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.
Reflective Essay
The very first module in PHIL335E was on the issue of privacy and it extremely piqued my interest and it truly made me think about how pervasive technology is throughout our daily lives. The case analysis on the launch of Google Street View and the way some citizens felt about it gave me a very different perspective from my own. Google Street View took a while to launch in my hometown. When it finally did, I was ecstatic to search for my house and see that my old car was parked right on the street! I have used it to navigate around unfamiliar areas, whether to find out where to park near a restaurant or to find a decent area to move into. While I have zero complaints about Google Street View, I have changed my perspective as a result of the case analysis and subsequent readings. I now understand that many people do not like the idea of having their property or possibly themselves photographed and posted on the internet. I learned that the process was not seamless with the fact that Google did not initially blur all photographed persons or license plates of vehicles. Also, different cultures will have different expectations for privacy. For instance, many people in urban settings are used to a lack of privacy, but people in rural settings or different countries have a much different expectation for privacy. In the end, I still stand by my opinion that Google Street View has many more benefits than negative effects. However, I realize that it is not a straightforward issue and privacy concerns should always be respected and handled in the correct manner.
Module 4 was extremely interesting, and it details the lasting effects of creating technology that harms society for the cause of an organization’s profits. Technology, without a doubt, improves our lives. However, I learned we must be vigilant and truly ask ourselves if the technology that we are working with is enhancing or degrading society. Sourour wrote an article that detailed his first official coding job as an adult. He coded a quiz that would advise a harmful prescription no matter what answers the user gave on the quiz. He did resign, and yes anyone could have coded a quiz to do that. However, the fact that he helped create that harmful quiz stayed on his conscience for many years even after resigning. The takeaway here is that no matter what we do, we must constantly question if we are working towards the betterment of society. Reviewing various professions’ codes of ethics helped me to even further reinforce this takeaway.
In the module 6 case analysis I learned of the continuous back and forth of cyberattacks between Israel and Iran. Initially, I would have determined that if one country committed cyberattacks against another then the defending country should most certainly counter cyberattack. However, upon reading through the journals I learned about some very interesting viewpoints that give sound advice. Given the stealthy nature of cyberattacks, it leads to both countries suspecting the other committed the cyberattack without knowing beyond doubt that it was truly them. This leads to an increasing amount of sophisticated cyberattacks between both countries, all at the expense of the civilian populations’ quality of life. The part that really stuck with me was Taddeo’s justification for an ethical cyberwar. The third principle of Taddeo states that cyberwar should be avoided in order to promote the well-being of the Infosphere. The takeaway is that by abstaining from cyberwar, the civilian population of the participating countries will have a much better quality of life. This is because the majority of cyberattacks cause major inconvenience at best and possible death at worst depending on the infrastructure attacked.