- Describe four ethical issues that arise when storing electronic information about individuals.
- Compare cybersecurity risks in the U.S. and another country.
- Throughout the years technology has grown exponentially and so has storage of consumers’ information. Many companies and businesses storing electronic information about individuals have new and improved ways to store data, but there are still many risks and ethical issues associated with it. If businesses misuse or store data inappropriately it can not only destroy consumers’ trust, but could also get them in trouble with the law. The first ethical issue associated with electronic storing of data is security breaches. Security breaches can and most likely will happen at some point in time for any business or company. The important part is how the company deals with the security breach. Companies/businesses should let their customers know what happened, what was breached, and the steps they are taking to deal with it. If a security breach is not dealt with properly, that is when it becomes an ethical issue. The next ethical issue is inappropriate storage and usage of data. When dealing with an individual’s personal information, there are steps that need to be taken to make sure only that individual can access their data. Privacy and confidentiality is key when storing a person’s personal information. Companies should make sure to have security measures such as multi-factor authentication when allowing individuals to access data and ensure that their employees are only using or looking at the information when necessary. Another ethical issue is how the company implements their system. Humans are one of the downfalls of security plan. A company has to make sure to train their employees properly and follow the guidelines of the plan that is being implemented. The last ethical issue is companies keeping individuals data longer than needed. Keeping a person’s data longer than needed is a huge risk and can be mitigated by only keeping data that is necessary. When a company follows the proper guidelines, has privacy and security as their priority, and are able to mitigate risks then they should have no problem ethically storing data. It is up to companies to keep up with new and evolving technologies to properly store people’s information.
- Cybersecurity risks in the United States are extremely high are high compared to other countries around the world, but our risks and attacks are similar to Russia’s. The United States and Russia being on about the same level for cybersecurity risks is not surprising because both countries are more technologically advanced and economically developed. Some of these risks include phishing scams, insider threats, non-state actors, malware, and several more. Yet, even though both countries have higher cybersecurity risks, both tend to house a large majority of those who bring on cyber attacks. Russia and the United States are the top sources of phishing attacks and pirating emails, but the United States receives 60% of all phishing scams. Although Russia and the US have similar cybersecurity risks, the United States experiences more phishing and advanced fee scams than the Russian federation. The United States knows that their cybersecurity risks are high and have national, state, and local plans in place to protect individuals. Plus, the United States has worked on raising awareness of how important cybersecurity is for businesses and individuals. The United States is fully committed to being prepared for cyber attacks because they are one of the most targeted countries. Russia on the other hand is raising awareness and building their cybersecurity industry, but still is not as developed as the United States. Both countries deal with high rates and risks of attacks, but are on different levels of preparedness.
Works Cited
Lee, Wanbil. “An Ethical Approach to Data Privacy Protection.” ISACA, 24 Dec. 2016, https://www.isaca.org/resources/isaca-journal/issues/2016/volume-6/an-ethical-approach-to-data-privacy-protection.
Kigerl, Alex. “Cyber Crime Nation Typologies: K-Means Clustering of Countries based on Cyber Crime.” International Journal of Cyber Criminology, Vol. 10, Issue 2, 2016. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pMr6eM8unKNgPH5uwlp3CmEzGPr_kFya/view.
“Global Cybersecurity Index 2017.” ITU, 2017. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ldTE-_IIZ0rr4kO-kCqV5QOcW52aVotT/view.