Primary Principles For IT Professionals

Primary Principles for IT Professionals

Technology is growing at a rate that is almost beyond comprehension. A person buys a brand new computer today and it seems that within three months their PC is out of date. The world of technology is growing so fast, and that rate of exponential growth is challenging the integrity of those who work in this field. As a result, several organizations have created a system of ethics and policies that they have implemented to ensure that professionals and organizations act in a moral way about the way they do business, and while these standards differ in many ways the three things that are consistently found in each one of them is personal honesty, confidentiality of information, and the commitment to cause

ISACA states that all information is to be kept confidential under every circumstance unless a legal authority has overruled them. They point out that a failure to do so discredits the work of the professional and the industry as a whole (ISACA 2010). SANS goes a step further. They not only expect that IT professionals would protect the information of customers and businesses, but also the data and personal information of co-workers, unless there is a company policy that supersedes the policy. It also does not allow people to probe into systems or networks where a professional might find a computer vulnerability that allows them to gather information (SANS 2004). The ethics of a business are very important whether employees and professionals know it or not, and these ethical guidelines ensure that persons working on systems understand that there is a need to protect the integrity of information and data provided by businesses, co-workers and customers. This has become a policy that has been challenged more of late because of the debate over Eric Snowden, the former NSA worker who took top-secret United States information and revealed that information. While many applaud what he has done, there are those in the

The primary focus of such policies are to instruct IT professionals that they are not to do things out of malice to cause injury. The policies cover the businesses, clients, and co-workers. The SANS policy begins the section on professionalism by instructing IT professionals to not injury others, whether it is another’s property, reputation or their employment status (SANS 2004). IEEE provides almost the exact same wording to their policy related to this issue, demonstrating that both want it made clear that this is simply not acceptable (IEEE 2014). In some policies that have been created they have asked employees who find that co-workers have violated this policy to report those employees to the management or other heads of the business, or even to authorities if the violation is egregious enough (ISACA 2010). It is clear that these organizations are taking issues like this very seriously.

It should be made clear that this is not an all-encompassing list by any stretch of the imagination. Many policies address such things as education, social responsibilities, communication and asset protection. These are all important, and do deserve consideration, but a close look at the majority of these IT professional policies focuses on the three key areas of personal honesty, confidentiality of information, and avoiding harming anyone else in the conduct of the business of getting the job