What are Information Ethics, Privacy, and Security in Information Systems

A. Ethics

Ethics is a system of moral principles that human beings use to judge right and wrong and to develop rules of conduct, what is right from wrong, ethics can change from one culture to the next.

There are two ethical systems:

• Emphasizes natural laws and rights :

Which judges the morality of an action based on how well it accepted the rules based on consequences. Examples: Thou shalt not kill. Right to privacy. Right to a free press.

• Utilitarianism :

 Considers the consequences of an action, weighing its good effects against its harmful ones. Examples: The greatest good for the greatest number.

B. Information Ethics

is the ethical and moral issues arising from the development and use of info technologies, as well as the creation, duplication, processing and distribution of information itself.

The Issue Example such as :

• Intelectual property :

it includes intangible assets such as music, written works,   software, art, designs, movies, discoveries, inventions, and other expressions of the human mind.

• Digital rights management :

technologies that software developers, publishers,  media, and other IP holders use to control access to their digital content.

• Plagiarism :

When a person gets an idea from reading another’s work and then copying it without crediting/change the content.

C. Privacy

Is like a state or condition of being free from being observed or distributed by other people. It also means the protection of data about individuals. Like the data was on paper or in separate systems with clumsy interconnections, information privacy was easier to achieve. For example : face recognition on smartphones , password lock, pin, fingerprint unlock and etc.

• Surveillance : to monitor e-mail, web surfing , and othe online communications are readily available to all  organizations, and survey show that many have already adopted them.
• Anonymity : refers to a condition in which a person’s identity is unknown. The positive side ,it protects people who participate in online support groups where they reveal embarrassing facts without fear of disclosure.

D. Information Security

Information security protect assets against misuse, disclosure, unauthorized access, or destruction. They can be natural events or human- made, accidental, or deliberate. With countless threats and limited budgets , organizations can’t eliminate all risks and must make careful assessments to manage them. Risk managers consider many issues, beginning with a clear understanding of what information assets need protection.

E. The Human Element in Information Ethics, Security, and Privacy

To reduce the over load with multiple passwords, many organizations implement the  single sign-on, which is permits users to log in once with a single user ID and passwords to software applications.