DIT notes.docx - IT professionals must be held to strict...

IT professionals must be held to strict legal and high ethical standards because of the strategic
role they occupy in business. They have knowledge of and access to sensitive information,
business systems, and communications, and they can cause great harm to their organizations if
they engage in illegal or unethical behavior.
There are many ways an IT professional can cause harm to others in the course of
work.
Some ways are:

Identity Theft

Corporate Espionage

Trade Secrets

Software Piracy

Classified information
Ethical behavior guidelines that all IT professionals should follow:
 Be fair and honest with customers.
 Respect confidentiality of data.
 Do not use access to computer systems in unprofessional or inappropriate ways.
 Protect passwords and system access of users.
 Protect sensitive information.
 Do no harm to a company when leaving voluntarily or involuntarily.
Demonstrate fair and honest action—
Most customers of IT services do not understand the complexity of computing hardware
or software. They rely on the advice and expertise of the IT worker. The IT worker is
ethically responsible to provide the best advice and guidance for the customer needs at
a fair cost.
The computer programmer should provide clear explanations and avoid complicated
explanations. It is best to ask clients if they have additional questions or need
clarification.
Respect confidentiality of data—

IT professionals may have access to users’ private personal information

Keeping information confidential means:

Being aware of what you say out loud and to whom

Proper filing, storage, and destruction of sensitive information

Not discussing or using information in any way outside of the workplace
Do not use access to computer systems in unprofessional or inappropriate ways—
Using granted authorizations such as administrator access for unprofessional or
inappropriate activities is unethical. Examples:
 Moonlighting business, or doing work for a secondary job (moonlighting while
at your primary job could get you fired)
 Viewing sexual material
 Social media networks
 Breaking copyright law
IT professionals are responsible for setting up employee network access, e-mail
accounts, and other technology access. IT professionals must adhere to strict
confidentiality guidelines because they have access to sensitive information.
IT professionals have access to sensitive company and employee information.
Company-wide systems like customer retention management (CRM) and enterprise
resource planning (ERP) rely on the collection of sensitive customer data. IT
professionals help with collecting and processing this sensitive data.
Protecting sensitive information requires secure disposal of sensitive documents, limited
access to private information, and refraining from discussing private information in a
public area.