1. Describe four ethical issues that arise when storing electronic information about individuals.

One of the major ethical issues that you must deal with is if you are storing private or confidential information such as SSNs, addresses, birthdates, etc. Is the assurance that you can store this data and promise that this data is secure and only those who need to see it, can. We have seen over the past 10 or so years major breaches of companies like Equifax and many people’s private information stolen which led to lots of people having their lives and credit ruined.

Another issue that has to be addressed is whether can you convince people that the information that is stored is also untampered and the original. Nowadays, it is very easy to alter and change the information on documents so that they have a new meaning. This can lead to massive problems especially when it comes to documents pertaining to national security because if there were a breach bad enough, it could cause intelligence to be altered in a way that causes a military to decide to act based on false pretenses.

Can we guarantee that only those who need to see the information do and no one else? I have made it a practice for myself that when I type a password, I do not save that to my browser because I do not want to leave myself open to a data breach, and I also take the time to practice good security practices like changing my passwords often so that I can protect myself as well. However, we do have to occasionally give our information out and trust others to protect it, and that is a major responsibility for these companies to deliver on that promise.

Finally, the main practice everyone can do is to not rely solely on others to protect their data, like I mentioned above, if you start practicing cyber security on your own, you’ll make it much harder for your information to be exposed to unwanted sources.