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

This course has really helped me prepare for my major. I am a cyber security major and while taking this class, I feel that I have learned a lot. There are many things that were taught, however there were three things that really stood out to me. The first thing being, that I learned a lot about the ethics behind a lot of topics. There are a lot of ethical issues with data and things we put online. It made me second guess a lot of things, especially before posting anything on social media. I learned that Facebook especially has a lot of ethical issues due to the fact that they have been caught using people’s information without any consent. When I read this, It got me thinking about other social media apps and if they are using our data without our consent. There are some things that people put online, and I feel that it is important that they know that they are at risk. Another issue that I learned and personally have thoughts on is whistle blowing and the importance of it. Before this class, I knew what whistle blowing was, however I did not know how important it was. Within a company, there are a lot of things people do not know, unless you are personally working there. Therefore, if there were to be an ethical issue within the company that could possibly affect their customers, I think the best thing for an employee to do is whistle blow. By doing this, they are bringing awareness to what is actually occurring behind the scenes. The example in the case study we did, really did stick to me because I never knew that it was an issue. After reading and completing that assignment, it got me to thinking about the behind the scene issues that occur that could be potentially harmful to us. The last issue or idea that I learned from this course was cyber warfare and why it was an issue. Before taking this class, I had no idea what this meant and that it was an issue. Cyber warfare is a serious issue as it disrupts the normal activities of organizations or states. I learned that cyber warfare occurs when one one organization views another organization as an “enemy state”. It is essentially hacking into another company or business’s system, and that is where the issue arises. In conclusion, I feel that this class will really help me with my major, which is cyber security. There were a lot of things that helped me prepare for what I will learn later on in my college major. All of the readings helped me understand each topic further and I learned a lot about the ethics behind a lot of cyber security related things. I can fully say that I feel prepared for the next semester, which for me is filled with all the cyber security courses I am required to take. I had a great time and felt that all the material was appropriate!