Unit 13 P4

The employees of the computing department of McLinsoft Solutions must be aware of the acts that are passed by their government. By doing this they are aware of what authority they have with their employer or the government as well as what authority the government has on them. Such acts include the Data Protection Act, the Regulatory Investigation of Powers Act, and the Computer Misuse Act.
The Data Protection Act was passed in 1984, but was updated in 1998. This act was made to make sure that data was accurate, used legally, and correct. The Data Protection Act is an agreement between the “Data Subject” (anyone who submits their information to an organisation, such as an employee or a member of a club), and the “data controller” (the organisation/person
This act was passed in 1990 and made three offences in relation to hacking. An offence under the computer misuse act would be to access someone else’s computer without any permission or authorisation (for example, looking through someone’s private files without them giving you permission). Another offence under the act was being able to access someone’s computer with the intent of causing another crime on top of that. An example of this would be to hack into someone’s banking account and transferring their money over to yourself, hacking without permission was the initial crime and theft of their money is the intended crime. The last offence to be added to the Computer Misuse Act was to edit the computer in any way. For example, you hack into a computer and leave a virus that will in time destroy the computer. McLinsoft computing staff must know that they cannot commit any of these actions. Doing so can lead to a prison sentence of up to 12 months (or 6 months in Scotland) [3]. Examples of computer misuse in the workplace can be obtaining colleague’s log-on details and accessing their private data, releasing a virus throughout the company network, or even hacking into other company networks and obtaining any