Cybersecurity, Technology, and Society

This course explores how technology is related to cybersecurity from an interdisciplinary orientation.  Attention is given to the way that technologically-driven cybersecurity issues are connected to cultural, political, legal, ethical, and business domains.

Course Material

Ethics of CRISPR Gene Editing

CRISPR stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (Broad Institute 2018). CRISPR is a gene editing system. Being able to pick and choose genes has both reasons to support and reasons to oppose. For example, if cancer runs in a family, and a member of the said family is trying to have a baby, being able to eliminate any cancer genes from the baby’s DNA could save their life. Using gene editing to save a life would be considered ethical because, in this case, it is being used for morally correct reasons. However, some people may try to use CRISPR with more materialistic motives. For example, some may try to use CRISPR to make their baby have certain physical attributes. Using gene editing to make a baby look a certain way is unethical because it is not being used for morally correct purposes. Genetically designing a child takes an extreme amount of money. Socially, there is already a huge gap that separates the rich from the poor, and giving the rich the ability to design their own offspring genetically could broaden that gap. Enjoying the benefits of wealth is not unethical, but using it to make children genetically superior and expanding the social gap between the rich and the poor is. 

Adolf Hitler, a German dictator, and leader of the Nazi party ordered the death of six million Jewish people, disabled people, homosexuals, etc. One of the ways he tried to do this was through eugenics. Eugenics can be defined as the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable. Hitler believed that having attributes like blonde hair and blue eyes made someone a part of the “Aryan race,” or the superior race. If someone like Hitler had the ability to eliminate genes like brown eyes and brown hair, that could lead to the actual extinction of an entire group of people. 

References

Broad Institute. (2018, August 4). Questions and answers about CRISPR. Broad Institute. Retrieved November 30, 2022, from https://www.broadinstitute.org/what-broad/areas-focus/project-spotlight/questions-and-answers-about-crispr#:~:text=A%3A%20%E2%80%9CCRISPR%E2%80%9D%20

NIST Framework

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) created a framework for identifying, assessing, and managing cybersecurity risk. The benefit of using this framework is being able to customize a cybersecurity system in order to receive the best protection for an organization. The protection from utilizing this framework is vital for any organization. It is vital because almost everything, including crimes, can be done digitally now. For example, the majority of businesses in the United States use direct deposit to pay their employees. In order to be able to directly deposit money into employees’ bank accounts, they must have their personal information, like banking and routing numbers. If someone decides to hack into a business and retrieve employee bank information, they could drain everyone who has ever gotten a direct deposit from that company’s bank accounts. Employees trust their employer to keep their information safe, if they have a breach due to low-quality cybersecurity, that could result in huge lawsuits and the failure of the company. 

In my workplace, I would utilize or encourage the utilization of the steps in section 3.2 in order to properly protect my business. I would start by figuring out what the main goal of my company is. After that, I would get everyone together to do a risk assessment and figure out what sort of threats we could be susceptible to. We would then create a goal and a plan of action to reach said goal. I would present the plan to stakeholders in order to obtain all the resources needed to achieve our goal. Once all of the resources are obtained, I would utilize them and my team to have optimal protection for our company.

Workplace Deviance

Before cyber technology existed, workplace deviance had to happen face-to-face. Whether it be setting a store on fire or punching a superior, it had to happen in person. However, with cyber technology, employees can do it from anywhere. For example, an employee gets fired for being constantly late. If that angry employee can log in to their account from home, they could put malware onto the company’s network, steal information, or even cause the whole thing to crash. If that employee was given access to information such as consumer data, they could leak it to the world and put every consumer that has ever done business with that company at risk. If the employee had access to future business plans, they could sell them to a competing company and put their employers out of business. Most companies employ a least-access policy, or only give information on a need-to-know basis. Least-access policies are a very productive way of limiting workplace deviance, but with cyber technology constantly advancing, they can only do so much.