Collection of chapter summaries from Ethics in Information

Technology (Reynolds, G. 6th edition, 2019)

Chapter 1 summary: An Overiview of Ethics

What is ethics?
•Ethics is a code of behavior that is defined by the group to
which an individual belongs.
•Morals are the personal principles upon which an individual
bases his or her decisions about what is right and what is
wrong.
•A person who acts with integrity acts in accordance with a
personal code of principles.
•Law is a system of rules that tells us what we can and cannot
do. Laws are enforced by a set of institutions (the police,
courts, and law-making bodies).
•A code of ethics states the principles and core values that are
essential to one's work.
•Just because an activity is defined as legal does not mean that
it is ethical.
What trends have increased the likelihood of an unethical
behavior?
•Globalization has created a much more complex work
environment, making it more difficult to apply principles and
codes of ethics consistently.
•Organizations may be tempted to resort to unethical behavior
to maintain profits in today's more challenging and uncertain
economic climate.
•It is not unusual for powerful, highly successful individuals to
fail to act in morally appropriate ways as such people are often
aggressive in striving for what they want and are used to having
privileged access to information, people, and other resources.
Furthermore, their success often inflates their belief that they
have the ability and the right to manipulate the outcome of any
situation.

What is corporate social responsibility, and why is fostering

good business ethics important?
•Corporate social responsibility is the concept that an
organization should act ethically by taking responsibility for the
impact of its actions on its shareholders, consumers,
employees, community, environment, and suppliers.
•Supply chain sustainability is a component of CSR that focuses
on developing and maintaining a supply chain that meets the
needs of the present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their needs.
•Each organization must decide if CSR is a priority, and if so,
what its specific CSR goals are.
•Organizations have five good reasons for pursuing CSR goals
and promoting a work environment in which they encourage
employees to act ethically: (1) to gain the goodwill of the
community, (2) to create an organization that operates
consistently, (3) to foster good business practices, (4) to protect
the organization and its employees from legal action, and (5) to
avoid unfavorable publicity.

What measures can organizations take to improve their

business ethics?
•An organization can take several actions to improve its
business ethics including: appointing a corporate ethics officer,
requiring its board of directors to set and model high ethical
standards, establish a corporate code of ethics, conduct social
audits, require employees to take ethics training, include
ethical criteria in employee appraisals, and create an ethical
work environment.

How can you include ethical considerations in your decision

making?
•Often, people employ a simple decision-making model that
includes these steps: (1) define the problem, (2) identify
alternatives, (3) choose an alternative, (4) implement the
decision, and (5) monitor the results.
•You can incorporate ethical considerations into decision
making by identifying and involving the stakeholders; weighing
various laws, guidelines, and principles—including the
organization's code of ethics—that may apply; and considering
the impact of the decision on you, your organization,
stakeholders, your customers and suppliers, and the
environment.

What trends have increased the risk that information

technology will be used in an unethical manner?
•The growth of the Internet and social networks; the ability to
capture, store, and analyze vast amounts of personal data; and
a greater reliance on information systems in all aspects of life
have increased the risk that information technology will be
used unethically.
•In the midst of the many IT breakthroughs in recent years, the
importance of ethics and human values has been
underemphasized—with a range of consequences.
Chapter 2 Summary: Ethics for IT Workers and IT Users

What relationships must an IT worker manage, and what key

ethical issues can arise in each?
•An IT worker must maintain good working relationships with
employers, clients, suppliers, other professionals, IT users, and
society at large. Each relationship has its own set of ethical
issues and potential problems.
•In relationships between IT workers and employers, important
issues include setting and enforcing policies regarding the
ethical use of IT, the potential for whistle-blowing, and the
safeguarding of trade secrets.
•In relationships between IT workers and clients, key issues
revolve around defining, sharing, and fulfilling each party's
responsibilities for successfully completing an IT project. The IT
worker must remain objective and guard against any sort of
conflict of interest, fraud, misrepresentation, or breach of
contract.
•A major goal for IT workers and suppliers is to develop good
working relationships in which no action can be perceived as
unethical.
•Bribery is the act of providing money, property, or favors to
someone in business or government in order to obtain a
business advantage.
•Internal control is the process established by an organization's
board of directors, managers, and IT group to provide
reasonable assurance for the effectiveness and efficiency of
operations, the reliability of financial reporting, and compliance
with applicable laws and regulations.
•Policies are the guidelines, standards, and laws by which the
organization must abide. Policies drive processes and
procedures. Processes are a collection of tasks designed to
accomplish a stated objective. A procedure defines the exact
instructions for completing each task in a process.
•A fundamental concept of good internal control is the careful
separation of duties associated with any process that involves
the handling of financial transactions so that different aspects
of the process are handled by different people.
•The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) makes it a crime to
bribe a foreign official, a foreign political party official, or a
candidate for foreign political office. The act applies to any U.S.
citizen or company and to any company with shares listed on
any U.S. stock exchange.
•In relationships between IT workers and other professionals,
the priority is to improve the profession through activities such
as mentoring inexperienced colleagues, demonstrating
professional loyalty, and avoiding résumé inflation and the
inappropriate sharing of corporate information.
•In relationships between IT professionals and IT users,
important issues include software piracy, inappropriate use of
IT resources, and inappropriate sharing of information.
•When it comes to the relationship between IT workers and
society at large, the main challenge for IT workers is to practice
the profession in ways that cause no harm to society and
provide significant benefits.

What can be done to encourage the professionalism of IT

workers?
•A professional is one who possess the skill, good judgment,
and work habits expected from a person who has the training
and experience to do a job well.
•A professional is expected to contribute to society, to
participate in a lifelong training program, to keep abreast of
developments in the field, and to help develop other
professionals.
•IT workers of all types can improve their profession's
reputation for professionalism by (1) subscribing to a
professional code of ethics, (2) joining and participating in
professional organizations, (3) obtaining appropriate
certifications, and (4) supporting government licensing where
available.
•A professional code of ethics states the principles and core
values that are essential to the work of a particular
occupational group.
•Codes of ethics usually have two main parts—the first outlines
what the organization aspires to become and the second
typically lists rules and principles that members are expected to
live by. The codes also typically include a commitment to
continuing education for those who practice the profession.
•Adherence to a code of ethics can produce many benefits for
the individual, the profession, and society as a whole, including
ethical decision making, high standards of practice and ethical
behavior, trust and respect with the general public, and access
to an evaluation benchmark that can be used for self-
assessment.
•Several IT-related professional organizations have developed a
code of ethics, including ACM, IEEE-CS, AITP, and SANS.
•Many people believe that the licensing and certification of IT
workers would increase the reliability and effectiveness of
information systems.
•Certification indicates that a professional possesses a
particular set of skills, knowledge, or abilities, in the opinion of
the certifying organization. Numerous companies and
professional organization offer certification.
•Most states support the licensing of software engineers, and
the state licensing boards have ultimate responsibility over
specific requirements for licensing in their jurisdiction.

What ethical issues do IT users face, and what can be done to

encourage their ethical behavior?
•IT users face several common ethical issues, including
software piracy, inappropriate use of computing resources, and
inappropriate sharing of information.
•Actions that can be taken to encourage the ethical behavior of
IT users include establishing guidelines for the use of company
hardware and software; defining an AUP for the use of IT
resources; structuring information systems to protect data and
information; installing and maintaining a corporate firewall;
and ensuring compliance with laws, policies, and standards.
•The information security (infosec) group is responsible for
managing the processes, tools, and policies necessary to
prevent, detect, document, and counter threats to digital and
nondigital information.
•The audit committee of a board of directors and members of
the internal audit team have a major role in ensuring that both
the IT organization and IT users are in compliance with
organizational guidelines and policies as well as various legal
and regulatory practices.
Chapter 3 summary: Cyberattacks and Cybersecurity

Why are computer incidents so prevalent, and what are their

effects?
•Increasing computing complexity, expanding and changing
systems, an increase in the prevalence of BYOD policies, a
growing reliance on software with known vulnerabilities, and
the increasing sophistication of those who would do harm have
caused a dramatic increase in the number, variety, and severity
of security incidents.
•An exploit is an attack on an information system that takes
advantage of a particular system vulnerability. Often this attack
is due to poor system design or implementation.
•Many different types of people launch computer attacks,
including the black hat hacker, cracker, malicious insider,
industrial spy, cybercriminal, hacktivist, and cyberterrorist. Each
type has a different motivation.
•A white hat hacker is someone who has been hired by an
organization to test the security of its information systems
allowing the organizations to improve its defenses.
•Ransomware, viruses, worms, Trojan horses, logic bombs,
blended threats, spam, DDoS attacks, rootkits, advanced
persistent threats, phishing, spear phishing, smishing, vishing,
cyberespionage, and cyberterrorism are among the most
common computer exploits.
•The DHS has the responsibility to provide for a “safer, more
secure America, which is resilient against terrorism and other
potential threats.” The agency's Office of Cybersecurity and
Communications is responsible for enhancing the security,
resilience, and reliability of U.S. cyber and communications
infrastructure.
•The US-CERT is a partnership between DHS and the public and
private sectors that was established to protect the nation's
Internet infrastructure against cyberattacks by serving as a
clearinghouse for information on new viruses, worms, and
other computer security topics.
•Over the years, several laws have been enacted to prosecute
those responsible for computer-related crime, including the
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Fraud and Related Activity
in Connection with Access Devices Statute, the Stored Wire and
Electronic Communications and Transactional Records Access
Statutes, and the USA Patriot Act.

What can be done to implement a strong security program to

prevent cyberattacks?
•The IT security practices of organizations worldwide must be
focused on ensuring confidentiality, maintaining integrity, and
guaranteeing the availability of their systems and data.
Confidentiality, integrity, and availability are referred to as the
CIA security triad.
•An organization's security strategy must include security
measures that are planned for, designed, implemented, tested,
and maintained at the organization, network, application, and
end-user levels.
•Every organization needs a risk-based strategy with an active
governance process to minimize the potential impact of any
security incident and to ensure business continuity in the event
of a cyberattack. Key elements of such a strategy include a risk
assessment to identify and prioritize the threats that the
organization faces, a well-defined disaster recovery plan that
ensures the availability of key data and information technology
assets, definition of security policies needed to guide
employees to follow recommended processes and practices to
avoid security-related problems, periodic security audits to
ensure that individuals are following established policies and to
assess if the policies are still adequate even under changing
conditions, compliance standards defined by external parties,
and use of a security dashboard to help track the key
performance indicators of their security strategy.
•The concept of reasonable assurance in connection with IT
security recognizes that managers must use their judgment to
ensure that the cost of control does not exceed the system's
benefits or the risks involved.
•Authentication methods, a firewall, routers, encryption, proxy
servers, VPN, and an IDS are key elements of the network
security layer.
•Authentication methods, user roles and accounts, and data
encryption are key elements of the application security layer.
•Security education, authentication methods, antivirus
software, and data encryption are key elements of the end-user
security layer.

What actions must be taken in the event of a successful security

intrusion?
•No security system is perfect, so systems and procedures must
be monitored to detect a possible intrusion. A response plan
should be developed well in advance of any incident and be
approved by both the organization's legal department and
senior management. The response plan should address
notification, evidence protection, activity log maintenance,
containment, eradication, and follow-up.
•Organizations must implement fixes against well-known
vulnerabilities and conduct periodic IT security audits.
•Many organizations outsource their network security
operations to a MSSP, which is a company that monitors,
manages, and maintains computer and network security for
other organizations.
•Organizations must be knowledgeable of and have access to
trained experts in computer forensics to identify, collect,
examine, and preserve data from computer systems, networks,
and storage devices in a manner that preserves the integrity of
the data gathered so that it is admissible as evidence in a court
of law.

Chapter 4 summary: Privacy

What is the right of privacy, and what is the basis for protecting
personal privacy under the law?
•The right of privacy is “the right to be left alone—the most
comprehensive of rights, and the right most valued by a free
people.”
•Information privacy is the combination of communications
privacy (the ability to communicate with others without those
communications being monitored by other persons or
organizations) and data privacy (the ability to limit access to
one's personal data by other individuals and organizations in
order to exercise a substantial degree of control over that data
and its use).
•The use of information technology in business requires
balancing the needs of those who use the information that is
collected against the rights and desires of the people whose
information is being used. A combination of approaches—new
laws, technical solutions, and privacy policies—is required to
balance the scales.
•The Fourth Amendment reads, “The right of the people to be
secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against
unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and
no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by
Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be
searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” The courts
have ruled that without a reasonable expectation of privacy,
there is no privacy right to protect.
•Today, in addition to protection from government intrusion,
people want and need privacy protection from private industry.
For many, the existing hodgepodge of privacy laws and
practices fails to provide adequate protection and fuels a sense
of distrust and skepticism, and concerns over identity theft.

What are some of the laws that provide protection for the
privacy of personal data, and what are some of the associated
ethical issues?
•Few laws provide privacy protection from private industry and
there is no single, overarching national data privacy policy for
the United States.
•The Fair Credit Reporting Act regulates operations of credit
reporting bureaus.
•The Right to Financial Privacy Act protects the financial
records of financial institution customers from unauthorized
scrutiny by the federal government.
•The GLBA established mandatory guidelines for the collection
and disclosure of personal financial information by financial
institutions; requires financial institutions to document their
data security plans; and encourages institutions to implement
safeguards against pretexting.
•The Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act allows
consumers to request and obtain a free credit report each year
from each of the three consumer credit reporting agencies.
•The HIPAA defined numerous standards to improve the
portability and continuity of health insurance coverage; reduce
fraud, waste, and abuse in health insurance care and healthcare
delivery; and simplify the administration of health insurance.
•The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act included strong
privacy provisions for EHRs, including banning the sale of health
information, promoting the use of audit trails and encryption,
and providing rights of access for patients. It also mandated
that each individual whose health information has been
exposed be notified within 60 days after discovery of a data
breach.
•The FERPA provides students and their parents with specific
rights regarding the release of student records.
•The COPPA requires websites that cater to children to offer
comprehensive privacy policies, notify parents or guardians
about their data collection practices, and receive parental
consent before collecting any personal information from
children under the age of 13.
•Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act
(also known as the Wiretap Act) regulates the interception of
wire (telephone) and oral communications.
•The FISA describes procedures for the electronic surveillance
and collection of foreign intelligence information between
foreign powers and agents of foreign powers.
•Executive Order 12333 identifies the various government
intelligence-gathering agencies and defines what information
can be collected, retained, and disseminated by the agencies. It
allows for the tangential collection of U.S. citizen data—even
when those citizens are not specifically targeted.
•The ECPA deals with the protection of communications while
in transit from sender to receiver; the protection of
communications held in electronic storage; and the prohibition
of devices from recording dialing, routing, addressing, and
signaling information without a search warrant.
•The CALEA requires the telecommunications industry to build
tools into its products that federal investigators can use—after
gaining a court order—to eavesdrop on conversations and
intercept electronic communications.
•The USA PATRIOT Act modified 15 existing statutes and gave
sweeping new powers both to domestic law enforcement and
to international intelligence agencies, including increasing the
ability of law enforcement agencies to eavesdrop on telephone
communication, intercept email messages, and search medical,
financial, and other records; the act also eased restrictions on
foreign intelligence gathering in the United States.
•The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act of
2004 authorized intelligence gathering on individuals not
affiliated with any known terrorist organization (so-called lone
wolves).
•The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments
Act of 2008 granted the NSA expanded authority to collect,
without court-approved warrants, international
communications as they flow through the U.S.
telecommunications equipment and facilities.
•The PATRIOT Sunsets Extension Act granted a four-year
extension of provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act that allowed
roving wiretaps and searches of business records. It also
extended authorization intelligence gathering on “lone wolves.”
•USA Freedom Act terminated the bulk collection of telephone
metadata by the NSA instead requiring telecommunications
carriers to hold the data and respond to NSA queries for data.
The act also restored authorization for roving wiretaps and the
tracking of lone wolf terrorists.
•“Fair information practices” is a term for a set of guidelines
that govern the collection and use of personal data. Various
organizations as well as countries have developed their own set
of such guidelines and call them by different names.
•The OECD for the Protection of Privacy and Transborder Data
Flows of Personal Data created a set of fair information
practices that are often held up as the model for organizations
to adopt for the ethical treatment of consumer data.
•The European Union Data Protection Directive requires
member countries to ensure that data transferred to non-EU
countries is protected. It also bars the export of data to
countries that do not have data privacy protection standards
comparable to those of the EU. After the passage of this
directive, the EU and the United States worked out an
agreement that allowed U.S. companies that were certified as
meeting certain “safe harbor” principles to process and store
data of European consumers and companies.
•The European–United States Privacy Shield Data Transfer
Program Guidelines is a stopgap measure that allows
businesses to transfer personal data about European citizens to
the United States. The guidelines were established after the
European Court of Justice declared invalid the Safe Harbor
agreement between the EU and the United States.
•The GDPR takes effect in May 2018 and addresses the export
of personal data outside the EU enabling citizens to see and
correct their personal data, standardizing data privacy
regulations within the EU, and establishing substantial penalties
for violation of its guidelines.
•The FOIA grants citizens the right to access certain information
and records of the federal government upon request.
•The Privacy Act prohibits U.S. government agencies from
concealing the existence of any personal data record-keeping
system.

What are the various strategies for consumer profiling, and

what are the associated ethical issues?
•Companies use many different methods to collect personal
data about visitors to their websites, including depositing
cookies on visitors' hard drives.
•Consumer data privacy has become a major marketing issue—
companies that cannot protect or do not respect customer
information have lost business and have become defendants in
class actions stemming from privacy violations.
•A data breach is the unintended release of sensitive data or
the access of sensitive data (e.g., credit card numbers, health
insurance member ids, and Social Security numbers) by
unauthorized individuals. The increasing number of data
breaches is alarming, as is the lack of initiative by some
companies in informing the people whose data are stolen. A
number of states have passed data breach notifications laws
that require companies to notify affected customers on a timely
basis.

What is e-discovery, and how is it being used?

•Discovery is part of the pretrial phase of a lawsuit in which
each party can obtain evidence from the other party by various
means, including requests for the production of documents.
•E-discovery is the collection, preparation, review, and
production of electronically stored information for use in
criminal and civil actions and proceedings.
•Predictive coding is a process that couples human intelligence
with computer-driven concept searching in order to “train”
document review software to recognize relevant documents
within a document universe.

Why and how are employers increasingly using workplace

monitoring?
•Many organizations have developed IT usage policies to
protect against employee abuses that can reduce worker
productivity and expose employers to harassment lawsuits.
•About 80 percent of U.S. firms record and review employee
communications and activities on the job, including phone calls,
email, web surfing, and computer files.
•The use of fitness trackers in the workplace has opened up
potential new legal and ethical issues.

What are the capabilities of advanced surveillance technologies,

and what ethical issues do they raise?
•Surveillance cameras are used in major cities around the world
to deter crime and terrorist activities. Critics believe that such
security is a violation of civil liberties.
•An EDR is a device that records vehicle and occupant data for
a few seconds before, during, and after any vehicle crash that is
severe enough to deploy the vehicle's air bags. The fact that
most cars now come equipped with an EDR and that the data
from this device may be used as evidence in a court of law is
not broadly known by the public.
•Stalking apps can be downloaded onto a person's cell phone,
making it possible to perform location tracking, record calls and
conversations, view every text and photograph sent or
received, and record the URLs of any website visited on that
phone.
Chapter 5: Freedom of Expression

What is the basis for the protection of freedom of expression in

the United States, and what types of expressions are not
protected under the law?
•The First Amendment protects Americans’ rights to freedom
of religion, freedom of expression, and freedom to assemble
peaceably. The Supreme Court has ruled that the First
Amendment also protects the right to speak anonymously.
•Obscene speech, defamation, incitement of panic, incitement
to crime, “fighting words,” and sedition are not protected by
the First Amendment and may be forbidden by the
government.

What are some key federal laws that affect online freedom of
expression, and how do they impact organizations?
•Although there are clear and convincing arguments to support
freedom of speech on the Internet, the issue is complicated by
the ease with which children can use the Internet to gain access
to material that many parents and others feel is inappropriate
for children. The conundrum is that it is difficult to restrict
children’s Internet access without also restricting adults’ access.
•The U.S. government has passed several laws to attempt to
address this issue, including the Communications Decency Act
(CDA), which is aimed at protecting children from online
pornography, and the Child Online Protection Act (COPA),
which prohibits making harmful material available to minors via
the Internet. Both laws were ultimately ruled largely
unconstitutional. However, Section 230 of the CDA, which was
not ruled unconstitutional, provides immunity from defamation
charges to ISPs that publish user-generated content, as long as
they do not also serve as a content provider.
•Software manufacturers have developed Internet filters,
which are designed to block access to objectionable material
through a combination of URL, keyword, and dynamic content
filtering.
•The Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) requires federally
financed schools and libraries to use filters to block computer
access to any material considered harmful to minors. In United
States v. American Library Association, Inc., the American
Library Association challenged CIPA. Ultimately in that case, the
Supreme Court made it clear that the constitutionality of
government-mandated filtering schemes depends on adult
patrons’ ability to request and receive unrestricted access to
protected speech.
•The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) addresses a
number of copyright-related issues, with Title II of the act
providing limitations on the liability of an ISP for copyright
infringement.
What important freedom of expression issues relate to the use
of information technology?
•Internet censorship is the control or suppression of the
publishing or accessing of information on the Internet. There
are many forms of Internet censorship. Many countries practice
some form of Internet censorship.
•A SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) is a
lawsuit filed by corporations, government officials, and others
against citizens and community groups who oppose them on
matters of concern. Anti-SLAPP laws are designed to reduce
frivolous SLAPPs. As of 2015, 28 states and the District of
Columbia have put into effect anti-SLAPP legislation to protect
people who are the target of a SLAPP.
•Anonymous expression is the expression of opinions by people
who do not reveal their identity. The freedom to express an
opinion without fear of reprisal is an important right of a
democratic society. Anonymity is even more important in
countries that don’t allow free speech. Maintaining anonymity
on the Internet is important to some computer users. Such
users sometimes use an anonymous remailer service, which
strips the originating header and/or IP address from the
message and then forwards the message to its intended
recipient.
•Doxing involves doing research on the Internet to obtain
someone’s private personal information (such as home
address, email address, phone numbers, and place of
employment) and even private electronic documents (such as
photographs), and then posting that information online without
permission.
•Many businesses monitor the web for the public expression of
opinions that might hurt their reputations. They also try to
guard against the public sharing of company confidential
information.
•Organizations may file a John Doe lawsuit to enable them to
gain subpoena power in an effort to learn the identity of
anonymous Internet users who they believe have caused some
form of harm to the organization through their postings.
•In the United States, speech that is merely annoying, critical,
demeaning, or offensive enjoys protection under the First
Amendment. Legal recourse is possible only when hate speech
turns into clear threats and intimidation against specific
citizens.
•Some ISPs and social networking sites have voluntarily agreed
to prohibit their subscribers and members from sending hate
messages using their services. Because such prohibitions can be
included in the service contracts between a private ISP and its
subscribers or a social networking site and it members—and do
not involve the federal government—they do not violate
subscribers’ First Amendment rights.
•Many adults, including some free-speech advocates, believe
there is nothing illegal or wrong about purchasing adult
pornographic material made by and for consenting adults.
However, organizations must be very careful when dealing with
pornography in the workplace. As long as companies can show
that they were taking reasonable steps to prevent
pornography, they have a valid defense if they are subject to a
sexual harassment lawsuit.
•Reasonable steps include establishing a computer usage policy
that prohibits access to pornography sites, identifying those
who violate the policy, and taking action against those users—
regardless of how embarrassing it is for the users or how
harmful it might be for the company.
•Sexting—sending sexual messages, nude or seminude photos,
or sexually explicit videos over a cell phone—is a fast-growing
trend that can lead to many problems for both senders and
receivers.
•The Controlling the Assault of Non Solicited Pornography and
Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act specifies requirements that
commercial emailers must follow when sending out messages
that advertise a commercial product or service. The CAN-SPAM
Act is also sometimes used in the fight against the
dissemination of pornography.
•The proliferation of online sources of information and opinion
means that the Internet is full of “news” accounts that are, in
fact, highly opinionated, fictionalized, or satirical accounts of
current events presented in journalistic style.
Chapter 6 summary: Intellectual property

What does the term intellectual property encompass, and what

measures can organizations take to protect their intellectual
property?
•Intellectual property is a term used to describe works of the
mind—such as art, books, films, formulas, inventions, music,
and processes—that are distinct and owned or created by a
single person or group.
•Copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets form a
complex body of law relating to the ownership of intellectual
property, which represents a large and valuable asset to most
companies. If these assets are not protected, other companies
can copy or steal them, resulting in significant loss of revenue
and competitive advantage.
•A copyright is the exclusive right to distribute, display,
perform, or reproduce an original work in copies; to prepare
derivative works based on the work; to and grant these
exclusive rights to others.
•Copyright infringement is a violation of the rights secured by
the owner of a copyright. Infringement occurs when someone
copies a substantial and material part of another’s copyrighted
work without permission.
•Copyright law has proven to be extremely flexible in covering
new technologies, including software, video games, multimedia
works, and web pages. However, evaluating the originality of a
work can be difficult and disagreements over whether or not a
work is original sometimes lead to litigation.
•Copyrights provide less protection for software than patents;
software that produces the same result in a slightly different
way may not infringe a copyright if no copying occurred.
•The fair use doctrine established four factors for courts to
consider when deciding whether a particular use of copyrighted
property is fair and can be allowed without penalty: (1) the
purpose and character of the use, (2) the nature of the
copyrighted work, (3) the portion of the copyrighted work used,
and (4) the effect of the use on the value of the copyrighted
work.
•The use of copyright to protect computer software raises
many complicated issues of interpretation of what constitutes
infringement.
•The Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual
Property (PRO-IP) Act of 2008 increased trademark and
copyright enforcement; it also substantially increased penalties
for infringement.
•The original General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT),
signed in 1993, created the World Trade Organization (WTO) in
Geneva, Switzerland, to enforce compliance with the
agreement. GATT includes a section covering copyrights called
the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual
Property Rights (TRIPS).
•The WTO is a global organization that deals with rules of
international trade based on WTO agreements that are
negotiated and signed by representatives of the world’s trading
nations The goal of the WTO is to help producers of goods and
services, exporters, and importers conduct their business.
•The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is an
agency of the United Nations dedicated to “the use of
intellectual property as a means to stimulate innovation and
creativity.”
•The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which was
signed into law in 1998, implements two WIPO treaties in the
United States. The DMCA also makes it illegal to circumvent a
technical protection or develop and provide tools that allow
others to access a technologically protected work. In addition,
the DMCA limits the liability of Internet service providers for
copyright infringement by their subscribers or customers.
•Some view the DMCA as a boon to the growth of the Internet
and its use as a conduit for innovation and freedom of
expression. Others believe that the DMCA has given excessive
powers to copyright holders.
•A patent is a grant of property right issued by the U.S. Patent
and Trademark Office (USPTO) to an inventor that permits its
owner to exclude the public from making, using, or selling a
protected invention, and it allows for legal action against
violators. A patent prevents copying as well as independent
creation (which is allowable under copyright law).
•For an invention to be eligible for a patent, it must fall into
one of three statutory classes of items that can be patented: (1)
it must be useful, (2) it must be novel, and (3) it must not be
obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the same field.
•A utility patent is “issued for the invention of a new and useful
process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or a
new and useful improvement thereof.” A design patent, which
is “issued for a new, original, and ornamental design embodied
in or applied to an article of manufacture,” permits its owner to
exclude others from making, using, or selling the design in
question.
•Unlike copyright infringement, for which monetary penalties
are limited to certain specified dollar amounts, if the court
determines that a patent has been intentionally infringed, it can
award up to triple the amount of the damages claimed by the
patent holder.
•The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act changed the U.S. patent
system from a “first-to-invent” to a “first-inventor-to file”
system and expanded the definition of prior art, which is used
to determine the novelty of an invention and whether it can be
patented. The act made it more difficult to obtain a patent in
the United States.
•The courts and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)
have changed their attitudes and opinions of the patenting of
software over the years.
•To qualify as a trade secret, information must have economic
value and must not be readily ascertainable. In addition, the
trade secret’s owner must have taken steps to maintain its
secrecy. Trade secret laws do not prevent someone from using
the same idea if it was developed independently or from
analyzing an end product to figure out the trade secret behind
it.
•Trade secrets are protected by the Uniform Trade Secrets Act,
the Economic Espionage Act, and the Defend Trade Secrets Act,
which amended the Economic Espionage Act to create a federal
civil remedy for trade secret misappropriation.
•Trade secret law has three key advantages over the use of
patents and copyrights in protecting companies from losing
control of their intellectual property: (1) There are no time
limitations on the protection of trade secrets, unlike patents
and copyrights; (2) there is no need to file any application or
otherwise disclose a trade secret to outsiders to gain
protection; and (3) there is no risk that a trade secret might be
found invalid in court.
•Because organizations can risk losing trade secrets when key
employees leave, they often try to prohibit employees from
revealing secrets by adding nondisclosure clauses to
employment contracts. Employers can also use noncompete
agreements to protect intellectual property from being used by
competitors when key employees leave. A noncompete
agreement prohibits an employee from working for any
competitors for a period of time, often one to two years.

What are some of the current issues associated with the

protection of intellectual property?
•Plagiarism is the act of stealing someone’s ideas or words and
passing them off as one’s own. Plagiarism detection systems
enable people to check the originality of documents and
manuscripts.
•Reverse engineering is the process of breaking something
down in order to understand it, build a copy of it, or improve it.
It was originally applied to computer hardware but is now
commonly applied to software.
•In some situations, reverse engineering might be considered
unethical because it enables access to information that another
organization may have copyrighted or classified as a trade
secret.
•Recent court rulings and software license agreements that
forbid reverse engineering, as well as restrictions in the DMCA,
have made reverse engineering a riskier proposition in the
United States.
•Open source code is any program whose source code is made
available for use or modification, as users or other developers
see fit. The basic premise behind open source code is that when
many programmers can read, redistribute, and modify it, the
software improves. Open source code can be adapted to meet
new needs, and bugs can be rapidly identified and fixed.
•Competitive intelligence is legally obtained information that is
gathered to help a company gain an advantage over its rivals. It
is not the same as industrial espionage, which is the use of
illegal means to obtain business information that is not readily
available to the general public. In the United States, industrial
espionage is a serious crime that carries heavy penalties.
•Competitive intelligence analysts must take care to avoid
unethical or illegal behavior, including lying, misrepresentation,
theft, bribery, or eavesdropping with illegal devices.
•A trademark is a logo, package design, phrase, sound, or word
that enables a consumer to differentiate one company’s
products from another’s. Website owners who sell
trademarked goods or services must take care to ensure they
are not sued for trademark infringement.
•Cybersquatters register domain names for famous trademarks
or company names to which they have no connection, with the
hope that the trademark’s owner will eventually buy the
domain name for a large sum of money.
•The main tactic organizations use to circumvent
cybersquatting is to protect a trademark by registering
numerous domain names and variations as soon as they know
they want to develop a web presence.

Chapter 7 Summary: Ethical Decisions in Software

Development

What is meant by software quality, why is it so important, and

what potential ethical issues do software manufacturers face
when making decisions that involve trade-offs between project
schedules, project costs, and software quality?
•High-quality software systems are easy to learn and use. They
perform quickly and efficiently to meet their users’ needs,
operate safely and reliably, and have a high degree of
availability that keeps unexpected downtime to a minimum.
•High-quality software has long been required to support the
fields of air traffic control, nuclear power, automobile safety,
health care, military and defense, and space exploration.
•Computers and software are integral parts of almost every
business, and the demand for high-quality software is
increasing. End users cannot afford system crashes, lost work,
or lower productivity. Nor can they tolerate security holes
through which intruders can spread viruses, steal data, or shut
down websites.
•A software defect is any error that, if not removed, could
cause a software system to fail to meet its users’ needs.
•Software quality is the degree to which a software product
meets the needs of its users. Quality management focuses on
defining, measuring, and refining the quality of the
development process and the products developed during its
various stages.
•Software developers are under extreme pressure to reduce
the time to market of their products. They are driven by the
need to beat the competition in delivering new functionality to
users, to begin generating revenue to recover the cost of
development, and to show a profit for shareholders.
•The resources and time needed to ensure quality are often cut
under the intense pressure to ship a new software product.
When forced to choose between adding more user features
and doing more testing, many software companies decide in
favor of more features.
•A business information system is a set of interrelated
components—including hardware, software, databases,
networks, people, and procedures—that collects and processes
data and disseminates the output.
•Software product liability claims are typically based on strict
liability, negligence, breach of warranty, or misrepresentation—
sometimes in combination. Strict liability means that the
defendant is held responsible for injuring another person
regardless of negligence or intent.
•A warranty assures buyers or lessees that a product meets
certain standards of quality and may be either expressly stated
or implied by law. If the product fails to meet the terms of its
warranty, the buyer or lessee can sue for breach of warranty.

What are some effective strategies for developing quality

systems?
•A software development methodology is a standard, proven
work process that enables systems analysts, programmers,
project managers, and others to make controlled and orderly
progress in developing high-quality software. Software
methodologies define the activities in the software
development process as well as the individual and group
responsibilities for accomplishing objectives, recommend
specific techniques for accomplishing the objectives, and offer
guidelines for managing the quality of the products during the
various stages of the development cycle.
•The waterfall system development model is a sequential,
multistage system development process in which development
of the next stage of the system cannot begin until the results of
the current stage are approved or modified as necessary.
•Under the agile development methodology, a system is
developed in iterations (often called sprints), lasting from one
to four weeks. Agile development, which accepts the fact that
system requirements are evolving and cannot be fully
understood or defined at the start of the project, concentrates
on maximizing the team’s ability to deliver quickly and respond
to emerging requirements.
•Using an effective development methodology enables a
manufacturer to produce high-quality software, forecast
project-completion milestones, and reduce the overall cost to
develop and support software. An effective development
methodology can also help protect software manufacturers
from legal liability for defective software in two ways: by
reducing the number of software errors that could cause
damage and by making negligence more difficult to prove.
•The cost to identify and remove a defect in the early stages of
software development can be up to 100 times less than
removing a defect in a piece of software that has been
distributed to customers.
•Quality assurance (QA) refers to methods within the
development process that are designed to guarantee reliable
operation of a product. Ideally, these methods are applied at
each stage of the development cycle.
•There are several tests employed in software development
including black-box and white-box dynamic testing, static
testing, unit testing, integration testing, system testing, and
user acceptance testing.
•Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) models are
collections of best practices that help organizations improve
their processes. A best practice is a method or technique that
has consistently shown results superior to those achieved with
other means, and that is used as a benchmark within a
particular industry. CMMI-Development (CMMI-DEV)—is
frequently used to assess and improve software development
practices.
•CMMI defines five levels of software development maturity:
initial, managed, defined, quantitatively managed, and
optimizing. CMMI identifies the issues that are most critical to
software quality and process improvement. Its use can improve
an organization’s ability to predict and control quality,
schedule, costs, and productivity when acquiring, building, or
enhancing software systems. CMMI also helps software
engineers analyze, predict, and control selected properties of
software systems.
•A safety-critical system is one whose failure may cause human
injury or death. In the development of safety-critical systems, a
key assumption is that safety will not automatically result from
following an organization’s standard software development
methodology.
•Safety-critical software must go through a much more
rigorous and time-consuming development and testing process
than other kinds of software; the appointment of a project
safety engineer and the use of a hazard log and risk analysis are
common in the development of safety-critical software.
•Risk is the potential of gaining or losing something of value.
Risk can be quantified by three elements: a risk event, the
probability of the event happening, and the impact (positive or
negative) on the business outcome if the risk does actually
occur.
•The annualized rate of occurrence (ARO) is an estimate of the
probability that an event will occur over the course of a year.
The single loss expectancy (SLE) is the estimated loss that
would be incurred if the event happens. The annualized loss
expectancy (ALE) is the estimated loss from this risk over the
course of a year.
•The following equation is used to calculate the annual loss
expectancy: ARO × SLE = ALE.
•Risk management is the process of identifying, monitoring,
and limiting risks to a level that an organization is willing to
accept.
•Reliability is a measure of the rate of failure in a system that
would render it unusable over its expected lifetime.
•The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) issued
its 9000 series of business management standards in 1988.
These standards require organizations to develop formal quality
management systems that focus on identifying and meeting the
needs, desires, and expectations of their customers.
•The ISO 9001 family of standards serves as a guide to quality
products, services, and management; it provides a set of
standardized requirements for a quality management system.
Many businesses and government agencies specify that a
vendor must be ISO 9001 certified to win a contract from them.
•Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) is an important
technique used to develop ISO 9001–compliant quality systems.
FMEA is used to evaluate reliability and determine the effects
of system and equipment failures.

Chapter 8 summary: The Impact of Information Technology on

Society

What is the relationship between IT investment and productivity

growth in the United States?
•The most widely used measurement of the material standard
of living is gross domestic product (GDP) per capita.
•In the United States, as in most developed nations, the
standard of living has been improving over time. However, its
rate of change varies as a result of business cycles that affect
prices, wages, employment levels, and the production of goods
and services.
•Labor productivity is a measure of the economic performance
that compares the amount of goods and services produced with
the number of labor hours used in producing those goods and
services.
•Most countries have been able to produce more goods and
services over time—not through a proportional increase in
labor but rather by making production more efficient. These
gains in productivity have led to increases in the GDP-based
standard of living because the average hour of labor produced
more goods and services.
•Innovation is a key factor in productivity improvement, and IT
has played an important role in enabling innovation.
Organizations use IT, other new technology, and capital
investment to implement innovations in products, processes,
and services.
•It can be difficult to quantify the benefits of IT investments on
worker productivity because there can be a considerable lag
between the application of innovative IT solutions and the
capture of significant productivity gains. In addition, many
factors other than IT influence worker productivity rates.

How will artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, and

natural language processing affect the future workforce?
•Advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics,
and natural language processing are fundamentally changing
the way work gets done and have the potential to affect the
tasks, roles, and responsibilities of most workers.
•Almost every job has partial automation potential and
research suggests that 45 percent of human work activities
could be automated using existing technology.
•It is likely to take decades for automation to achieve anywhere
near its full potential.
•Artificial intelligence systems can simulate human intelligence
processes, including learning, reasoning, and self-correction.
•Machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence (AI), involves
computer programs that can learn some task and improve their
performance with experience.
•Robotics is a branch of engineering that involves the
development and manufacture of mechanical or computer
devices that can perform tasks that require a high degree of
precision or that are tedious or hazardous for human beings.
•Natural language processing is an aspect of artificial
intelligence that involves technology that allows computers to
understand, analyze, manipulate, and/or generate “natural
languages” such as English.

What impact has the application of IT had on health care?

•Healthcare costs in the United States are expected to increase
an average of 5.6 percent per year from 2016 to 2025.
•Much of this increase is due to the continued aging of the
population, government policy, and life style changes, and to a
lesser extent the development and use of new medical
technology.
•In order for the United States to rein in healthcare spending,
patient awareness must be raised and technology costs must
be managed more carefully.
•An electronic medical record (EMR) is a collection of health-
related information on an individual that is created, managed,
and consulted by authorized clinicians and staff within a single
healthcare organization. The information in an EMR is not easily
shared with others outside of the healthcare organization
where the data originated.
•An electronic health record (EHR) is a comprehensive view of
the patient’s complete medical history designed to be shared
with authorized providers and staff from more than one
organization.
•Health information exchange (HIE) is the process of sharing
patient-level electronic health information between different
organizations. HIE can result in more cost-effective and higher-
quality care.
•A personal health record (PHR) includes those portions of the
EHR that an individual patient “owns” and controls such as
personal identifiers, contact information, health provider
information, problem list, medication history, allergies,
immunizations, and lab and test results.
•Clinical decision support (CDS) is a process and a set of tools
designed to enhance health-related decision making through
the use of clinical knowledge and patient-specific information
to improve healthcare delivery. Effective use of CDS systems
increases the quality of patient care while at the same time
cutting costs.
•A computerized provider order entry (CPOE) system enables
physicians to place orders (for drugs, laboratory tests,
radiology, physical therapy) electronically with the orders
transmitted directly to the recipient. CPOE streamlines the
ordering process.
•Telehealth employs modern telecommunications and
information technologies to provide medical care to people
who live or work far away from healthcare providers, provide
professional and patient health related training, and support
healthcare administration.
•Telemedicine is the component of telehealth that provides
medical care to people at a location different from the
healthcare providers. Telemedicine helps reduce the need for
patients to travel for treatment and allows healthcare
professionals to serve more patients in a broader geographic
area.
•Store-and-forward telemedicine involves acquiring data,
sound, images, and video from a patient and then transmitting
everything to a medical specialist for later evaluation.

Chapter 9 summary: Social Media

How do individuals use social networks, and what are some

practical business uses of social networking and other social
media tools?
•Social media are web-based communication channels and
tools that enable people to interact with each other by creating
online communities where they can share information, ideas,
messages, and other content, including images, audio, and
video.
•A social networking platform creates an online community of
Internet users that enables members to break down barriers
created by time, distance, and cultural differences; such a site
allows people to interact with others online by sharing
opinions, insights, information, interests, and experiences.
•The number of Internet users worldwide is approaching 4
billion or roughly half the population.
•Many organizations employ social networking platforms to
advertise, identify and access job candidates, improve customer
service, and sell products and services.
•An increasing number of business-oriented social networking
platforms are designed to encourage and support relationships
with consumers, clients, potential employees, suppliers, and
business partners around the world.
•Social media marketing involves the use of social networks to
communicate and promote the benefits of products and
services.
•Two significant advantages of social media marketing over
traditional marketing are that marketers can create a
conversation with viewers of their ads and that ads can be
targeted to reach people with the desired demographic
characteristics.
•Social media marketing involves the use of social networks to
communicate and promote the benefits of products and
services. The two primary objectives of social media marketers
are raising brand awareness and driving traffic to a website to
increase product sales.
•Organic media marketing employs tools provided by or
tailored for a particular social media platform to build a social
community and interact with it by sharing posts and responding
to customer comments on the organization's blog and social
media accounts.
•Paid media marketing involves paying a third party to
broadcast an organization's display ads or sponsored messages
to social network users. Two common methods of charging for
paid media are cost per thousand impressions and cost per
click.
•Earned media refers to media exposure an organization gets
through press and social media mentions, positive online
ratings and reviews, tweets and retweets, reposts (or “shares”),
recommendations, and so on. Earned social media traffic
enables an organization to reach more people without any
additional cost.
•Viral marketing is an approach to social media marketing that
encourages individuals to pass along a marketing message to
others, thus creating the potential for exponential growth in
the message's exposure and influence.
•Some 60 percent of employers used social media to research
job candidates with half of those finding information that gave
a negative impression of the candidate.
•Employers can legally reject a job applicant based on the
contents of the individual's social networking profile as long as
the company is not violating federal or state discrimination
laws.
•Job seeking candidates should review their presence on social
media and remove photos and postings that portray them in a
potentially negative light. Many jobseekers delete their social
media accounts altogether.
•Increasingly, consumers are using social networks to share
their experiences, both good and bad, with others. Because of
this, many organizations actively monitor social media
networks as a means of improving customer service, retaining
customers, and increasing sales.
•A social shopping platform brings shoppers and sellers
together in a social networking environment in which members
share information and make recommendations while shopping
online.

What are some of the key ethical issues associated with the use
of social networks and other social media?
•Cyberabuse is any form of mistreatment or lack of care, both
physical and mental, based on the use of an electronic
communications device that causes harm and distress to
others.
•Nearly three-quarters of U.S. Internet users have witnessed
online harassment or abuse and almost half have personally
experienced it.
•Cyberharassment is a form of cyberabuse in which the abusive
behavior, which involves the use of an electronic
communications device, is degrading, humiliating, hurtful,
insulting, intimidating, malicious, or otherwise offensive to an
individual or group of individuals causing substantial emotional
distress.
•Cyberstalking is also a form of cyberabuse that consists of a
long-term pattern of unwanted persistent pursuit and intrusive
behavior (involving the use of an electronic communications
device) that is directed by one person against another that
causes fear and distress in the victim.
•The National Center for Victims of Crime offers tips on how to
combat cyberstalking.
•The 1994 Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and
Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act set requirements for
sex offender registration and notification in the United States.
It also that states create websites that provide information on
sex offenders within the state.
•The Sex Offender Registration and Notification Provisions
(SORNA) of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of
2006 set national standards that govern which sex offenders
must register and what data must be captured.
•Most social networking platforms have terms of use
agreements, a privacy policy, or a content code of conduct that
summarizes key legal aspects regarding use of the platform.
Typically, the terms state that the platform has the right to
delete material and terminate user accounts that violate its
policies. These policies can be difficult to enforce.
•Inappropriate material posted online includes nonconsensual
posts that include intimate photos or videos of people without
their permission; such posts are often referred to as “revenge
porn.” This type of content is often uploaded by ex-partners
with an intention to shame, embarrass, and/or harass their
former partner.
•The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects the
right of freedom of expression from government interference,
however, it does not prohibit free speech interference by
private employers.
•Organizations should put in place a social media policy to
avoid legal issues and set clear guidelines and expectations for
employees.
•The increased risk of accidents associated with social media
interaction while driving, the tendency of many social media
users to become narcissist in their postings, and the ability to
perform self-image manipulation are additional social media
issues.

Chapter 10 summary: Ethics of IT Organizations

What key legal and ethical issues are associated with the use of
contingent workers, H-1B visa holders, and offshore outsourcing
companies?
•Contingent work is a job situation in which an individual does
not have an explicit or implicit contract for long-term
employment.
•Organizations can obtain contingent workers through
temporary staffing firms, employee leasing organizations, and
professional employment organizations.
•Temporary staffing firms recruit, train, and test job seekers in
a wide range of job categories and skill levels, and then assign
them to clients as needed.
•In employee leasing, the subscribing firm transfers all or part
of its workforce to the leasing firm, which handles all human-
resource-related activities and costs such as payroll, training,
and the administration of employee benefits. The subscribing
firm leases these workers, but they remain employees of the
leasing firm.
•A coemployment relationship is one in which two employers
have actual or potential legal rights and duties with respect to
the same employee or group of employees.
•A PEO is a business entity that hires the employees of its
clients and then assumes all responsibility for all human
resource management functions, including administration of
benefits. The client company remains responsible for directing
and controlling the daily activities of the employees. The client
maintains a long-term investment and commitment to the
employees, but uses the PEO as a means to outsource the
human resource activities.
•The gig economy refers to a work environment in which
temporary positions are common and organizations contract
with independent workers for short-term engagements.
•An independent contractor is an individual who provides
services to another individual or organization according to
terms defined in a written contract or within a verbal
agreement.
•Organizations that use contingent workers must be extremely
careful how they pay and treat these workers, or run the risk of
getting dragged into a class action lawsuit over mis-
classification of workers.
•When a firm employs a contingent worker, it does not usually
have to provide benefits, can easily adjust the number of
workers to meet its business needs, and does not incur training
costs.
•Contingent workers may have a low level of commitment to
the company and its projects. The skills and knowledge a
contingent worker gains while working for a particular are lost
when the worker departs at a project's completion.
•An H-1B is a temporary work visa granted by the U.S.
Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for people who
work in specialty occupations—jobs that require at least a four-
year bachelor's degree in a specific field, or equivalent
experience.
•Employers hire H-1B workers to meet critical business needs
or to obtain essential technical skills or knowledge that cannot
be readily found in the United States. H-1B workers may also be
used when there are temporary shortages of needed skills.
•Congress sets an annual cap on the number of H-1B visas to be
granted—although the number of visas issued often varies
greatly from this cap due to various exceptions.
•Companies applying for H-1B visas must offer a wage that is at
least 95 percent of the average salary for the occupation.
Because wages in the IT field vary substantially, unethical
companies can get around the average salary requirement.
•Companies that employ H-1B workers are required to declare
that they will not displace American workers; however, they are
exempt from that requirement if 15 percent of more of their
workers are on H-1B visas and the H-1B workers are paid at
least $60,000 a year.
•Many U.S. companies complain they have trouble finding
enough qualified workers and urge that the cap on visas be
raised. Unemployed and displaced IT workers challenge
whether the United States needs to continue importing tens of
thousands of H-1B workers each year.
•The number of degrees awarded in the field of computer and
information sciences at post-secondary institutions in the
United States reached 130,000 in 2015. The Bureau of Labor
Statistics has projected an increase of 53,000 new U.S. tech
jobs per year from 2014 to 2024.
•Opinions vary as to whether or not the hiring of H-1B workers
affects job opportunities and wages.
•Outsourcing is a long-term business arrangement in which a
company contracts for services with an outside organization
that has expertise in providing a specific function.
•Offshore outsourcing is a form of outsourcing in which the
services are provided by an organization whose employees are
in a foreign country.
•Outsourcing and offshore outsourcing are used to meet
staffing needs while potentially reducing costs and speeding up
project schedules.
•Many of the same ethical issues that arise when considering
whether to hire H-1B and contingent workers apply to
outsourcing and offshore outsourcing.
•Successful offshoring projects require day-to-day interaction
between software development and business teams, so it is
essential for the hiring company to take a hands-on approach
to project management.
What is whistle-blowing, and what ethical issues are associated
with it?
•Whistle-blowing is an effort to attract public attention to a
negligent, illegal, unethical, abusive, or dangerous act by a
company or some other organization.
•Whistle-blower protection laws allow employees to alert the
proper authorities to employer actions that are unethical,
illegal, or unsafe, or that violate specific public policies.
Unfortunately, no comprehensive federal law protects all
whistle-blowers from retaliatory acts.
•A potential whistle-blower must consider many ethical
implications prior to going public with his or her allegations,
including whether the high price of whistle-blowing is worth it;
whether all other means of dealing with the problem have been
exhausted; whether whistle-blowing violates the obligation of
loyalty that the employee owes to his or her employer; and
whether public exposure of the problem will actually correct its
underlying cause and protect others from harm.
•An effective whistle-blowing process includes the following
steps: (1) assess the seriousness of the situation, (2) begin
documentation, (3) attempt to address the situation internally,
(4) consider escalating the situation within the company, (5)
assess the implications of becoming a whistle-blower, (6) use
experienced resources to develop an action plan, (7) execute
the action plan, and (8) live with the consequences.
What is green computing, and what are organizations doing to
support this initiative?
•Green computing is concerned with the efficient and
environmentally responsible design, manufacture, operation,
and disposal of IT-related products.
•Green computing has three goals: (1) reduce the use of
hazardous material, (2) allow companies to lower their power-
related costs, and (3) enable the safe disposal or recycling of
computers and computer-related equipment.
•Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) is
a system that enables purchasers to evaluate, compare, and
select electronic products based on 51 environmental criteria.
•The European Union passed the Restriction of Hazardous
Substances Directive to restrict the use of many hazardous
materials in computer manufacturing, require manufacturers to
use at least 65 percent reusable or recyclable components,
implement a plan to manage products at the end of their life
cycle in an environmentally safe manner, and reduce or
eliminate toxic material in their packaging.