Choicepoint and Sony, an Ethical Analysis Essay

Ethics refers to what comes off as right or wrong to an individuals conscience .The internet age has brought somewhat sassy estimable issues, not lone(prenominal) for an individual provided for the society as well as it has travel anonymous manipulation and distribution of study, creating new and easier paths for committing crimes same piracy, identity larceny, infringement of an individuals loneliness etc. In this paper we will be analyzing the Choice-point case and the Sony selective intercommunicateation br apiece case from an good point of view. (Laudon &Laudon, 2010, p.128)BackgroundThe Choice contingent Data break On September 27 of 2004, ChoicePoint,a lodge that aggregates and stores personal information, venture that some of its small note customers were touch in suspicious activities and informed the police. (Paine, Phillips, 2008)On February of 2005, ChoicePoint entirely notified those residents of California whose entropy had been leaked to the il ratifi ed customers, since a certain law in California requires it. A protest from the public, however, forced the company to notify the details of the spoil to the former(a) involved parties residing in the other states. The swindlers who scammed ChoicePoint had created over 50 accounts with previously stolen identities over the course of a year or even longer. (Pantesco, 2006)Look to a greater extentthe issues concerning identity theft essayChanges in transaction practices (Otto, Anton & Baumer, 2007) ChoicePoint made legion(predicate) stirs after(prenominal) the 2004-2005 entropy breach. The company closed the 50 fake accounts and made a policy to disdain any faxed business licenses in the future .The come with formed a new policy, that all nongovernmental presidencys enquire to be re-credentialed in order to do business with it, and increased its procedures in verifying the identity of the company. more(prenominal) stringent and better business policies in ensuring the ru bber eraser of their customers data, for e.g. partial masking of affectionate security system numbers were emgambited. The company continued its investigations of its databases for tho indications of foul play and brought in impertinentrs to assess and advance their practices. The Sony Data BreachThe Sony data breach was a result of an intrusion from an outsider party, causing an outage in the Play blank space Ne cardinalrk and Qriocitys services mingled with seventeenth April 2011 and 19th April, 2011.A confirmation from Sony revealed that pieces of personal information had been stolen from each and every 77 million accounts. This breach resulted in Sony shutting off the PlayStation Network for 23 geezerhood. (Hirai, 2011)Sony state that the chairman of the company had submitted explanations precious by get together States House subcommittee regarding the attack and that they were taking some measures to bar further breaches. When questioned about the check off in devis ing the breach public, Sony explained that theyd sought help from outside officials to conduct an investigation in order to take hold of the nature and magnitude of the incident and hence forensic analysis and investigation had caused the delay since they wanted to catch all the necessary details before make the breach public. On May 14, 2011, Sony released a security patch called PlayStation 3 firmware version 3.61 requiring users to change their password upon signing into their account in the PlayStation Network. (Seybold, 2011) requital In requital for this outage, Sony announced hosting of special events for their users. Sony wanted to appreciate the loyalty of the customers who stuck to using Play Station internet and didnt look for other alternatives. at that placefrom Sony announced an extension of free 30 days of its various services for its existing users. Also, few of their games in the PlayStation network were made free, though these games are open only in some re gions or countries. In addition to that Sony also offered one years worth of free identity theft vindication to all of its customers. (Wesley, 2011)Ethical Analysis According to Culnan and Williams (2009, p.679),the two aspects of moralisticity that are principal to the relationship between information aggregators and information providers are vulnerability and avoiding psychic trauma. nerve of VulnerabilityAnalysis Since the customer gives away his data in exchange for something in return, he loses wangle on how that information would be used in the future.(Culnan& Williams, 2009, p. 681) The firm that is aggregating the data has the duty to exercise wariness in protecting the consumers vulnerability, not only for the sake of the customer but also to score its own reputation.However, in the cases of both ChoicePoint and Sony breach, the consumers were vulnerable. Individuals whose data ChoicePoint and Sony stored lacked experience about the risks posed by Choice Points cred entialing procedures or the way personal information was stored by Sony.Aspect of Do No vituperateAnalysis Most ethicists are of the opinion that data aggregators have the minimum duty of doing no harm whenever at that place is an issue concerning information privacy rights (DeGeorge 2006 Goodpaster 1987 Marcoux 2003 Valesquez 2003 as cited in Culnan& Williams, 2009), even more so when their preaching of the consumers sensitive personal information makes the consumers unnecessarily vulnerable. (Culnan& Williams, 2009, p. 682)In both the cases of ChoicePoint and Sony Data breach however, the DO NO Harm principle was violated and moral responsibility was clearly absent in the bearing of the officials of these firms. (Culnan& Williams, 2009, p. 682)ChoicePoints questionable intentions in delaying the notification of the breach to the public and the fact that ChoicePoint only bothered to research records that were leaked within 15 months to the date of the search ,until pressurized , were criticized heavily.( Evers, 2005)Further investigations revealed that ChoicePoint had been subjected to a similar scam in 2002.( Paine, Phillips, 2008)The fact that ChoicePoint could be duped so easily within two age proved that ChoicePoint hadnt done anything to improve its practices since the kick the bucket breach. Similarly, Sony also had a delay in notifying the users of PlayStation network about the breach. The public disputed Sonys flat coat for its delay by speculating that, if Sony judged the situation to be so grave that it felt the need to shut tear its PlayStation network, then they should have warned the public without any delay as well.Moreover, Sony failed to give any concrete reports regarding the breach and merely stated that they fag endnot rule out the incident of a username or password leak. One more thing to be noted is that the fiends could have perhaps gotten information like email addresses and first name calling of the customers who had consent ed to receiving information about new deals or products from Sony or its partners.Now, there is a pretty good scene that the fiends might send emails in the format of a Sony webpage template and extract valuable information from those customers. thereof this breach indirectly paved the way for more unintentional breaches in the future. (Eddy, 2011)According to, (Laudon &Laudon, 2010,p.135),the basic Concepts of ethics are as followsResponsibility where the individual or the organization should accept the duties, costs and obligations for the decisions that it made. Accountability where the organization should be aware of what decision is taken by whom. If it is impossible to find out who was responsible for what march then that organization is basically incapable of honest analysis. Liability this basically extends the concept of responsibility to legal actions where the affected individuals should be able to get compensation for their damages.Analysis In my opinion, both Choi cePoint and Sony showed half-hearted ethics on these incidents as a whole. While Choicepoint did inform officials about the breach as soon as it demonstrate out, yet it only felt necessary to inform the public because of the California law. The people in the other states were notified because of public outcry. Also limiting the search results for leaked records to only 15 months prior to the date of the search righteous because it was necessary by the law was another shift on ChoicePoints part.Thus ChoicePoint violated the ethical concepts of responsibility and accountability yet they seemed to have understood their mistake when they were making changes in their policies and practices after the 2004-2005 breach, and were unforced to take corrective actions. But it is debatable whether ChoicePoints corrective measures were taken to save its own business or whether it genuinely cared for the affected individuals. Similarly, though Sony did do necessary investigations, it failed t o concretely identify which parties had been affected or what kind of information have been stolen.Similar to ChoicePoint, there was a delay in notifying the public regarding the breach. Hence, there is a dearth of responsibility and accountability from Sonys side as well .The compensations given can similarly be argued to be a ploy for keeping itself in the market. While, ChoicePoint and Sony offered free credit observe and free identity theft protection separately for one year, they disregarded the possibility that the thieves might catch ones breath low and take advantage of the stolen information after the passage of a year. Hence these companies showed half-heartedness in organism ethically liable as well.