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50 TECHNOLOGY AND BUSINESS RESEARCH

It should be ensured that the data in the information system are error-free and
are frequently updated. After all, decision making can only be as good as the
data made available to managers.

INTERNATIONAL DIMENSIONS OF CYBERSPACE

Cyberspace is not free of geographical boundaries or cultural nuances. Foreign
governments can use the same firewall and filtering technology that American
corporations use to deter computer hackers. Some countries ban access to gam-
bling web sites, and a few others like Singapore and Saudi Arabia censor the web
site contents.
A judge in France ruled that Yahoo had violated French law by selling Nazi
memorabilia on Internet auctions, and the ruling is contested by Yahoo. As a
result of these, unregulated cyberspace is a mythical notion. Local laws do
indeed govern what can and cannot appear in cyberspace.
Copyright laws can also be deemed to be broken as in the case of the Russian
programmer who was accused of breaking copyright laws in 2001, but pleaded
not guilty to charges of violating the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act of
1998. The decision on this case will have an impact on the sale of books and other
works in the digital age and the jurisdiction of U.S. law over the Internet.

DATA STORAGE AND SURVEILLANCE

Storage of Databases

The September 11th catastrophe in 2001 has sadly but powerfully dramatized the
need for storing company data at more than one site and away from the location
of business operations. Fortunately, a devastated financial company that was
based at the World Trade Center in New York had a data center in Boston. A
member of the storage management company Veritas’ “fly-to-site” team drove
from New Jersey to Boston, and recovered all the data.
Data is the lifeblood of companies and should be mirrored live in at least two
other locations, or at least backed up on tape and stored in other remote loca-
tions. There are several firms in the storage industry that offer protection of pro-
prietary data and aid in disaster recovery.

Data Security
Increasingly, organizations and their information systems are faced with security
threats that include, among others, computer hacking, Internet fraud, and sabo-
tage, from a wide range of sources. Computer viruses and computer hacking are
an incessant threat and everpresent danger.
To protect information from a variety of threats, digital IDs and firewalls are a
few of the security measures used to prevent fraud and unauthorized use.