Database Management Systems: Improving Social Issues and Organizational Structures - Essay Sample

Introduction

Social issues are problems that influence people's way of living. Database base systems have been adopted by various organizations such as hospitals, schools, governments, business entities for managerial purposes. The database management system has allowed improvement in the consistency of manipulation, collection, and distribution of data. It has enabled organizations to develop their organizational structures, reducing the excessive risks and costs incurred, and hence allowing the organizations to attain significant improvements in their operations. However, the abuse of the database system by the managerial could lead to other users obtaining detailed information about people that were not entitled to be seen raising social and ethical issues. This paper aims at outlining the impact of a database system in organizations for managerial purposes and the unintended consequences from the use of the database management system, which has resulted in ethical, social, and political issues.

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Background

Databases are essential to almost every organization in the world today. It has played a very significant role in computer evolution. The technological knowledge behind the power of the database has, over the decades, been developing. With the introduction of the database system, it has become easier to create and manage big data in an effective way and over a persistent time. Unfortunately, this rapid and continuous development of technological networking in the world has resulted in detrimental effects on the life of people, organizations, and society. It has led to the introduction of many issues in database systems (Abbasi et al., p.3) It has become a priority for each organization globally to look into new ways of dealing with the rising economic, political, ethical and social issues in the data systems in computer science. It is then necessary to look into these issues by analyzing them and recommending appropriate and suitable measures to promote adequate security to databases.

Advantages of Database Management Systems

Database management systems allow efficient management of data and will enable the user to perform multiple tasks with ease. Businesses and organizations have adopted the business management system because of its efficiency, and it has provided highly efficient techniques in the handling of multiple data employee records, payroll, accounting, student information, health records, inventories and project management are some the data easily managed by organizations and businesses using the database management system.

Without the application of database management systems, tasks have to be performed manually, which might result in the usage of more time and reducing the efficiency of work. With a database management system, the data can easily be structured and categorized to fit organization and company structures (Cheng et al., p.27). The data entered into the system can be easily accessed by the assigned users on a timely basis. Each assigned user is given login passwords, which allows them to gain access to the intended part of the system.

The database base management system also allows multiple users to use the system at the same time. The database management system has increased the operational intelligence of companies and organizations. History records of the company or organization can be easily accessed, and the information obtained used for immediate or deliberate action in case of any emergency from the company or the organization. For instance, human resource departments in different organization companies use the database system to manage employee's records, share information to the employees, and to create new files on hired employees. Manufactures use the database system in tracking their production, inventories, and distribution of their goods. Both scenarios have shown that the database management system operates in creating an organized and smooth working environment.

Issues in Database Management systems

The database management system allows multiple users to use the order at the same time. This has led to increased insecurity of individuals' data stored in the system leading to privacy issues. Privacy of once information and data is of great importance and once interfered with, and it loses its creditability.

Database management systems store a lot of information of persons depending on the organization or the company in which the individual operates. The lost privacy of people details might lead to individual life being in danger in case one exposes their income earnings to a platform where criminals or people with evil deeds are. First, it will result in one's life is at risk. Endangering one's life by the user will be unethical from the user because the individual might be attacked either verbally or physically.

Also, exposing individual information and details might result in mental disturbances to the individual once they realized that their data had been revealed. The privacy concept has evolved, and the advancement of technology has made it easy to access the private information of people (Acquisti, Curtis, and Liad, p.82).

Louis Brandeis and Warren pushed the first theory of The Right to Privacy in the United States due to increased cases of privacy concerns. They supported the application of prevailing laws in the protection of the right to privacy. When The Right to Privacy has attained fifty years, privacy was no longer new but had achieved doctrine in law. Twelve states in the United States recognized the right of privacy as common law, and two states had accepted it as a statute.

Databases are a significant target to those cybercriminals, mainly because of the confidential nature of the information that is locked away. Therefore, hackers gain profits by intruding on business servers and then interfering with the databases. It has been reported that several security failures have promoted cybercrimes to increase. Among these issues are;

Data insecurity as a result of data leaking is one of the problems of great concern to the whole society. This is where hackers transmit organizational or personal data to an outside destination without the authority of the owner. Many studies show that many organizations that experience a data leakage are always affected because they usually lose revenue.

Other effects may be experienced by patients working in healthcare clinics; as a result, breach of their confidential information. This issue may also end up ruining the reputation of the doctor in charge, too, and this why many healthcare organizations usually buy malpractice insurance against such data breach. Stolen database backups are also other issues that are linked to data security because many institutions have reported that theft of databases may occur from the inside. The insiders usually steal the backup database as a result of revenge, profit, or for money. This is a very general and common issue in many businesses and enterprises today.

A study was done by (Abouelmehdi et al., p.1) on privacy and significant data security of healthcare centres, which was aimed at investigating the challenges occurring from the use of big data in organizations such as healthcare centres and business enterprises. It was found that privacy concerns were a significant challenge in this organization as a result of significant data usage and also that there was a need for substantial data privacy reconciliation.

It was also found that other challenges experienced in these institutions were as a result of data deployment during collection and devices used for processing data. It was concluded that reduced profits are linked to insecure database systems and weak data processing devices.

Another issue in database systems is Poor database performance, which is a result of poor database design. These designs are costly to change, and thus it is, therefore, essential to ensure a system for data is well designed for data. Poor deployment is also another issue that needs to be well looked into an active database system. It is a result of network issues, firewalls, and the addition of multiple switches. These issues have resulted in poor data quality for use by businesses and other relevant users. It can lead to inappropriate decisions in the industry and poor data analysis, thus leading to substantial financial losses and even the loss of customers. Inferior branding will affect the business community as a result of low sales because of a lack of confidence in services offered or products on sale. Hence, customers are forced to look for new markets or other alternatives.

According to a study conducted by (Harizopoulos et al., p.420) on Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) by looking into a glass. It was found that it contained heap files, B-trees and disk-resident, support for multi-threading, concurrency control locking that was optimized for internet technology. It was observed that the modern conventional database systems are built to use hardware and generate speculations about their performance in detail. It was concluded that the design of a database is vital in creating a useful database concerning speed, accuracy and secure data access by business enterprises

Recommendation

To ensure patient privacy in healthcare clinics, it is essential to implement a systematical mixture of technologies and practices that are better, such as securing measures to underling technical platform, restricting access to data, and finally technically de-identifying the data. Also, in hospitals, it is essential to create models to secure data and deny access to protected patients' confidential information by any unauthorized person. Even, other measures that can be implemented are redundant data entry, high cost of database system ownership, and reduce environmental work mobility. Finally, it is also essential to encrypt data to ensure data safety security and thus preventing issues that may result as a result of cybercrimes. This paper also recommends business enterprises and large institutions to ensure to wok with people with comprehensive database management expertise, find the right partners, to drive business insights with data security and privacy regulations.

Conclusion

In conclusion, technological advances have led to significant improvements in the database management system. It has led to a smooth and organized running of companies and organizations through its efficiency. It has enabled users in various companies and organizations to obtain and store massive data and information from their employees. It has promoted the commerce industry and manufacturing sector in marketing their goods with ease through easy tracking of products and services from the data stored in the system. However, the database management system has impacted the societies and communities negatively through social, political, and ethical issues resulting from the use of the system. Database management systems should, therefore, be well managed to avoid any problems arising from the use of the arrangements.

Abbasi, Ahmed, Suprateek Sarker, and Roger HL Chiang. "Big data research in information systems: Toward an inclusive research agenda." Journal of the Association for Information Systems 17.2 (2016): 3.

Abouelmehdi, Karim, Abderrahim Beni-Hessane, and Hayat Khaloufi. "Big healthcare data: preserving security and privacy." Journal of Big Data 5.1 (2018): 1.

Acquisti, Alessandro, Curtis Taylor, and Liad Wagman. "The economics of privacy." Journal of Economic Literature 54.2 (2016): 72-92.

Cheng, Bo, et al. "Industrial cyber-physical systems: Realizing cloud-based big data infrastructures." IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine 12.1 (2018): 25-35.

Harizopoulos, Stavros, et al. "OLTP through the looking glass, and what we found there." Makin...