Chapter 8
Protecting People and
Information
Threats and Safeguards
8-1
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Presentation Overview
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8-2
Ethics
Privacy
Information
Security
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Opening Case Study
Digital Destruction Beyond All Imagination

One of the lessons learned from 9/11 is that with
careful and thorough protection of important
information, not even a calamity like the one that
occurred in New York can put you out of
business.

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade
.center/tenants1.html

In what ways is information vulnerable and what
can you do to protect important information?
8-3
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Ethics

Ethics - the principles and standards that
guide our behavior toward other people.

Ethics depend on:
1.
2.
8-4
Your basic ethical structure, which you developed
as you grew up.
The set of practical circumstances involved in the
decision that you’re trying to make – that is, all the
shades of gray in what are rarely black or white
decisions.
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Ethics
Two Factors That Determine How You
Decide Ethical Issues
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
8-5
Consequences
Society’s opinion
Likelihood of effect
Time to consequences
Relatedness
Reach of result
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Ethics
Guidelines for Ethical Computer System
Use

In the figure to the
right you see the four
quadrants of ethical
and legal behavior.

You’re pretty safe if
you can manage to
stay in quadrant I.
8-6
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Ethics
Intellectual Property

Intellectual property - intangible creative work that
is embodied in physical form.

Copyright - the legal protection afforded an
expression of an idea.

Fair Use Doctrine - says that you may use
copyrighted material in certain situations.

Pirated software - the unauthorized use,
duplication, distribution or sale of copyrighted
software.
8-7
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Ethics
Intellectual Property

8-8
Counterfeit
software - software
that is manufactured
to look like the real
thing and sold as
such.
On Your Own
Are You Careful
About Your Posture?
(p. 377)
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Privacy

Privacy - the right to
be left alone when
you want to be, to
have control over
your own personal
possessions, and not
to be observed
without your consent.
8-9
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Privacy
Privacy and Other Individuals

Key logger, or key
trapper, software, a program, when
installed on a
computer, records
every keystroke and
mouse click.
8-10
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Team Work
What Would
You Do?
(p. 307)
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Privacy
Privacy and Other Individuals

E-mail is completely insecure.

Each e-mail you send results in at least 3
or 4 copies being stored on different
computers.
8-11
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Privacy
Privacy and Employees

Companies need information about their
employees and customers to be effective
in the marketplace.

In 2001, 63% of companies monitored
employee Internet connections including
about two-thirds of the 60 billion electronic
messages sent by 40 million e-mail users.
8-12
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Privacy
Privacy and Employees

Hardware key
logger - a
hardware device
that captures
keystrokes on their
journey from the
keyboard to the
motherboard.
8-13
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Privacy
Privacy and Consumers

Customers want businesses to:
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8-14
Know who they are, but they want them to leave
them alone.
Provide what they want, but they don’t want
businesses knowing too much about their habits
and preferences.
Tell them about products and services they might
like to have, but don’t want to be inundated with
ads.
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Privacy
Privacy and Consumers

Cookie - a small record deposited on your
hard disk by a Web site containing information
about you and your Web activities.

Adware - software to generate ads that installs
itself on your computer when you download
some other (usually free) program from the
Web.

Trojan-horse software - software you don’t
want hidden inside software you do want.
8-15
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Privacy
Privacy and Consumers

Spyware (also called sneakware or
stealthware) - software that comes hidden
in free downloadable software and tracks
your online movements, mines the
information stored on your computer, or
uses your computer’s CPU and storage for
some task you know nothing about.
8-16
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Privacy
Privacy and Consumers

Web log - consists of one line of information for
every visitor to a Web site and is usually stored
on a Web server.

Clickstream - records information about you
during a Web surfing session.

Anonymous Web browsing (AWB) services hides your identity from the Web sites you visit.
8-17
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Privacy
Privacy and Government Agencies


Government agencies have about
2,000 databases containing
personal information on individuals.
Team Work
For example, The National Crime
Information Center (NCIC) database
contains information on the criminal
What Are The
records of more than 20 million
Biggest Internet Scams?
people.
(p. 387)
8-18
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Privacy
Privacy and International Trade

8-19
Safe-harbor
principles - a set of
rules to which U.S.
businesses that want
to trade with the
European Union (EU)
must adhere.
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
On Your Own
What’s Your
Opinion?
(p. 388)
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Information
Information as Raw Material

Raw materials are the components from which a product
is made.

Wood, glue, and screws are raw materials for a chair.

Almost everything you buy has information as part of the
product.

The most successful companies place the highest value
on information.
8-20
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Information
Information as Capital

Capital is the asset you use to produce a
product or service.

Buildings, trucks, and machinery are assets.

Information is capital since it is used by
companies to provide products and services.
8-21
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Security
Security and Employees

Most of the press reports are about
outside attacks on computer systems, but
actually, companies are in far more danger
of losing money from employee
misconduct than they are from outsiders.

White-collar crime accounts for about
$400 billion in losses every year.
8-22
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Security
Security and Employees
8-23
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Security
Security and Collaboration Partners

If you use collaboration systems,
representatives of other companies can
gain access to your systems.

Grid computing - harnesses far-flung
computers together by way of the Internet
or a virtual private network to share CPU
power, databases, and database storage.
8-24
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Security
Security and Outside Threats

85% of large companies and
governmental agencies were broken into
during 2001.

Hackers - very knowledgeable computer
users who use their knowledge to invade
other people’s computers.
8-25
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Security
Security and Outside Threats

Computer virus (or simply a virus) - is software that is
written with malicious intent to cause annoyance or
damage.

Worm - a type of virus that spreads itself, not just from
file to file, but from computer to computer via e-mail and
other Internet traffic.

Denial-of-service attack (DoS) - floods a Web site with
so many requests for service that it slows down or
crashes.
8-26
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Security
Security and Outside Threats

Computer viruses can’t:
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
8-27
Hurt your hardware (i.e. monitors, printers, or
processor.)
Hurt any files they weren’t designed to attack.
Infect files on write-protected disks.
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Security
Security Precautions

Risk management - consists of the identification of risks,
security implementation, and effective measures.

Risk assessment - measure the risk exposure of IT
assets.

Risk assessment asks:



8-28
What can go wrong?
How likely is it to go wrong?
What are the possible consequences if it does go wrong?
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Security
Security Precautions

Backup - making a copy of computer information.

Anti-virus software - detects and removes viruses.

Firewall – protects computers from intruders.

Intrusion-detection software - looks for people on the
network who shouldn’t be there.

Security auditing software - checks out your computer or
network for potential weaknesses.
8-29
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved
Security
Security Precautions

Biometrics - the use of physical characteristics
to provide identification.

Encryption – scrambles the contents of a file so
that you can’t read it without having the
decryption key.

Public key encryption (PKE) - an encryption
system that uses two keys: a public key that
everyone can have and a private key for only the
recipient.
8-30
Management Information Systems
for the Information Age
Copyright 2004
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
All rights reserved