Cybersecurity Ethics

This course examines ethical issues relevant to ethics for cybersecurity professionals, including privacy, professional code of conduct, practical conflicts between engineering ethics and business practices, individual and corporate social responsibility, ethical hacking, information warfare, and cyberwarfare. Students will gain a broad understanding of central issues in cyberethics and the ways that fundamental ethical theories relate to these core issues.

Course Material

Reflective Assignment
Looking back through the semester I have gained a lot of new knowledge, in fact, out of all of my classes
this semester this is the one that I have gained the most knowledge in. I say that because this is my first
ever ethics class, so I was introduced to ethics and the things that it is centered around, things we as
humans deal with almost every day. As I look back there are three main things I got from the “Tools for
Ethical Reasoning” tab in class this semester that I feel will stick with me and help me advance in my
career as well as life. The first one would have to be from the first assignment which was
“consequentialist” which could also be “utilitarianism”. ” Consequentialism focuses on the
consequences of the actions people take. For a consequentialist, an action is right if the
consequences of that action were good, and wrong if the consequences of that action were bad.
A common form of consequentialism is called “utilitarianism”. A utilitarian thinks that the
consequences of an action are good exactly when the consequences increase the amount of
good in the world—the right action is the one that maximizes the amount of happiness and
minimizes the amount of suffering.” I chose this because it helped me understand that a lot of
things in life are selfish and things that people may think are the right thing is sometimes not the
right thing. It helped me understand how to make the best decisions in life and in my field of
work and that is why I chose this as the first one.
The second most important one would be “deontology’ or “Kantian” based on the well-known
Immanuel Kant. “Deontology focuses on people’s reasons for acting in considering whether a
particular action is right or wrong. Specifically, what one should do in any given situation is the
action that is based on the best reasons. Kant held that one could do something that resulted in
good things but that was motivated by bad reasons. When this happens, the person has still
done something wrong. So, imagine a person who decides not to be a criminal because he is
scared of going to jail. For Kant, even though this person ends up doing good thing, his reasons
are bad, and so he has done something immoral. The person should have opted not to be a
criminal because he should have acted for the sake of duty and out of a responsibility to respect
others.” I chose this because it opened my mind up that no everyone does everything for the
right reasons and it made me think about how bad the world would actually be if people carried
out their thoughts. This stood out to me because it made me want to always think positive and
do what is best for the right reasons. I feel as If that can go a long way, just being genuine and
positive in everything I do from home to work.
The last thing that stood out to me “virtue ethics” or “ubuntu”. Virtue ethics looks at morality as
an aspect of personal character rather than considering effects (like consequentialism) or
intention (like deontology) or social systems (like contractarianism) or relationships and roles
(like ethics of care and Confucianism) or shared humanity (like ubuntu). This sat well with me
just because it focuses striving for a great life but without forgetting that we all still have room to
grow and I believe that should sit well with everyone because nobody is perfect. We all should
still live our life to the best of our capabilities and find the areas we need to grow in so that we
can continue to be better as a whole.