Programming the technology - Essay Example

The availability of customers’ information at numerous sources initiated concerns about its privacy. Customers began to worry about the theft of their information and also about its usage for different purposes. There are many sources of data from where the security breach may initiate and privacy of the individual may be threatened. Kahn (2010) stated some of them, namely healthcare records, financial institutions, residence and postal records, business transactional data etc. The need of the hour is for the organizations to understand the meaning of privacy; it does not mean to stop the data collection process, rather it means to understand the boundaries and limitations by which the customer’s data should be used.

Business organizations, health-care establishments, financial institutions need to ensure that the usage of the customers’ information complies with the terms that were communicated to the customer at the time of the data collection. Since otherwise, it is considered unethical and illegal (in some instances) to use the information for analytical purposes for the betterment of their business. There are an increasing number of instances of security breach around the world. Waters (2008) quoted a survey that constituted of 1000 companies; it was concluded that almost 90% of them allowed their employees to leave the office premises with confidential data on their USB devices.

This is just one of the examples of how customer’s data is not protected in the hands of the organizations; another common happening in which the customer’s privacy is threatened is the theft of computers and laptops in which data is not encrypted. Few other techniques that go against the privacy rights of the customers are hacking, phishing, eavesdropping, intrusion etc. Waters (2008) also stated that security breaches cost UK billions of pounds every year. Some