Impacts of information technology policies, for example, include whether they are legal, whether they are all-encompassing and whether they are actually being enforced. When it comes to regulations and laws, it is commonly at the discretion of law enforcement as to whether or when they prosecute people but that is there call and they will tend to protect employees and customers if they are being wronged or if there is a perception of the same (Hess, 2013)
Doing otherwise is a betrayal of the customer or the employees involved. Customers will not take kindly if they know or think their data is being reviewed in a willy-nilly and/or warrantless fashion (Nelson, 2015)
Just as two examples, Target and Home Depot have learned a very hard lesson about what happens when information is not properly secured and some very high-ranking IT and non-IT people lost their jobs over that mess (Sidel, 2015). Then of course there were prior incidents like the one at TJX that was borne of abject ignorance about the obsoleteness of the WEP wireless standard at the time (Ou, 2007)
Analysis When it comes to the legal environment in which information technology managers operate, it can be a minefield and then some. Just as two examples, Target and Home Depot have learned a very hard lesson about what happens when information is not properly secured and some very high-ranking IT and non-IT people lost their jobs over that mess (Sidel, 2015)