One ethical issue that arises when storing electronic information about individuals is a threat to this information from an insider, an employee of the company storing the information. Some system-related employee sabotage can include destroying hardware or facilities, planting malicious code that destroys data or programs, entering data incorrectly, holding data, or deleting data, crashing systems, or changing administrative passwords to prevent system access. This kind if issue is usually a result of an employee finding out they are to be terminated, or already have been terminated. The best action a company can take to precent this kind of issue is to immediately disable the employee’s access to IT and removed from the building.

            A second issue concerning the storage of electronic information is the theft of personal information. Malicious hackers cause damage and steal information for a variety of reasons. There are many variations of these hackers, some are criminal groups doing it for monetary gain, attackers for the thrill and bragging rights, phishers to steal an individual’s identity and even terrorists who seek to generate funds for an attack.

            Another issue that comes out of the storage of information is privacy and confidentiality for the individual. This includes companies not selling the person’s information to third parties or releasing information to other parties without the individual’s consent.

            The last issue I would like to discuss is data inaccuracies, which can have extreme negative circumstances in certain environments such as the healthcare industry. If the wrong data is entered that patient could be harmed or even killed due to inaccurate information entering. One way that data can be entered wrong easily is the improper use of the cut-and-paste keyboard shortcut. Medical identity theft is another problem in that can arise from storing electronic information improperly.