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 Writing Assignment

This was an interesting course to say the least. I have never taken a formal ethics course before so there are some interesting topics that I had to tackle and struggle with along the way. Sometimes I took a side I agreed with, sometimes I took the other side.

One of the theories that stood out to me was the ethics of care unlock. I found it natural for me to get behind that over the more basic impartial utilitarian view. I found it more natural to care about people and found I was more emotionally connected to the people I care about and have personal relationships with and am more likely to think of them first. This must be a byproduct of my being in the military and flying with those I cared about and expected we would all take care of each other the stronger our bond was. Common peril forms lasting, lifelong bonds, so it would be difficult to stay impartial in a life and death situation like that. I was certainly not a military commander and have yet to choose between the lessor of two evils and that’s not a situation I would want to find myself in either. My takeaway on this part of the course was after gaining knowledge of the many ethical theories out there, this is the one I gravitated towards the most. If I was to be put in a situation where impartiality does the greatest good, I would have that knowledge about myself and hopefully remember how in some cases, impartiality is the path to the greatest human prosperity.

Another aspect of the course was the whistleblowing module. This took time for me to fully digest because it was a module that had content, I was personally familiar with. While I do agree that there should be whistleblowing protections, I found it difficult to allow myself to have compassion for Manning when I argued against her. I don’t know what she was going through, I was upset at the process she took to disclose the information she had access to, and I blamed her for her actions. The nuance in this type of thought is that maybe society failed her. Maybe the military failed her. In reflection, I’ve been a part of organizations that have processes like that in place but just wasn’t familiar with it. I probably won’t fully know why she did what she did or why she chose that route. The silver lining here is that it did spark the conversation about institutional whistleblowing and that we need a formal process to encourage and protect people that are calling out immoral or illegal behavior.

I think this goes into my last and most recent module on cyberconflict. I don’t think we will ever go back to a place where we have defined lines in battle. In reading and writing for this one, it concerns me that we have the right knowledge of how others should be treated but we still have a long way to go when it comes to how we treat others that are different from us. Different races, cultures, or religions. We’ve built in certain protections for those types of things in our laws and yet mistreatment still happens all over the world. My takeaway here is to not get discouraged. Continue to lead by example and always evolve how we think about the people or places that are different from what we know. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes so to speak. When I am confronted with ethical dilemmas, make sure that I’m clearly looking at my view or argument before shifting to the other side.

This was an excellent class and should be required for every student. This day and age ethics should be part of your curriculum not just in college but well before as well. Especially now when young people see a body of leaders that don’t seem to have much.