Ethical Issues related to Information Technology Professionals

While searching on the web about ‘ethical issues related to Information Technology professionals’, I found many of the sites explaining about ‘Cyber-crime’ which is the most serious issues in the digital world. Ethical issues in IT differ from general ethical issues in a variety of ways. During the dive on this research, I came to know that there are many sub issues in this topic which majorly includes

• Plagiarism
• Hacks and threats on the system
• Piracy
• Hackers accessing online databases
• Some of the web sites installing cookies and spyware to monitor user activities
• Employers monitoring employee’s emails and other stuffs
• And one of the most common problem we face is spam emails
• Vendor-Client issues

During the research, for the system analysts various ethical issues could be found. Day by day the speed of computation is increasing; not only in the hardware but also in the software, the latest technology are developed. The system analysts may demand for those technology which may not be seriously required. They may demand to change the specification continuously which the company may not require. They demand such resources which increases just the company assets. This problem is very serious in as it does not help for the company profit. Not only the hardware and software, but also the resources like internet, telephone and many more. The fast growing internet with high speed helps the person to solve the problems very quickly. But multiple tasks can be done also parallel which may encourage the system analysts to do. The risks of breaking the laws of the company assets is high enough. During the office time instead of analyzing the systems, s/he may be involved in misusing those resources. Let us see this example, the system analysts may require to analyze on the web and he does but apart he is using some of the sites which are restricted may arise the ethical issues. The most common issues that we face is the piracy in the digital world. It is easy enough to violate the copyright act easily on the www. The research that they do may have a high chance of the piracy. Not only this the report they present may include plagiarism.

Apart from this the company may not entitle them what the system analysts do. They are not given the credit they deserve. All the credit the company seems to take. The company may make their employee to do a bunch of work in a very limited time. This arises in the health issues of the employees. Being human, the analysts requires the rest physically. In making profit, the company makes the manpower to do a hard work even if the employees have some health problem. For example, spending maximum time n computer arises the eye, headache problem to the employees. The company may not have a serious glance at this issues. There are also the gender issues, given the fact that females are often discriminated against the various ways in the growing IT age. Company may use some of the techniques to monitor their employees, but they might not know ‘at what extent to monitor?’ Personal files/emails may be monitored in this case.

There is not only just one hand that makes clapping.  All we need to understand is the growth of any company can be taken by the mutual understanding. A good digital citizen must understand this and stop letting these issues rise up.