Employee Electronic Privacy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Employee Electronic Privacy - Essay Example The employee eventually resigned from her current position and immediately began to work at the new position. The debate rages on whether which side is correct. But this paper would establish that in this scenario, it is the employer who stands to lose more by their workers’ access to the internet, and hence, are justified in monitoring internet access in the workplace. For one, with each access to the internet the chances of electronic hackers gaining access to the corporations’ intranet and confidential files are increased if not monitored. We turn to Chang, J. (April 9, 2004)1 who stated: †¦..Each year hackers steal millions of dollars worth of proprietary information from companies and organizations. A survey by the Computer Security Institute indicated that for the year 2002, theft of proprietary information by hackers cost companies and organizations over $70 million.1 The cost to insure against these hackers is staggering—the market for hacker insurance is expected to increase from $100 million in 2003 to $900 million by 2005.2 In addition, hackers can cause severe damage to computer systems by altering or deleting data files and disabling software. In addition to proprietary information, hackers also steal personal information from these organizations and corporations including their customers’ credit card numbers, account numbers, and social security numbers. For example, in 2000, hackers stole 55,000 credit card numbers from creditcards.com and 300,000 credit card numbers from CDUniverse.com.3 The theft of personal information such as credit card numbers raises serious concerns relating to both identity theft and privacy. Hence, in an attempt to forestall such staggering losses, the employers’ reaction was naturally to check the culprit, and that is the unprecedented access to online materials. The cost of installing monitoring devices is