Please feel free to read my case studies on Professional Ethics and User Data.

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.

A Reflection on Ethics in Cybersecurity

The study of ethics has provided humanity plenty of benefit for ages. Throughout that time, what was considered right and wrong has been shaped by moral principles and society. The ethical standard that most appealed to me in this course was virtue ethics. Given that it is considered the oldest ethical theory it is no wonder that the topic of virtues has permeated virtually every code of ethics, military creed, and company vision. It wasn’t until I studied virtue ethics for this course that I realized its impact on my life. A pivotal moment in this class was, while doing more research on various topics within ethics, I saw a video that said that being virtuous isn’t being all the way honest or all the way generous, but instead finding the middleground. This idea by itself redefined the three most important roles I play in my life: A husband, father, and Naval leader. Rather than my almost draconian model of virtuous behavior as fostered by European-born parents and the United States military, throughout the short duration of this course, my actions and thoughts have started to make the slow migration to a more balanced example of virtuous behavior. With this transition well underway, as I continue on my path in life I hope to remember that virtues aren’t automatic, and that it is much better to be an example to follow, rather than an enforcer of virtues.

We can all claim to have some immovable opinions. As a person whose job revolves around secrecy, it is easy to form very bad opinions of whistleblowers like Snowden and Manning. Secrecy keeps Submarines safe, and safety is paramount when it comes to conducting Submarine operations, making this opinion even more deeply ingrained. The whistleblower topic had me change the way I approached judgment of a person’s actions. All it took was a little reflection from a different point of view, combining their stories with a deeper understanding of different ethical principles to see how the world looked from their perspective and why whistleblowing could have been the right thing to do in that instance. Being able to view the world from someone else’s perspective is something I hope to carry with me throughout life.

I had a notion of various ethical models, but never studied them. After doing so I realized how big of a role ethics have in a person’s perspective, and vice versa. The diversity in the reading of this course have brought different perspectives and, much like the power of reading in the story “Girl in Wave: Wave in Girl ” which brings the world together through each other’s stories, they are from all over the moral spectrum. The situations in life that you experience are objects to consider and build your ethical foundations around, and those foundations change your perspective, creating a feedback loop that doesn’t allow mental models to change. Some call this an echo chamber, only ever hearing your own opinions and standards shouted back at you. This course as a whole challenged me to dissect writings from people I may have never read otherwise, and helped me to recognize that some of my mental models were very broad, making it easy to be wishy-washy, or ethically very black and white. Throughout this course I have begun to let go of some of these mental models and am working to refine others. As I leave this class and move on down the path of a Cybersecurity major, my plan is to keep my studying pin-pointed on work, but my sources and perspectives diverse.

Read more: PHIL 355E