Murdoch University

School of Information Technology

ICT521 EXAM

Semester 2, 2023

Unit Coordinator: Dr. Pol Koutsakis

 This is an open-book exam

 Please label clearly the answers to all questions. If it is not clear which question your
answer corresponds to, you will receive zero marks for that answer.

1. (24 marks) John is the new Chief Information Security Officer in Trust
Software, a leading provider of software supporting the operation of parking
meters in Europe. The company has been the target of successful corporate
espionage in the recent past. There is also suspicion, in upper management, that
many employees spend significant amounts of their work time, daily, visiting
social media websites and this may be the reason for a decline in the company’s
performance. John has been hired to make sure that security lapses will not recur
and to ensure that employees do not waste their working hours. John decides to
use screen capture programs in order to facilitate live monitoring of all
employees’ actions on their computers. Discuss John’s decision. Is it ethical,
considering the following moral theories from Lecture 1?
- Utilitarianism
- Deontology

2. (24 marks) Below please find the link to an article paper titled: “The State of the
Digital Divide in the United States”. Read the article and discuss: a) what the digital
divide is, b) is it correct that minorities suffer from the digital divide, according to the
article? c) what is the Internet Income Ratio? Do you think it is a good measure?
Justify your response.
https://pcrd.purdue.edu/the-state-of-the-digital-divide-in-the-united-states/
3. (30 marks) Attached please find the paper titled: “Comparing Twitter and Facebook
user behavior: Privacy and other aspects”. Also, below please find the link to an
article titled: “Never trust a platform to put privacy ahead of profit”
https://www.wired.com/story/twitter-two-factor-advertising/
Discuss the following:
a) How similar or different are the findings of the paper and the article in regard to
privacy? Why, in your opinion, is there a similarity or difference between them?
b) which limitations of the study conducted in the paper are, in your opinion, the most
important ones and why?

4. (22 marks) Assume your Australia-based company is considering expanding to two

foreign countries, Ecuador and Slovakia. Go to the following link

https://www.hofstede-insights.com/country-comparison

and compare these two countries with Australia in all Hofstede dimensions. Explain
in your own words what the differences might mean for how your company needs to
adapt to the foreign country, and if you had to make a choice, in which of the two
you would prefer to expand and why.