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
End of Course Reflection
One of the ideas in this course that I’ve worked closely with that I feel I’ve really taken a lot out of is the practice of ethical reasoning. Before this class of course, like any other human being, I argue about right and wrong. I say things like “It’s not right for you to do this” and “that’s not fair,” but this class made me realize that I don’t give a great deal of thought to how I come to these conclusions. I just do. It’s like I’m preconditioned to believe what I do. Being presented with the seven tools for ethical reasoning and then being forced to look at different ethical problems through those lenses was helpful for me in two ways. It forced me to be able to look at problems from outside my normal perspective of thinking and enabled me to think critically about which elements of my problem were aligned with a way of thinking that previously was, for the most part, unfamiliar to me. It also gave me more lenses by which I can judge ethics going into the future. Usually when confronted with stuff in a newspaper article or a magazine headline, it filters through this one stagnant understanding of the world which usually doesn’t call things into question. Not so now. I find myself filtering things through some of my favorite “tools for ethical reasoning” almost automatically when I’m presented with some noteworthy current events. I anticipate this will be a useful habit when I enter my field.
Another interesting topic that’s stuck with me is privacy. I had no idea how wide ranging the issue of privacy was or that there were so many models for understanding privacy. In just about every service that collects even the most insignificant data from users, companies have to take a stance on privacy and conform their policies and procedures to what they think is alright. Then the user is the one who’s affected by the company’s ethical beliefs. The insights from the various authors as well as the cases presented to us in this course brought awareness to me about the complexity of privacy in our digital age, and I’m coming away with much more caution in my own online practices, but also a greater interest in how laws and big companies’ policy change to fit the ever-evolving digital information sphere.
Lastly the topic of corporate social responsibility was one that I engaged with and had a clear position on even before reading any material on it. After engaging the course material however, the skills that I gained from analyzing things from different ethical perspectives as well as the insights provided to me by the commentators caused me to spiral into a lot of reflective thought. It seemed obvious to me that companies are supposed to look out for the good of society, but the alternate views presented by the authors and the perspectives I was coming away with by thinking through the lens of the opposing tools for ethical reasoning made me second guess my own beliefs quite thoroughly. In my mulling over these different perspectives the realization came to me that law makers and policy creators likely go through the same thing when doing their job. This was the topic that made me realize the process by which the regulations not just of our digital world, but our entire world are formed. I came away from my study of this topic with a greater understanding and appreciation of ethicists and people who endeavor to take on such challenges when they recognize that the need has arisen in our society.