Ethics Assignment
Victor M Rodriguez
Dona Ana Community College
This assignment is very interesting, because it, once again, exposes an individual with the classic predicament of speaking out or remaining quiet. Each course of action has potential implications for all stakeholders in this situation. This document will attempt to delve into those courses of action to try to arrive at the best possible recommendation for our network administrator (NA) facing this tortuous dilemma. The dilemma stems from the fact that the company president’s nephew is allegedly involved in corporate espionage, but the last employee that reported something negative against the president’s nephew was fired from the job. The president and his nephew have a very close relationship, and this closeness complicates the issue. Also, the NA is very close to retirement and to start receiving benefits. If the NA does not notify the president of the alleged corporate espionage, the livelihood of the corporation may be at stake. That would make everyone related to this company as a potential stakeholder in the outcome of this issue. Affected people could be the president, the president’s family, all employees and their respective families. This includes the president’s nephew and our NA. Of course it would also affect all vendors that deal with this company, although to lesser degree. One thing that we don’t know is whether our NA was briefed on his roles and responsibilities. We know that after reviewing some of the system log files, he discovered that the president’s nephew was sending out drawings of the new designs for the next year’s product line. For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume that reviewing system log files is his responsibility and also to inform the company’s president in case of any abnormality. If this same scenario were to involve another employee not so close to the company’s president, it would be a no brainer. The fact that the network administrator being so close to retirement would not even be an issue. The solution in this case would be to notify the company’s president. The option to remain quiet would be absurd in this scenario, as it could probably compromise the integrity of the company and the well-being of all employees. Furthermore, the nephew would probably continue to pass information to the competitor, thus probably crippling the company for the future. I would recommend that our NA double checks all his information, before proceeding in any possible direction. I would then suggest that he would seek legal counsel in terms of the potential implications to him and his family. I believe there is some type of law that protects certain employees once they get very close to retirement. It is worth checking out. Finally, we have seen that remaining quiet is certainly not a feasible option for this company and its employees. Now we just need to arrive at how to properly disclose the newly found information to the president, and brace up for impact! Also high company executives often hire external auditors to run tests on a company’s IT assets. If the company president were to find out via an external audit that our NA knew about the alleged corporate espionage and opted to remain quiet, the effect on our NA’s employment longevity would be catastrophic. Another potential complication is that the company president might’ve been testing the NA thoroughness and loyalty by asking nephew to send emails with phony pictures of next year’s campaign to competitor. Regardless of how one looks at dilemma, one must reveal the information to president. Now the last remaining issue is one of information revelation methodology. By revealing the information the company’s future will remain uncompromised and the well-being of its employees would remain sound regardless of whether the pictures of next year’s campaign are phony or not. Before revealing the newly discovered information to president, the NA should follow up with a veritable source to ascertain if the pictures are the actual pictures for next year’s campaign. The NA would then schedule a meeting with the president to try to find out the status of next year’s campaign and also to see what if anything can be done from the IT stand point in order to support the campaign. The NA would try to steer the conversation toward network security and have the president direct him to keep the eyes and ears fully open on the network. In other words, if anything is found in the network reference next year’s campaign, it would be because he indicated to go check and report the findings. He cannot fire himself, because he is the company president and also it was his idea. He cannot fire the NA, as he was just doing his job and following orders. Hopefully with this methodology, the company would endure as its future would not be compromised. The NA should NOT lose his job for following orders. The only one that might lose a position would be the president’s nephew. In the event that for some strange reason the NA loses his job, he may have legal ground to stand on. When one does his job, one feels good at the end of the day and can easily go to sleep

P.S. I found The Ten Commandments Of ComputerEthics while looking around for ethics on IT. I think that it is a good read for any IT student, but they all don’t apply to network administartors…