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

Four ethical issues that arise are protection of health information (PHI), identifiable information (PII), financial information, and national security. Certain companies collect health information like health records, allergies, current medications, and other health information in order to operate. This information needs to be taken care of properly or someone with malicious intent can get access to this information and impersonate an individual with this information. A hacker attaining this information can severely affect the life of the individual whose information is attained, causing much stress and difficulty for that individual to try and fix it. Much of the same can be said for personally identifiable information (PII). An individual’s PII getting taken could also heavily affect their life as they attempt to recover from the theft. Businesses also have a potential ethical issue with financial information because businesses are responsible for keeping customers or users information secure. If financial information is not secured, then hackers can get customers credit card numbers, routing numbers, account numbers, or whatever information is stored. Finally, certain information about individuals could be a threat to national security. Information like military positions, times or presidential trips/meetings, or any classified information about an individual could be used against an entire nation and cause serious problems.

Compare cybersecurity risks in the U.S. and another country.

Every country has allies and enemies. The U.S., for example, is a part of NATO, a large group of allied countries who agreed to defend each other if they need arose. Having allies typically means that there are troops stationed in that country, sometimes their locations being highly confidential. Confidential information is valuable to not friendly countries, or countries that there is a high tension between. This confidential information could be a risk that other countries do not have because they may have less allies or less troops stationed in other countries. In addition, the technological advancement of the not friendly country could mean different risks. Some countries, like Japan, are very technologically advanced and send large amounts of cyberattacks every second. Having a country like Japan as an enemy could mean that the other country has a bigger threat to their cybersecurity infrastructure than if that same country had an enemy that is less technologically advanced.