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.

Reflection

I came into this course not knowing what to expect, I knew what ethics was already but didn’t know how to apply it to cybersecurity. I’m pleased with what I learned. As a cybersecurity major, I plan on taking away more knowledge. I think this class will play an important part when I get a cybersecurity job and my life in general. Before this class, I wasn’t paying attention to how my cybercrime can affect people’s everyday lives. I’m constantly on social media, and I never really paid attention to how some of these companies handle themselves. I heard about how Facebook is unethical or untrustworthy from some people but I never really paid attention to it, I still kept using it. But this course opened my eyes to the world of cyber ethics and how it can play an important role in my life, modules like privacy and data ethics play an important part in how people use technology. I use google view every other day, I like to look at the area that I’m traveling to and from, also this may sound crazy but I used to look up my current house here and there. Not knowing that it invaded people’s privacy and that it broke ethical rules. I think the most important takeaway I got from the privacy module is that everyone deserves privacy, as long as they aren’t doing anything illegal or harmful with that privacy. Module two which was based on data ethics was also very important to me in my personal life. Data ethics wasn’t something that I knew about in my everyday life before this class, I’m 21, and most conversations don’t mention this even though we are all constantly on social media. Data Ethics is crucial because it gives companies a structure on what to do and not do with the data they collect from people. Before this class, I could care less about data ethics because I thought companies would have the users back but now learning that the companies are the ones who are taking data without the user’s permission. My takeaway about Data Ethics is you got to be careful online from other people to the companies you decide to open accounts with. My most favorite module was whistleblowing. The whole unit was very much well put together. Before this class, I heard here and there about whistleblowing but I never knew an exact definition. I got a better understanding from watching “The Resident” and the doctor was labeled as a whistleblower, I put two and two together and thought it was a different word for a snitch. But looking at this module, a whistleblower is a person who informs on a person or organization engaged in an illicit activity. As stated, I didn’t have a perspective on them before this class, but now after doing a whole module on them I think they are important not only to a business but to the community. My takeaway is that a whistleblower is someone who takes one for the team. Whistleblower and Corporate Social Responsibility are most definitely the two that would play a very important part in any cyber job I take in the future. I consider CSR a focal point in a company list. I will go research companies in the future and what they think CSR means to them. I didn’t agree with Milton Friedman when he stated that a company should only focus on maximizing profits. My perspective on that is that a company’s main focus should be on the customers. Focusing on customers will not only bring profit but it will bottom line keep the company afloat. Businesses take cybersecurity, data ethics, and everything else seriously because of their customers and customer’s equal profit. I love this class and I liked my professor aka Matthew; I would retake this class just because I enjoyed it so much, it opened my eyes to things I never really noticed and it thought me things that I would never forget.