Business communications

I will be explaining the legal and ethical Issues that relate to the use of business information. I personally think that legal and ethical issues are usually to do with something that involves people having to abide to a law, in most cases there will be a consequence for not abiding with the law. Most businesses have different information about people working for them, that's when the Data Protection Act 1998 protects the Information held about people being misused.The information usually n the companys database must be: obtained fairly and lawfully, only to be used for the purposes stated during collection, adequate relevant and not excessive in relation to the intended use, accurate and up to date, not kept for longer than necessary, proceed in line with your rights and also protected from transfer to an area outside the European Economic Area unless adequate protection exists for that data in the area. There is also Freedom of Information Act 2000 (that came to effect in 2005) th is Includes Right of access to information held by public authorities.This Is when a person request Information to public authority, the authority has to be informed in writing by the public authority whether it holds information of the description specified in the request, and if that is the case, to have that information communicated back to them The Computer Misuse Act 1990 it is a law that does not allow certain activities when using computers, this include: hacking into other people's systems, misusing software or helping a person to gain access to protected files on someone's else's computer.There are also ethical Issues that are dealt with using organisational pollcles and codes of practise such as: use of email, internet and whistle blowing. These go under business ethics meaning moral principles concerning acceptable and unacceptable behaviour by business. Whistle blowing is also one of the ethical issues users can use and relate to. This is when an employee raises a concer n about a business practise either to management within the company or to an outside organisation like the press.Operational Issues In relation to the use of business Information, Including security of Information, backups, health and safety, business continuance plans and costs. Organisations have to store and manage countless pieces of information with some being far more important than others. To make sure that information is managed appropriately, a number of policies and procedures have to be put in place, concerning; security of information, backups, health and safety, organisational pollcles and business continuance plans and cost. ailable as and when they need it, in order to make good business decisions. Information security management deals with maintaining the integrity and availability of organisational information and knowledge. Backups is also one of the operation issues as most businesses have developed programs constantly to try to minimise the risk of losing vital i nformation stored on IT servers. This involves producing backups of information stored on the servers. Some companies back up constantly and some less frequently.Health and safety is also one of operational system and so are business continuance plans and costs. Business continuance plans are the steps that a company puts into place to make sure it is capable of surviving a worst-case scenario. M2 Legal issues are the laws raised by different companies so that users or customers will be aware of them. Ethical issues involve right and wrong or what is considered good, and what is considered evil in a society. Legal and ethical issues for businesses are usually different from business to business.