From my research across the internet, here are the four ethical issues I
have chosen to discuss regarding the storage of electronic information about
individuals:
Electronic Medical Records: Improperly storing and safeguarding patient’s
medical information can lead to the unethical use and sell of their information.
HIPAA regulations need to be adhered to by all medical employees. (1)
Data Ownership: Every individual is the owner of their own personal
information so all companies need to request permission to use that
information.
Requests can be in the form
of electronic pop-up check boxes, digitally signed written agreements, and the
disclaimer to use website cookies. (2)
PII Protection: It is the company’s responsibility to protect a customer’s
personally identifiable information with strong data encryption and
multi-factor authentication in order to prevent the public release of that information.
(2)
Transparency:
When you provide your
information to a company during an e-commerce transaction, you do not want to unexpectedly
see the website predict your shopping patterns for you.
The company should have a policy or disclaimer
posted that explains this type of predictive shopping experience. (2)
Continuing with the topic of properly storing personal electronic
information, the main difference I see today between the United States and
other countries, with regards to cybersecurity, would be the fact that the U.S.
has not implemented a General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) type of law
like many European countries have since 2018.
Cybersecurity and GDPR work hand in hand to make sure that all businesses
in that country will properly protect customer information from the beginning. (3)
As of 2021, only 16 countries around the world
have adopted data privacy laws like the GDPR but the U.S. is not one of them.
The U.S. does have a federal level law to
protect medical information known as HIPPA and many states have some type of
data protection law.
I believe more countries
should adopt a GDPR-like of law in order to have safer nation-to-nation
e-commerce relations.
1.
https://www.medicaleconomics.com/view/acp-2019-overcoming-ethical-challenges-ehrs
2.
https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/data-ethics
3.
https://apexprivacy.com/how-cyber-security-and-gdpr-work-together/
4.
https://securityscorecard.com/blog/countries-with-gdpr-like-data-privacy-laws