P3- Explain the issues
related to the use of information
Legal Issues
Data Protection Act 1998- The data protection act applies to virtually all
businesses. This act covers how personal information is used by different
organisations which can be a private business or the government. The kind of
information this covers can be names, addresses, photographs, card details and
phone numbers. As a business your company Matlin insurance would be handling and
storing a lot of personal information such as names, contact information,
employment history, cars, addresses etc. Matlin insurance should follow these 8
principles to make sure they are following and not breaking the law. These are:
information must be accurate, kept secure, not transferred outside E.U, used
fairly and lawfully, kept no longer than you need it for, handled according to
people’s data protection act, used for the right purposes and used in a
relevant not excessive way.
This is an example of the business not following the
data protection act. This big corporation failed to keep customers
information secure as hackers targeted there databases. They were to blame
because they are a multibillion corporation which failed to invest in good
security measurements.
http://www.thedrum.com/news/2013/01/24/sony-fined-250k-over-serious-data-protection-act-breach
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Another example of the data protection act breached is
by a company called Torbay care trust. After 1,00+ employees sensitive information
such as names, religion, sexuality was leaked and published, this cost the
company the £175,000.
http://brianpennington.co.uk/2012/08/16/who-has-breached-the-data-protection-act-in-2012-find-the-complete-list-here/
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How it can affect the company- If Matlin insurance got hacked or one of employees
leaked the data they would be responsible for the information get stolen because
they did not have good secuirty measuments in place, they would be breaking the
law leading to a fine up to £500,000 which can affect the company the
finicially and furthermore jail for the company managers.
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Matlin Insurance
will most likely share important data about customers with other insurance
companies and the company might ask for data from other insurance companies
however they cannot do this without the customer’s permission. A way businesses
try to get around this when customers sign up for insurance whatever it may be
in the terms and conditions there is normally a part saying you have gave them
the rights to share your data for business purposes.
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Matlin Insurance
must also make sure the data from the customers is kept up to date whethere
that may be electronic or paper based. If they do not do this it will affect
the company itself such as if they wanted to find information about a specific
customer and contact them but they have changed there contact number and it was
not updated on the system the business is left in the blank.
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On the up side if
Matlin insurance handeled the information properly it can improve the
businesses reputation, this may take many years but as long as they get no
complaints against them they can gain full trust from the customers and even
the employees.
Freedom of Information Act
2000- This
act provides the public access to information held by authorities such as
government, council, schools. Under this act anyone living in the world can
make a request to get this information. The information has to be recorded such
as documents, digital computer files, letters, emails, photographs, sound and
video recordings. However if a person asked for their own personal information
such as credit references it would not cover this. This act can affect
businesses whether they may be of a public organisation or private, however
private is less affected.
A business can have a form for people to request
information. This is an example of one and normally all the details of the
person has to be filled out accordingly and then retrieve information. This
particular form is about retrieving information about accidents or injuries
but there are other forms for businesses can have.
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This article shows FOIA requests made from people. There
are some major articles that got published and if the request was not made,
people would never know about this information and a business could just
hide it.
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How it can affect the company- If a person makes a FOI
request to Matlin Insurance they would have to reply to that request and give
information regarding anything that fits in the critera. For example if a
customer made a freedom of information request the company would have to reply
within 20 days. You can provide the person making the request whether you hold
the information they are hold any information within the request they made and
if they do they have to provide that
information, again if they asked for personal information you are not obliged
to give it.
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If Maltin Insurance did get a request and they held the wrong kind of
information such as secrecy from there customers. The businesses reputation
could be at stake leading to further losses such as customers, again if they
did not respond to the request it would be just as bad. So they would have to
make sure right from the begining they know what kind of information they need.
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Again Matlin insurance would need need to train there staff on the FOI
Requirments to make sure they do not give the wrong kind of information away or
disrigard the request. As for affect this will cost the business time and money
which could be a big difference between profit and loss of last weeks.
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However Matlin Insurance can also use this for themselves to find out
if any public authorities are holding information about your business such as
reports, annual returns, planning procudures, proposed devolpments. Matlin
could use this as an advantage and get ahead of there compitetors giving them a
good affect.
Ethical
Issues
Ethical
Issues for a business would be different principals that people follow. This
can affect people working for a business and how they make decisions. These
decisions can be right (ethical) or wrong (Unethical). For a business to have a
good standing they normally make sure ethical.
Use of internet- When working for a company
most of the time you will use the internet whether it will be for research, contacting
other businesses, etc. The company would want to make sure the employees are
using the internet in the right ways making sure its work related and no other
things such as social networking, gambling, etc. On the internet there are many
websites that install viruses on the host’s computer and take the information
so businesses have to be really careful. To avoid this many companies sign up
with a proxy which also have certain filters on the network for what websites
the employee can and cannot access, furthermore they can also have a firewall
setup in place to make sure there are no incoming ports such as hackers.
This is an example of when an employee signs to a
business’s contract. They would have to read this and obey it, otherwise
there will be consequences for their actions. Most businesses will give
this or similar agreement saying this the employee can and cannot do.
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How it can affect the
company- Matlin
Insurance would have a code of conduct you have to sign up and follow when you
became a part of the company. There normally a set of rules such as what
websites you are allowed to use, the information you can share and what you can
download from the internet under strict circumstances. Matlin Insurance would
monitor their employees in the work place so they can protect their network and
reputation as company.
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For example if an employee from Matlin Insurance planted a virus on the
network not only they would be breaching the code of practice but also the
computer misuse act. Matlin Insurance would have to spend there time repairing
the network costing the money and time which they could be doing more useful
things.
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Use of internet can have a big impact on company like Matlin Insurance
if it is not used correctly. If a employee went onto the wrong websites and
downloaded a virus such as a keylogger, the person who operates that keylogger
can get important details the employee is typing into the computer such as bank
or personal details, which will then lower the customers trust in the company.
Even if Matlin decideds to fire that employee there reputation can still be
runied as they could not control there employees which other companies would
then use this as an disadvantage towards them.
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Using the internet in the wrong ways whethere that may be managers or
guests can have impact on the preformance and producivity of the business as it
stops them from doing work. For example if any employee needed to produce 3
reports for different departments at the end of the week but was too busy
gambling he would have nothing to hand so someone else would have to step in
and waste more time.
Use of Email- Email is used widely throughout
the business to communicate with a faster response time and less cost however
often the codes of practice apply to this as well. Emails should be used ethically
for the right reasons such as for work related, not unethically for the wrong
reasons such as spam, inappropriate or personal use. When an employee signs up
for a job under the use of internet, using the email system correctly will also
apply to this.
This is another example but for Email Use Policy. If a
business is heavy orientated around email software it will most likely have
this to secure their policy in place. All employees should read this to
obey the rules of the business to see what they can and cannot do. This
document also shows the consequences of this.
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How it can affect the
company – Insurance
Company like Matlin would send hundreds of email a day whether it is to contact
other businesses or their customers.
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This could affect Matlin Insurance if an employee decided to send emails
with a virus attachments or unsutiable images, this would be unethically and
the company reputation for long term would be ruined if anyone outside the
organisation found out about this. This might mean new employees wouldn’t want
this as there first choice as a job at the company which means they might not
be able to get new staff to manage different departments
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Matlin Insurance have to get tasks done throughout the day regulary and
if spam emails break computer systems the employees work on. This will hault
work which means less producivity so the business is on a standstill. This can
impact customers as they might not get the help they require in time.
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Spam emails can also be directed towards the customers especially by
the employees, if there inbox is already flooded by the companies emails, this
can also discourage them and maybe block the emails which means they might not
get important notifcations from Matlin. However to try to prevent this the
company would limit how many emails each employee can send so this can’t happen
in the first place. Companies also monitor each employee’s inbox through
filtering software.
Operational issues
Security of information- Whenever a business is
holding information about a customer it must be kept secure whether this is
paper or electronic based, this will also include temporary and deleted data.
This is to make the data is not put into bad use such as being manipulated or
unauthorised people accessing it. If the information is not kept secure
sometimes the company can be to blame because they should have good parameters
in place to stop information being leaked or stolen. For paper based
information it can be stored easily in a cabinet with a lock on it however if
the information is electronic it’s more vulnerable to getting stolen or lost.
A Business can setup a VPN Server in place so filter
devices connected to the network, this also includes out coming and
incoming connections. So anything that looks suspicious can get blocked.
This is the overall diagram of the system should be setup, if its a small
or big system.
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If the business decided to store information paper
based. They would need cabinets that can old information and can be drilled
to the wall so it can be physically stolen. Also most cabinets should come
with a key and stored in a safe place from unauthorized access.
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How it can affect the
company- For
Matlin Insurance if information is not kept properly secure there can be
different consequences. Sometimes if information is not kept securely and
customers find out there information is vulnerable you can lose your customers
and your reputation can also get damaged, for example customers might not get
insurance from Matlin because of past events.
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For reasonable precautions the network can have a firewall and filters to
stop people from intruding into the network and from hacking into the computer
systems. A firewall is easy to setup for a business as most Windows Based
computers and servers can Firewalls built in.
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Extra precautions could be encrypting all the documents and with
passwords for limiting access to who can view this information so it’s only
kept within a certain amount of people. Microsoft Word has the feature and
other zip extractors.
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Another precaution Matlin Insurance can make is making sure the
physical servers that store the important data is fully secured. This can be
done with locks on doors so no one can access the server rooms and even alarms
if intruders do manage to break in everyone will be on alert. For more safety
and security they can install CCTV Cameras around the premises to capture
people going in and out of the Rooms if there is any suspicious activity they
can report it to the police.
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The best way to secure the information is by backing up the information
into different severs or cloud so even if the information isn’t secure they
still have backups of them for security reasons.
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Matlin Insurance should also have controlled access to monitor who can
go in and out of the sever rooms. This will lower the risk of anyone intruding
into these rooms. The best way a company can do this is to have a swipe card
system in place with only major technicians allowed to enter and anyone else
that is important such as managers.
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For paper based information after the documents are no longer relevant and
the company threw away important finical information in the recycling bin this
could be read by other people potentially working for companies stealing this
information and putting it into bad use. So companies must make sure these
documents are shredding them before throwing it away.
Backups- Companies store a lot of
information and if this is lost due to corruption or hard drives being erased
most of the time there is no way to get this data back. It is vital that
companies back this information in another place usually far away from the
original source. This can be done in different ways for example if the
information is paper based they can make a backup by scanning the work via a
scanner and storing it electronically. However it is already electronic they
can back up the information on a different server.
This is what a business’s backup schedule should look
like, they should have it scheduled automatically whether it be week, month
or every day and they can also set the backup at specific time. All this
would be done through a software like this example shows.
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A business backup would look similar to something like
this were the information would be collected from the clients PC’s which
would be the employees and stored on a server. The backups would be stored
in 2 places, one which would be local hopefully within the business and one
offsite which would be in a complete different place.
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How it can affect the
company- Matlin
Insurance should make regular backups of their information every week to
prevent the information getting lost if the network failed or the servers went
done.
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For Matlin Insurance I would be best for them to do an offsite backup
because there such as large company. They would want a place which would be
fire and water proof in case any hazards do occur. Even though this does cost
more an offsite backup would be more effective
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If Matlin Insurance did not backup the information up they might have
to ask all the customers for the information again which they would not be
happy about, the company would also have then breached the data protection act
as they did not keep the information secure or at least take reasonable
precautions. This might then cost the company money and time rather than just
making a simple backup which would not take long at all.
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For Matlin Insurance this will have a long term affect because if they
did lose the information it would be harder to retrieve it back and even then
they might not fully recover from the disaster. From this there reputation
might also be ruined losing them customers because these customers are afraid
that it could happen again as there not a trusted company anymore.
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Matlin Insurance should get an employee to organise and do this every
week to make sure it is done correctly such as when the information is being
backed up, where it is being backed up and what kind of information needs
backing up. All of these steps should be taken into consideration before the
backup is taken place. Also most backups tell you when you have last backed up
and can further set a schedule for every so often.
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