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

In the spring of 2022 I took Cyber Security Ethics (PHIL355E) and I would like to take a moment to reflect on some of the topics and materials that stood out to me throughout the course.

 

The first topic I would like to address is in regards to the multitude of ethical theories I learned about in this course. Since this was my first time being introduced to philosophy in college, concepts such as Kantianism or Consequentialism were entirely unfamiliar to me, and I genuinely enjoyed diving into each ethical theory I was introduced to. Initially I was a bit overwhelmed with all of these unfamiliar terms but I quickly learned that I had been applying bits and pieces of these ethical theories to my day to day life since birth. Out of all the ethical theories we covered, I particularly enjoyed learning about deontology. This particular theory is used to determine the morality of an action based on the action’s consequences, and not the action itself. This is an ethical theory that I have loosely, and until recently unknowingly, followed my entire life. Only now at the age of 31 can I actually put a name to it. 

 

The second topic that I would like to mention involves the course’s modular approach. Each module focused on a different aspect of cyber security, and I was tasked with applying one of my recently learned ethical theories to it. The modules covered concepts such as data ethics, cyber conflict, and data privacy just to name a few. Each module was a deep dive into their associated concept and each one challenged me. There were times that I found it difficult to get traction applying certain types of ethical ideologies to the provided material, but that initial hesitancy forced me to give the topic much deeper thought. As is the case with ethical dilemmas, I found myself trying to square the topic with an ethical theory that simply could not work, making for my own internal ethical dialogue. A dialogue that I hope will resonate with me again in the future when I am confronted with a choice or demand that raises the alarm on what the consequences of my actions may be.     

 

My perspective on cyber security as a whole has also drastically changed as a result of taking this course. I always knew that majoring in cyber security was going to result in me being faced with ethical quandaries, but it wasn’t until now that I can fully appreciate the true scope of what I’ll be face to face with. Terms like cyber-warfare and information warfare are thrown around so often in the media that they have almost lost their meaning to me. But now I can stop and appreciate the significance and ramifications of those phrases and better understand what they mean. While I’m not certain where this degree will take me or which of the multiple fields within this area of study I’ll be supporting, I can safely say that I will now be going in with my eyes open to the multitude of problems that society and the industry of cyber security is facing as a result.

 

I would also like to share two of my case analysis that I completed during this course!