It is verbal, written, graphic or coded (Parker [1998]). In Digital Business, information is the medium of all transactions, and it is presented in various forms. .
eg. a customer's private information, e-mail, an Internet web page, description of a particular product, credit card details.
Although Information is distributed every second unknowingly in Digital Business, it is both precious and fragile, and it can be very easily abused when in the wrong person's hands eg. Computer hacker. For Digital Business's to protect their information, they have developed copyrights, trademarks and many other laws. But still, it seems as though this is not enough.
According to ABIX [1999] many small businesses are still "concerned with lack of security in electronic commerce-. This is the view of the managing director of Australian Businesses, Philip Holt. He continues to state that businesses lacked confidence, partly because of lack of IT skills and largely because of the security fears. .
Australian businesses have already launched their draft policy on e-commerce' for small to medium companies. It said that the most urgent issues requiring attention were "data protection, authentication, Internet taxation, digital copyright and consumer protection- (ABIX [1999]). .
From this policy, it can be noted that many companies still fear that there is a lack of security with Digital Business, and therefore we must look deeper into the wider issues of safety to determine the root of this problem.
ETHICS.
The reason many employees still feel that Digital Business is so insecure, could be linked to the absence of a good ethics program in many organisations. Ethics are a set of rules, or principles that simply state what is right and wrong; in Digital Business ethics are very important, because it can help to stop employees and/or employers from committing dishonest behaviour.
The following table is a representation of the five most important ethical principles, which Parker [1998] has derived.
