Technology Ethics Attributes in Handling Confidential Information for the Armed Forces

Abstract

The scarcity of technology ethics awareness particularly in Armed Forces personnel practises in handling confidential information remain of utmost concerns. This research aims to identify technology ethics attributes in handling confidential information for the Armed Forces. This is executed by designing technology ethics model and evaluating the proposed model. 121 questionnaires were distributed to personnel in Royal Signal Regiment (RSR) Corp of the Malaysian Armed Forces (MAF) from Sergeant to Major in rank. Using SPSS version 20 analysis revealed that the correlation between the identified attributes namely security and privacy, autonomy, code of ethics, legal, accuracy and safety showed significant with moderate to strong positive. Accuracy reads the highest correlation with 76.9%, which may be due to personnel concerns on organisation’s information sensitivity along with skills and knowledge equipped which portrayed their preciseness in decision making while handling confidential information. However, safety showed the lowest correlation of 31.4% while its regression reveals 9.9%. The overall regression analysis predicts 72.9% variations. This suggests personnel are excessive reliance with organisation’s benefactor safety while ignoring the importance of individual safety in managing the information they encountered. This research may assist the Armed Forces in securing practises acquired in handling organisation’s valuable assets which requires special guardianship towards its perseverance.