Globalization of Information Systems: Communication, Security and Privacy Issues

1
Globalization of Information Systems
Communication, Security and Privacy Issues

• Adelphi University
• Alireza Ebrahimi, Ph.D.
• School of Business
• State University of New York
• Old Westbury

2
Abstract

• Today, whatever happens in one part of the world
  will inevitably impact
• other parts of the globe. Information Systems
  have played an important
• role in making this new World of globalization
  happen and continue to
• reshape it. On the one hand, it seems that the
  rules of dominant powers
• and large companies are lessened as they explore
  ways to deal with the
• culture, norm, social values and local needs. On
  the other hand, there is
• a threat that hinders the existing infrastructure
  of global Information
• systems. The private will become public and the
  public will become
• private. What is the role of globalization and
  its influence on
• Information systems and what is the role of
  Information Systems
• indicating globalization? How do we deal with
  security and privacy of
• global Information systems and what are the
  costs?

3
What is Globalization?

• The process of developing, manufacturing, and
  marketing software products that are intended for
  worldwide distribution. This term combines two
  aspects of the work internationalization
  (enabling the product to be used without language
  or culture barriers) and localization
  (translating and enabling the product for a
  specific locale).

4
Define Globalization
5
Globalization Definition Googlization

• Related phrases   economic globalization  
  globalization management system   globalization
  index   globalization of markets  
  anti-globalization   globalization of wine  
  globalization of production   content
  globalization   linguistic globalization
• Definitions of globalization on the Web
• The process of developing, manufacturing, and
  marketing software products that are intended for
  worldwide distribution. ...www-128.ibm.com/develo
  perworks/library/glossaries/unicode.html
• Worldwide economic integration of many formerly
  separate national economies into one global
  economy, mainly through free trade and free
  movement of capital as by multinational
  companies, but also by easy or uncontrolled
  migration.www.ecoagriculture.org/page.php
• "Globalization refers in general to the worldwide
  integration of humanity and the compression of
  both the temporal and spatial dimensions of
  planetwide human interaction. ...www2.truman.edu/
  marc/resources/terms.html
• Globalization and Environment, Globalization and
  Labor Issues and Impact Migration, Politics of
  Globalizationwww.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Pe
  terson-Institute
• The process of tailoring products or services to
  different local markets around the
  world.viewpointbank.mediaroom.com/index.php
• The Marxist critic of postmodernism Fredric
  Jameson argues that American capitalism, in the
  form of huge multi-national corporations backed
  by the Western media, is (re)colonizing the
  world. ...royalholloway.org.uk/ltsn/english/event
  s/past/staffs/Holland_Arrowsmith/Critical20Concep
  ts20edit.htm

6
Globalization

• 1. The increasing world-wide integration of
  markets for goods, services and capital that
  began to attract special attention in the late
  1990s. 2. ...www-personal.umich.edu/alandear/glo
  ssary/g.html
• A process whereby an increased portion of
  economic or other activity is carried out across
  national borderswww.developmenteducation.ie/gloss
  ary/
• Trend away from distinct national economic units
  and toward one huge global market.enbv.narod.ru/t
  ext/Econom/ib/str/261.html
• the movement toward markets or policies that
  transcend national borderswww.wcit.org/tradeis/gl
  ossary.htm
• The effort to standardize consumer habits,
  values, and ways of thinking that contributes to
  the development of global markets, greater
  efficiencies and profits politically, it is
  based on neo-liberal values and assumptions that
  justify this latest expression of Western
  colonization undermines ...www.ecojusticeeducati
  on.org/index.php
• A set of processes leading to the integration of
  economic, cultural, political, and social systems
  across geographical boundaries.www.gemi.org/hsewe
  bdepot/Glossary.aspx
• A complex series of economic, social,
  technological, cultural, and political changes
  seen as increasing, integration, and interaction
  between people and companies in disparate
  locations.www.scrippscollege.edu/about/strategic-
  plan/glossary.php
• A global movement to increase the flow of goods,
  services, people, real capital, and money across
  national borders in order to create a more
  integrated and interdependent world
  economy.globaledge.msu.edu/resourcedesk/glossary.
  asp
• doing things on a global scalelibrary.thinkquest.
  org/06aug/00863/glossary.htm

7

• return to the discussion what is
  globalization?www.genderandhealth.ca/en/modules/
  globalization/globalization_glossary.jsp
• This term is used to describe a contracting
  method by which an entire claim/encounter is paid
  under a single flat fee regardless of how many or
  how few services were performed and regardless of
  any complications may arise. ...www.mhdpc.org/pre
  sentations/Glossary_of_Medical_Claims_Common_Terms
  .doc
• The process of worldwide integration of economic
  or political systems. Economically, globalization
  is driven by free trade and foreign investment.
  The concept of globalization can also be applied
  to cultural products (such as movies or music) or
  values (such as beliefs about human
  rights).www.icons.umd.edu/reslib/display_glossary
  
• is a term used to refer to the expansion of
  economies beyond national borders, in particular,
  the expansion of production by a firm to many
  countries around the world, ie, globalization of
  production, or the "global assembly line.
  ...colours.mahost.org/faq/definitions.html
• the expansion of international business and trade
  between countries by transnational firms
  customers, suppliers, distributors, retailers and
  competitors exist all over the world for any type
  of businesswww.321site.com/greg/courses/mis1/glos
  sary.htm
• growth to a global or worldwide scale "the
  globalization of the communication industry"
  wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
• Globalization in a literal sense is international
  integration.It can be described as a process by
  which the people of the world are unified into a
  single society and functioning together. This
  process is a combination of economic,
  technological, sociocultural and political
  forces. ...en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globalization
• Alternative spelling of globalisation
  en.wiktionary.org/wiki/globalization
• Find definitions of globalization in
   Chinese (Simplified)  Chinese (Traditional)  
  English  Spanish  all languages

8
Crossing Borders in a World Where Differences
Still Matter2

• Competing for global leadership requires that
  companies learn to navigate in unfamiliar waters.
  For incumbents, the emerging MNCs represent the
  threat of displacement. For the emerging
  challengers, globalizing is new and risky. But
  the greater openness today of both developed and
  developing economics to foreign trade and
  investment means that the best opportunities for
  growth in sales and profits are increasingly
  available to companies of all origins. Further,
  ongoing changes in the location of market growth,
  the shape of global supply chains, and the
  emergence of new global business models suggest
  that the conditions are right for aggressive
  global players to move outside their comfort
  zones. Industry may have been destiny thus far,
  but it is unlikely to remain so3 HBR November
  2008

9
What is information Systems

• From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The term
  information system (IS) sometimes refers to a
  system of persons, data records and activities
  that process the data and information in an
  organization, and it includes the organization's
  manual and automated processes. Computer-based
  information systems are the field of study for
  information technology, elements of which are
  sometimes called an "information system" as well,
  a usage some consider to be incorrect.

10
Different Languages that Google Provides for its
users
11
(No Transcript)
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Google offers local language support in India

• Google technology lets users type search queries
  in 14 Indian languages and also generate content
  in local languages

13
Communication

• The Internet Helps Bridge the Digital Divide in
  Villages, long isolated by distance and
  deprivation, are gaining cell-phone access to the
  internet. In the process, millions of people who
  have no land-line telephones and who often lack
  electricity and running water are able to utilize
  services that people in developed countries
  consider to be basic, such as weather reports,
  e-mail, and a second opinion from a physician

14
Internet growth in Bangladesh

• Now has about 16 million cell phone
  subscribers- and 2 million new users each
  month-compared with just 1 million land-line
  phones to serve a population of 150 million
  people. About 500 Internet centers have been
  opened in places where there are no land lines,
  so the connections can be made exclusively over
  cell phone networks.

15
Bangladesh GrameenPhone Internet cell provider
and Grameen Bank

• The Internet centers are being setup by
  GrameenPhone, a cell phone provider partly owned
  by Grameen Bank.
• Grameen Bank has sometimes been accused of
  charging relatively high interest rate and
  putting people in debt-trap.

16
Villages and Information Systems

• People now download job applications, check
  news stories and crop prices, make inexpensive
  internet calls, or use web cameras to see
  relatives. Student from villages with few books
  now have access to online dictionaries and
  encyclopedias. One of the most popular services
  is videoconferencing, which involves using a Web
  camera on top of a computer monitor, and video
  conferencing with relatives living overseas.

17
Russia Vs. Georgia Web Turned Battle Ground

• Weeks before physical bombs started falling on
  Georgia, a security researcher in suburban
  Massachusetts was watching an attack against the
  country in cyberspace.
• Cyber attacks are so inexpensive and easy to
  mount, with few fingerprints, that they will
  almost certainly remain a feature of
  modern warfare. Bill Woodcock
• 
  http//www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/12
  /europe/cyber.php

18
Russia Georgia Web Infrastructure

• In the wake of the Russian-Georgia conflict, a
  week worth of speculations around Russian
  Internet forums have finally materialized into a
  coordinated cyber attack against Georgias
  Internet infrastructure. The attacks have already
  managed to compromise several government web
  sites, with continuing DDoS attacks against
  numerous other Georgian government sites,
  prompting the government to switch to hosting
  locations to the U.S, with Georgias Ministry of
  Foreign Affairs. undertaking a desperate step in
  order to disseminate real-time information by
  moving to a BlogSpot account.
• Whos behind it? The infamous Russian Business
  Network, or literally every Russian supporting
  Russias actions? How coordinated and planned is
  the cyber attack? And do we actually have a
  relatively decent example of cyber warfare
  combining PSYOPs (psychological operations) and
  self-mobilization of the local Internet users by
  spreading For our motherland, brothers! or
  Your country is calling you! hacktivist
  messages across web forums. Lets find out,
  in-depth.
• The attacks originally starting to take place
  several weeks before the actual intervention
  with Georgia presidents web site coming under
  DDOS Attack from Russian hackers in July,
  followed by active discussions across the Russian
  web on whether or not DDoS attacks and web site
  defacements should in fact be taking place, which
  would inevitably come as a handy tool to be used
  against Russian from Western or Pro-Western
  journalists.
• http//blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p1670

19
Privacy

• Todays war on privacy is intimately related to
  the dramatic advances in technology weve seen in
  recent years (Gurfinkel, 2001, p. 5). Advocates
  of privacy warn that the conflation of the
  disregard of the general populace and
  unrestricted technology seriously threatens
  individual privacy (Marshall, 2001).  Whether you
  use the or not, whether you are aware of the or
  not, they are out there. We have become a
  surveillance society
• What technology are you referring to? 
• Consider the Internet and computers for one.
  Each time you log in to the Internet you are
  involved in a much broader information exchange
  than most people realize (Lyon, 2002, p. 345). 
  According to a 1998 report by the Federal Trade
  Commission, approximately 98 of websites collect
  personal information (Masci, 1998).
• What do websites do with this information?
  Whats a good question as only 14 of the
  websites that do harvest information reveal the
  whom and why regarding the collection (Masci,
  1998). Geocities was accused of just this by the
  FTC in 1998. In exchange for personal
  information, this company offered free emails.
  Geocities then sold this web data, the
  information amassed, without consent to
  advertisement companies (Masci, 1998).
•  
•  In fact, data sharing is still a rampant
  practice among corporations (Marshall, 2001). But
  what happens when your medical information is
  shared with you potential insurer? Or when your
  finances are shared with your potential employer?
  
•  
• What happens on the net doesnt stay on the net.
  Run a quick search on your computer for cookies.
  Unless you cleaned them out recently, you
  probably found a lot. Cookies are self-contained
  bits of computer code that are employed by
  websites as markers or tokens of identifying
  information (Campbell Carlson, p. 598, 2002).
  While these codes may be used to keep track of
  things such as personal preferences or items in
  an on-line shopping cart, they can also be used
  to stalk someone online. How would you like your
  on-line visits to websites tracked?

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Youth Privacy Issues

• Description of issue.
• Children and youth are vulnerable to a number of
  privacy threats.
• Their marketing profiles are highly prized. And
  since children are avid Internet users, marketers
  have attempted to capture data from their web
  surfing.
• Children watch a lot of television. With TV going
  "digital," (see below) marketing information is
  likely to be compiled from such new technologies
  as TiVo and Replay TV.
• State education departments are developing
  databases that track students throughout their
  K-12 school years.
• States are developing databases to track
  children's vaccine inoculations.
• Students are often asked to complete surveys that
  ask sensitive questions about themselves and
  their families.
• Given the incidents of violence in schools,
  administrators and school psychologists have the
  incentive to use profiling tools (Mosaic is one
  example) to attempt to identify individuals who
  are supposedly predisposed to violence, and then
  share that information with local law
  enforcement.
• Looking ahead.
• While these threats do not necessarily
  interrelate with one another, it is evident that
  children and youth are the targets of a great
  deal of data collection. Congress has acted to
  limit online data collection from children under
  age 13 by passing the Children's Online Privacy
  Protection Act, implemented in April 2000. And
  the Bush Administration signed into a law a
  provision to require that schools give parents
  the opportunity to opt the student out of
  participation in marketing related surveys that
  collect personal information. This is part of the
  No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. But as we've
  seen with the other issues discussed in this
  report, laws are not able to keep up with the
  fast pace of technology. Children are early
  adopters of computer and wireless technologies,
  and are far more skilled than many of their
  elders in using them. Children are also voracious
  consumers of the latest trends in clothing,
  music, sports, and entertainment. Marketers are
  not likely to bypass the opportunity to collect
  data from children and to solicit both them and
  their parents. The tension between laws and
  technology regarding children will persist for
  time to come.

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Conclusions

• Plan to Design the information systems in mind
• Outreach to all human potential
• World partnership, Good Deed Business and
  Marketing
• (consumer and producer relationship)
• Cost, quality and/or speed
• Build continuous trust which leads to security,
  privacy
• IS advantage versus IS disadvantage
• Build multipath ways with a cross over when is
  safe
• Global election

22
Cultures and Norms

• Culture sets our values and norms. It is a way of
  thinking that determines our behaviors,
  decisions, actions and knowledge. Technology
  transfer and integration are basically the
  exchange of the knowledge, know-how and skills
  through which technology was created and on which
  its use depends. Culture is deeply rooted in
  ourselves. We are usually unaware of its
  influence on our professional activity. Cultures
  are diverse, and their encounter through
  technology exchange triggers conflicts that are
  expressed in objective terms. We need to detect
  and resolve those conflicts at the right level,
  i.e. at the cultural level instead of only
  focusing on the visible 'obstacles' to the
  deployment of telematics applications. This paper
  summarizes the basic concepts on which we ground
  a practical approach to detecting and resolving
  culture-based conflicts in technology transfer
  and integration. It investigates the relation
  between cultural preferences and actions. Culture
  is translated and reduced to a seven dimensions
  framework. Cultural preferences influence the
  decision-making process that leads to tangible
  actions. The structure and dynamics of that
  process are described as a Change Governance
  Framework. It considers the control aspects of
  decision making that are sensitive to cultural
  preferences, i.e. the way decisions are taken,
  why, by whom.
• References
• http//cat.inist.fr/?aModeleafficheNcpsidt13720
  84

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So What's Y2K?

• The year 2000 bug arose from the fact that most
  old mainframe computers still running keep track
  only of the last two digits of the year. The
  computer assumes the first two digits are 1 and
  9. To the computer, 1999 is just 99. That means
  the computer will interpret 00 not as 2000 but as
  1900, throwing the date calculation off by 100
  years.
• The problem dates to the 1960s and 1970s, when
  computer memory was scarce and expensive.
  Computers filled entire rooms and cost millions
  back then, so smart programmers squeezed every
  last bit of memory from the systems. They didn't
  foresee all the problems that only using two
  digits for the date would cause in the future.
• Programmers who built the old mainframe
  computers didn't anticipate the problem because
  they never thought these machines would last 20
  years. But today, these mammoth computers are
  still running great portions of society.
• Because the two-digit method for dates became
  standard for computers, the bug also exists in
  the software of many personal computers made
  before 1997, and in the computer chips embedded
  in many products, ranging from automatic coffee
  makers to nuclear power plants.
• To fix the problem, every computer system's
  software must be checked and tested. Multiply
  this by the millions of computers around the
  world and the hundreds of billions of lines of
  computer code, and you can see how immense the
  project is.
• In the United States, there are about 157
  billion software functions that need to be
  checked,
• according to Capers Jones of Software
  Productivity Research. The 30 most industrialized
  
• countries have a total of 700 billion vulnerable
  software functions. Every one of them must
• be checked, Jones said, and estimated the global
  bill at around 3.6 trillion.
• http//www.countdown.org/y2k/what_is_y2k.htm

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Y2K Cost in Perspective

• World War II  4200 billionMillennium bug
  (Y2K) 600 billionVietnam conflict 500
  billionKobe earthquake 100 billionLos Angeles
  earthquake 60 billion
• Sources Gartner Group andCongressional Research
  Service

25

Globalization of technology
Privacy Issues
Internet privacy consists of privacy over the
media of the Internet and the ability to control
what information one reveals about oneself over
the Internet, and to control who can access that
information. Privacy measures are provided on
several social networking sites to try to provide
their users with protection for their personal
information. On Facebook for example privacy
settings are available for all registered users.
The settings available on Facebook include the
ability to block certain individuals from seeing
your profile, the ability to choose your
"friends," and the ability to limit who has
access to your pictures and videos. Privacy
settings are also available on other social
networking sites such as E-harmony and MySpace.
It is the user's prerogative to apply such
settings when providing personal information on
the internet.

This slide was written in my own words/my ideas
26
Advantages of Globalization

• Goods and people are transported with more
  easiness and speed
• the flexibility of corporations to operate across
  borders increases
• the communication between the individuals and
  corporations in the world increases
• environmental protection in developed countries
  increases
• the possibility of war between the developed
  countries decreases

27
Disadvantages of Globalization

• Increased flow of skilled and non-skilled jobs
  from developed to developing nations as
  corporations seek out the cheapest labor
• Threat that control of world media by a handful
  of corporations will limit cultural expression
• Decreases in environmental integrity as polluting
  corporations take advantage of weak regulatory
  rules in developing countries

28
Problems associated with globalization and
information technology
Most of Africa is being left in a technological
apartheid, and the same could be said of many
other regions of the world. The situation is
difficult to remedy when one third of the worlds
population still has to survive on the equivalent
of one dollar per day.
29
Security on Globalization and Information
Technology
Globalization has put tremendous pressure on
businesses in the form of new competitive threats
and onerous regulatory requirements. Businesses
have responded by focusing on their core
competencies and markets and have in turn raised
the bar for IT by demanding ever increasing
levels of responsiveness, stability and
efficiency. The ever increasing demands placed on
IT means that IT management has little choice but
to consider adding outsourcing to its delivery
mix. In other words it is important for people
around the world to know about outsourcing and
information technology so purchasing and
communicating something on the web can be more
secure.
30
Protecting your Privacy on the Internet

• Do not reveal personal information inadvertently.
• Turn on cookie notices in your Web browser,
  and/or use cookie management software or
  infomediaries.
• Keep a "clean" e-mail address.
• Don't reveal personal details to strangers or
  just-met "friends".
• Be conscious of Web security.
• Use encryption!
• Be conscious of home computer security.

31
Privacy

• North American analyses of privacy construct it
  as a human right that is inevitably violated by
  advanced communication technologies. Growing
  exposure is expected to become the fate of more
  and more people as globalization expands.
  However, studies of surveillance practices
  elsewhere suggest alternative interpretations of
  information disclosure, and developments in
  globalization theories highlight complicated
  relationships between the global, the local, and
  their mediators. This study adopts an agential
  approach to explore the encounter between Israeli
  and North American concerns over web privacy as
  they are mediated through local journalists'
  introduction of the new medium. The analysis
  identifies three arenas in journalists'
  discussion about web privacy The U.S., Israel,
  and the global community of surfers, attending
  both to the predominance of the U.S. in this
  discourse, and to the absence of local structural
  accounts. The analysis proposes that by
  Americanizing the concern over privacy violation
  and by constructing it as paranoia of the
  technologically inept, the text neglects to
  contextualize privacy violation, and privatizes
  the struggle against it.

32
Culture Norms and Values that affect
Globalization and Information Technology

• As the sophistication of contracting technologies
  increases, the normative content of those de
  facto regulations will increase, and potential
  for conflict between diverse local law and
  business culture on the one hand, and contracting
  norms embedded in networked commercial
  transaction systems on the other will increase.
• The development of contracting technologies that
  can accommodate diverse contracting regimes may
  reduce potential conflicts between the mandates
  of the global trading architecture and the social
  norms of local economic culture. Flexible
  technologies may be easier to develop for use in
  countries where contract law is highly formal in
  content Islamic law may provide an example of a
  contract law regime that is highly formal and
  thus can be more readily accommodated by
  computerized contracting systems.
• They may be harder to develop in countries where
  institutionalized informality is an essential
  element of contract law and practice some East
  Asian countries may provide examples of contract
  law regimes that are difficult to accommodate
  with computerized contracting systems because of
  the central role played by informal social norms
  in some economic activities.

33
References

• 1 Introduction to Information Systems
  Supporting and Transforming business (Reiner
  turban 2008)
• 2 Tomorrows Global Giants Not the Usual
  Suspects (Ghemawat, P., Hout, T. Harvard Business
  Review, November 2008)
• 3 Redefining Global Strategy Crossing Borders
  in a World Where Differences Still Matter
  (Ghemawat, P., Harvard Business Press, 2007)
• Google