Software Piracy is a serious matter. Using pirated software is illegal and opens your organization to liability. Offering to crack software may expose you personally.
The first thing to do is to inform your management that software piracy will expose the company to serious liability. Microsoft has published a guide that can help you present your case to management and educate them on this important topic.
To be honest, the excuse that the IT department is disorganized is quite worrisome. Your management is basically telling you: You may have a problem, but we have not looked into it and we are accepting the associated liability risk. The article Bringing your company into software license compliance with this six-step process by Aaron Boggs may also be a good way to present the information to your management. The six steps presented in the articles are:
- Pick a license tracking method,
- Perform a software audit,
- Catalog all existing licenses,
- Organize your data,
- Maintain your license database,
- Review your company's software licensing policy.
In addition, referring to the Code of Conduct for your organization may help you on the proper way to approach this situation within your organization. Larger organization have hotlines that employees can use to report unethical behaviors within having to directly engage management.
If you are unable to convince your management that they need to purchase the necessary licenses for the software you are operating, the ethical thing to do is blow the whistle on your organization. The Business Software Alliance (BSA) allows you to report your organization anonymously:
In order to investigate your software piracy report, you will need to provide the name and address of the company being reported, what software is being pirated, and how you know the software is pirated. All information provided to BSA will be kept confidential.