IT Security Governance Legal Issues

The protection of the investment and creativity made in producing computer programs and databases by intellectual property rights is still not harmonised internationally. Taking into account that IT is used not only to produce these goods, but also to infringe their intellectual property rights, national laws nowadays also protect the so-called technological protection measures, such as passwords, encryption or copy-protection software, created to protect the intellectual property rights. Besides, IT must fulfill the privacy protection regulations currently in force and the companies using it must carry out the international auditing standards. But intellectual property rights cannot protect simple data and information, apart from the substantial investment made in either obtaining, verification, or presentation of data, by sui generis right over databases (or database right). This chapter examines and compares the current legislations of developed countries in order to find the characteristics -and the criticism- in common.