Essay: Copyright Protection And Ethics In InfoSec For Academics (A4A).

The students are assessed against their ability to make meaningful contributions to the Group Discussion I Forum in Moodle in the specified weeks as well as their ability to express the outcomes of the discussion and their own views in the video.

Students need to familiarise themselves with the marking criteria to ensure that they contribute to this assessment task timely and properly.

Assessment Task

You are required to analyse the scenario given on page 2 and discuss the following issues in the specified weeks in relation to the Unit Learning Outcomes 4 and 7.

a)Copyright protection of the information produced by the members of A4A. (Due in week 3).

b)Ethics in InfoSec of the members of A4A. (Due in week 4).

c)Who would be responsible if any member of A4A handles the information of students unethically while working at a member institution? (Due in week 5)

The Group Discussion I Forum in Moodle should be used for weekly discussions.

Each student should copy/paste their discussions to a Word document and upload it to Moodle by the deadline in Week 6. You also need to individually prepare and upload a very brief video (5 min) to YouTube and provide the link in this Word document. The video should clearly express the group consensus and your own views.

The Scenario for Information Security Management Assessment Tasks

Academics for Academics (A4A) is a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) that has its head office and the branch office in Sydney and Singapore respectively. Being a NGO, A4A funds all of its projects and activities from public donations. A4A has a team of 10 staff members, and 6 of them are located in Sydney office and the remaining four are located in the Singapore office.

Copyright protection of the information produced by the members of A4A

Academics for Academics (A4A) is an NGO that has been established to assist public as well as private universities and colleges based in Australia. The academic professionals registered with A4A is responsible to provide the voluntary services like supervision of research project, teaching a subject (Safa et al. 2016). They have planned recently to adopt the information security policy that can safeguard the students’ information.

This report will highlight the copyright laws as well as the code of ethics associated with InfoSec by which A4A can securely conduct their business activities.

The Australian government has imposed copyright law for their country. The work needs to be original for the copyright protection (Ifinedo 2014). The owners of the work must keep their documents safe and secure so that it does not get lost.

Australian copyright law protects multiple items which include-

Artistic works- the artistic works include the photos, logs, paintings and drawings; Dramatic works- choreography, screenplays and scripts (Siponen, Mahmood and Pahnila 2014); Published editions- the published editions include the cover design, layout, typography; Music; Film; Sound Recordings and broadcast- TV and Radio.

The items that are not protected by copyright involves the-

The ideas provided by some authors cannot be protected. The general information which is available to everyone and is available over the Internet. The names, slogans or titles are generally cannot be stolen in general.

The one who creates the material is the owner of the material. Copyright lasts a lifetime and it remains additional seventy years after the death of the owner. The owner can prepare a will and can hand over the copyright material to somebody (Hsu et al. 2015). If any company wants to hire a fresh employee for writing copies, then the employee should sign a written agreement and should provide information about the owner.

The members of A4A must be aware of these copyright policies and must work accordingly. The A4A members those who want to provide the voluntary services like the teaching of a subject, the supervising a research project must be aware of the copyright policy. The A4A members must provide the assignments to the A4A and must not share the assignments with anyone.

The copyright owner’s permission is required when anyone wishing to utilize the whole part of the owner’s document or some portion of the owner’s document. The copyright owner’s permission will be required to produce or copy the work. The copyright owner is required to reproduce or copy the work, the permission is also required to communicate that work to the public (Alshaikh et al. 2016). When someone publishes, rent or re-broadcast the A4A members’ work needs the permission of them.

A4A must strengthen their security policies, must install firewall and antivirus software in the system as that can help them to mitigate the risks associated with the copyright infringements.

The A4A members should follow the code of ethics related to InfoSec as prescribed by the Australia Government-

Fair treatment: The members should treat everyone in a fair way. The members should not discriminate anyone on the grounds of national origin, religion and race.

Ethics in InfoSec of the members of A4A

Privacy: The members must access the private information of the computer system and the assignments they prepare when it is required in the course of duties (D'Arcy, Herath and Shoss 2014). The members should maintain the confidentiality of the information and must not disclose the information at any cost.

Communication: The members should inform A4A about the computing matters that can affect them like the maintenance of security, sharing of resources, the occurrence of system monitoring as well as the legal obligations.

System Integrity: The members should assure the integrity of the system, they must maintain the hardware and the software and should be aware of any kinds of malware attack (Peltier 2016). The systems if gets attacked by the malware can become vulnerable, thus if any kind of virus attacks their systems they must act responsibly and must report A4A.

Co-operation: The A4A members must co-operate with the computing professionals. The members should discuss with each other if any issue arises and must not get into direct conflict with the fellow computing professionals.

Honesty: The members of A4A according to the security policies must act honestly and should seek help from the professional whenever required (Fogarty et al. 2017). The members according to the ethics of security policies must follow the professional advice and should not get into conflict with the professionals.

Education: The A4A members must be proficient in a particular subject and must continue to update their subject expertise. Alongside the subject, they must have sound knowledge of the computer technology, the members must be tech savvy and should be capable to solve the minor computing issues (Alshaikh et al. 2016). The A4A members should share their knowledge with the rest of the A4A members in the same A4A members’ institutions or other similar A4A members’ institutions.

Social Responsibility: The A4A members must take into considerations the social as well as the legal issues that crop up in the computing environment. The members should communicate the understanding to the others whenever they will feel appropriate (Fogarty et al. 2017). They must ensure that their ethical principles match with the policies and laws related to the computer system.

Workplace Quality: The members of A4A must maintain a healthy and safe as well as productive workplace for all the members and the students of the A4A registered institutions.

The one who would be responsible if any member of A4A handles the information of students unethically while working at a member institution

A4A has decided to adopt the copyright laws and they are ready to follow the code of ethics related to InfoSec prescribed by the Government. Thus the members’ associations registered with A4A must abide by all the ethics and the copyright laws. The members of A4A should act responsibly. The academic professionals or the members of A4A if using the students’ information unethically then the academic professionals will be responsible for such mishaps. If someone copies the contents of the students’ documents, then that individual will be accused of the copyright infringement (Alshaikh et al. 2016). A4A has already specified that the information or the data generated by the A4A member will be the property of that particular member. They must protect the students’ documents, must protect them from being stolen or copied and must store them in safe and secure locations. The A4A members must ensure that the students’ documents must not get misused at any cost.

Conclusion

It may be concluded from the above discourse that the A4A members must adopt the security policy to carry out their business activities in well and secured manner. The code of ethics as well the copyright laws can help them the academic professionals or the A4A members to act responsibly and ethically. Following the code of ethics and copyright laws, the A4A can maintain peace in the academic workplace. A4A has established last year so, the informational security policies are still in the premature stage. It is hoped that by implementing the security policies fully they can provide better services to the students and the colleges and universities in coming future.

References

Alshaikh, M., Maynard, S.B., Ahmad, A. and Chang, S., 2016. Information Security Policy: A Management Practice Perspective. arXiv preprint arXiv:1606.00890.

D'Arcy, J., Herath, T. and Shoss, M.K., 2014. Understanding employee responses to stressful information security requirements: a coping perspective. Journal of Management Information Systems, 31(2), pp.285-318.

Fogarty, W., Riddle, S., Lovell, M. and Wilson, B., 2017. Indigenous education and literacy policy in Australia: bringing learning back to the debate. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, pp.1-13.

Hsu, J.S.C., Shih, S.P., Hung, Y.W. and Lowry, P.B., 2015. The role of extra-role behaviors and social controls in information security policy effectiveness. Information Systems Research, 26(2), pp.282-300.

Ifinedo, P., 2014. Information systems security policy compliance: An empirical study of the effects of socialisation, influence, and cognition. Information & Management, 51(1), pp.69-79.

Peltier, T.R., 2016. Information Security Policies, Procedures, and Standards: guidelines for effective information security management. CRC Press.

Safa, N.S., Von Solms, R. and Furnell, S., 2016. Information security policy compliance model in organizations. computers & security, 56, pp.70-82.

Siponen, M., Mahmood, M.A. and Pahnila, S., 2014. Employees’ adherence to information security policies: An exploratory field study. Information & management, 51(2), pp.217-224.