Privacy in the Workplace - Essay Example

Privacy in the Workplace Instruction Privacy is paramount to everyone in the 21st century due to the nature of information being handled. Everyemployee has a right to privacy as a policy in ethics of every work place due to the impact it can have of employee to employee and employer to an employee working relationship. The concern to uphold privacy has arisen from the fact that, on the internet, anything from hacking someone’s account to tapping into private conversations can happen and for that reason, employees and even employers can no longer feel secure to carry on without securing some precautions on their own. The privacy of consumer rights is also another issue arising from privacy at the workplace, for instance, a bank or any other institution that is dealing with numerous information of clients occasionally, ethics requires that the clients information should be treated with due confidentiality and no one is compellable to share the same information with a third party. Introduction of checking system has always been based on their ability to improve privacy without interfering with the intended functionality (Magill, & Worklaw Network. 2007). Most employees working online consider privacy a priority because mischief is always out to wreck the reputation of an individual. For instance, incidences of someone editing or even deleting the call logs can happen and if someone claims to have made communication and the opposing party denies of anything like that happening; the call logs will either show that the communication was made or not. The importance of ensuring that such communications are treated with privacy is that health status and financial status information are personal and is important to treat them with privacy. Past relationships between colleagues in the workplace if known may ruin their working relationship with others and for that reason, privacy must dominate the life of every individual in the working place. Social media is a window that gives people the opportunity to meet new people and interact, however, the content of interactions ought not to attract the attention of the public and that is why privacy has been improved to allow a one on one conversation between the individual around the globe (Angwin, 2014). In the work place also, there are shared, files, folders and even software that enable people to track information from one user to the other, such scenarios present the most agonizing situations with regards to privacy of individuals and their work. The records of every employee ought to be secured by using passwords to ensure that under no circumstance can someone with mischievous intentions interfere with the workings of another employee. For this reason, firms have provided an array of opportunities like use of passwords, and even key cards to ensure that someone who is accessing any information from the system is rightfully doing so. Most institutions have a procedure that is used to vett passwords, and that is customizable by an individual to ensure that no data that is classified is accessible to the wrong hands. The other approach towards addressing privacy issues is by ensuring that the king of emails used are those with a company name as the domain name as opposed to personal emails. This has been found as a step forward in ensuring the privacy issues become limited to the working environment alone, as opposed to exposure to the risk of the wider internet society. The social networks that have graced the internet are too another group of platforms that have compromised privacy of people in the workplace, any developments between individuals cannot miss the attention of work place colleagues. The administrators in these platforms are trying hard to guarantee the users in these platforms a degree of privacy that is desired by the users. Timeline information about an employee will tell where that person was and with whom he or she was with, everyone will want to treat the same information with a particular degree of privacy and for that reason, privacy at workplace must be provided. In trying to tame cross violation of computer ethics at the workplace, milestones have been achieved in terms drafting laws to govern such violations as cyber crime and cyber bullying. Journalism for instance, has the attitude of publishing information that would eventually interfere with the privacy of an individual, and that is why, legislation has been so dear to people at their workplace to ensure that employees are not embroiled in unfounded claims that would later taint their reputation ( Hansson, & Palm, 2005). Biometric data relating to individual persons at the workplace have been a target in more than one occasion according to privacy research policy. Most organizations are battling with proof of identity when dealing with a large array of data that demands the identity of individuals is shielded from unauthorized access. To secure the privacy of the people, their biometric information is encrypted to make sure that they are untraceable and that anyone seeking to use such information meet certain criteria that expose their legitimacy. Some of the steps are done by designing the whole process to ensure that even if somebody can access certain biometric information, they are not able to construct any image template out of it (Bidgoli, 2006). Privacy of information at workplace has also become apparent to workers working in the health institution for the simple reason that certain health complications a health officer encounters when dealing with patients are far much overwhelming for an individual. A patient may test positive for an STI and according to the ethics of workplace, the doctor in this case is required not to reveal the information to anyone not even close family member (Harman, & American Health Information Management Association, 2006). This enables the patient to avoid stigma and questions that ought not to be asked and learn to take charge of their own problems alone. To ensure that such mishaps are avoided, medical practitioners who work in shifts are required to use passwords, and user accounts in computers that are used by other employees when they change shifts. Similarly, information that is universal and might be needed by other employees is usually shared in a folder that is available in the work place network (Shelly, & Vermaat, 2010). Electronic health record is the latest development that has received widespread criticism for possible privacy breaches. While, at the foresight, EHR is a milestone in conducting disease outbreaks and surveillance; the challenge with privacy comes in when a patient is attended to by more than one doctor. This means that a patient’s information will be in the hands of more than one doctors although none of them is allowed to communicate the same, system checks may bring out the names of patients who have been treated for a certain number of times and the hospitals they have attended. When information is tabled for scrutiny that is when the privacy of a patient will come under trial. This is worsened by the efforts to come up with systems that are able to work in coordination (Brown, & Brown, 2011). Every client in any undertaking deserves a right to privacy no matter the circumstance, and that is provided for in the constitution of every country. This provision was meant to ensure that people who enter into any agreement or anyone dealing with another person by way of professional responsibility remains cognizant of the fact that they have a duty to protect the privacy of the client or whatever information is handled. The government’s move to centralize and compress information relating to an individuals, by producing identity cards that contain virtually all the information, is also seen as a gateway to breach the privacy of an individual. These cards too have memory microchips and that is what is used to track the movement of individuals within the country. With the rising of private security firms that have sophisticated technology, it is becoming very likely that, the privacy of individuals may be subject to interference considering that conspiracies can be engineered to blind fold the main agenda. National databases containing this information are vulnerable and can be hacked by individuals who want to access information about certain people, and when that is done, the privacy of the people is no longer secure (Turnbull, & Canadian Privacy Institute. 2009). In the business world and information technology, ethics play a key role in ensuring that business deals are entered with one agenda and that, the rules of any business undertaking are observed. In the past, setbacks have arisen out of the sense that the world has become a global village and for that reason, certain occurrences that are treated as detrimental in business are owed to failure in privacy of the systems that are being used. For instance, competing firms ought not to have issues with their employees. For instance, security firms competing for contracts to offer security solutions must have all the employees working towards achieving the agenda of firms, as opposed to helping a rival firm. This can only be achieved if privacy policy of the firm is not questionable and this more so with telecommunication companies where employees are bound to move from one firm to the other (Stanton, & Stam, 2006). This case gets worse if an employee who is heading a sensitive section of the firm and is talented relocates to a rival company, instances of that employee breaching connections and accessing information that is classified is rank likely. What that will translate to in terms of the future of the firm to compete in the market is invaluable as a loss. Similarly, as a matter of business, musicians have been victims of untamed society making them loss a lot of money for their work of art. No one can track and obstruct illegal sharing of movies and or songs from one user to the other. technology has not stretched to the level where a song once downloaded by an individual after paying for it can never be transferred to another individual through any other wireless connectivity and for that reason, musicians end up having their songs played all over for a small amount that should be (Roebuck, & Roebuck, 2004). In conclusion, the roles of every person in the society, whether in a profession or seeking out information regarding them or a situation, have a duty to uphold the level of privacy that the situation demands of them. Above all, the privacy of information starting from the organization, through the employees to the clients have to be treated with privacy since that is what ethics requires of every system. References Angwin, J. (2014). Dragnet nation: A quest for privacy, security, and freedom in a world of relentless surveillance. Bidgoli, H. (2006). Handbook of information security. Hoboken, N.J: John Wiley. Brown, S. A., & Brown, M. (2011). Ethical issues and security monitoring trends in global healthcare: Technological advancements. Hershey, PA: Medical Information Science Reference. Harman, L. B., & American Health Information Management Association. (2006). Ethical challenges in the management of health information. Sudbury, Mass: Jones and Bartlett Publishers. Hansson, S. O., & Palm, E. (2005). The ethics of workplace privacy. Bruxelles: PIE-Peter Lang. Magill, B. S., & Worklaw Network. (2007). Workplace privacy: Real answers and practical solutions. Washington, DC: Thompson Pub. Group. Roebuck, W., & Roebuck, W. (2004). Privacy in e-business: Promoting respect, trust and confidence in your organization. London: Business Information. Shelly, G. B., & Vermaat, M. (2010). Discovering computers 2010: Living in a digital world. Boston, MA: Course Technology/Cengage Learning. Stanton, J. M., & Stam, K. R. (2006). The visible employee: Using workplace monitoring and surveillance to protect information assets- without compromising employee privacy or trust. Medford, N.J: CyberAge Books. Turnbull, I. J., & Canadian Privacy Institute. (2009). Privacy in the workplace. Toronto: CCH Canadian. Read More