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

The first topic I will be discussing is whistleblowing. I did not know much about whistleblowing before I took this course. If I am being completely honest, I was not really sure what it was at all. I soon figured out that it is when an employee exposes an organization. At first glance this made me think that it was only a bad or immoral thing to do. However, the content in this course helped me realize that whistleblowing can be moral in some circumstances and immoral in others. For example, I was able to determine that the Manning case was an immoral case of whistleblowing using the ethical tool of contractarianism.

One takeaway about this topic that I want my future self to remember is that whistleblowing is not always immoral. Sometimes it is important for an employee to blow the whistle on an organization if they are doing something unethical. Employees can blow the whistle out of loyalty to point out the wrongdoings of an organization. I think this is extremely important. More often than not, whistleblowers are seen as bad people for exposing organizations. I think that this is wrong because in some circumstances it is completely understandable why they would want to blow the whistle.

The second topic I will be discussing is cyberconflict. Once again, I did not have too much knowledge on this topic before taking this course. This course helped me understand what cyberconflict is and in what circumstances it is just or unjust. I was able to learn about the cyberwar that is going on between Israel and Iran. At first I thought this was a just war because I thought both sides were just acting on their best interests. I was able to realize after taking a deeper look at the case that this conflict was actually unjust. My view took a complete turnaround. I was able to see it was actually an unjust war since it was causing immense suffering on both sides. It appeared that there was no end to the continuous retaliation attacks from both sides.

One takeaway I would like to remember about this topic is that cyberconflicts are not always just. In many cases attacks take place that harm civilians and cause immense suffering. I learned from this topic that it is important to read into these situations before making an opinion about it. If I did not look into the case between Israel and Iran I would still think it was a just cyberwar.

The last topic I will be discussing is privacy. This course helped me change my position on privacy. Privacy is a very broad topic so I will focus on how it was relevant to the first module. I enjoyed reading about the Google Street Case and how it was perceived by many. I learned that some people were ok with it and others felt it was invading their privacy. At first, I definitely thought that Google was ok for what they were doing. I really did not think much of it. I realized after looking into the case that Google could have done a much better job of implementing Street View. I feel that in some instances they did in fact invade the privacy of certain individuals.

A takeaway I want to remember from this topic is that privacy is not seen the same way in different cultures. In other countries privacy is very different than in the US. I think this is important to keep in mind because not everyone has the same view of privacy. Just as in the Street View case, it is important not to invade people’s privacy. Overall, I think it is important from an ethical standpoint to always do your best to respect other individual’s privacy.