Internet, so the company contacted backbone providers world-class to ensure their systems were patched to protect them from the threat. (Davidson, 2008, pencil lead By Example).The company has since then perk up various awards for Ethical practices. Another example is the development of a software that would at least prevent and regulate wrong security attacks, such as identity theft. This was the creation of Secure Electronic Transfers (SET) which was as developed by SETco, led by VISA and MasterCard (and involving other companies such as GTE, IBM, Microsoft, Netscape, RSA and VeriSign). A set of security protocols that ensures the pencil eraser of information from the buyer to the internet, that also takes into affection safety of consumers.In conclusion, an organization entrusts valuable assets of network and data security to Information Security Prof essionals. However, unlike older professions such as medicine and law, most ethical issues regarding this occupation have not been systematise to a specific law, and there is still no mandatory association such as (Bar association, American Board for Medicine) that has open up a detailed code of ethics that is uniform across all IT professionals. So organizations must take it upon themselves to instill a code of ethics to ensure that these personnel understand the moral and legal implications of their actions.