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

In this course, three topics/positions that stood out to me were the ones on google street view, cyberconflict, and deontology. The google street view case analysis was the first one I completed. Reading through the case and completing the analysis really opened my eyes to a lot of things related to privacy. Before completing the analysis, I would have said that people that used some of the arguments I did were just paranoid. It made me realize that there is a lot more to privacy than just protecting the generic private information. There are many more pieces of information that could be used to cause some sort of harm to someone. This is why I made the argument that Google should have thought about all possible uses for its service and maybe even done some surveys to get a feel for how people would feel about certain information being made public, no matter how small they might have thought it would be. I will use what I learned to make sure that I protect as much of my information as I can. As for cyberconflict, utilitarianism helped me see its pros and cons a little better. It made me think more on whether or not the
addition of cyberattacks is ethical or not. It made me look at the effects they have outside of just being a nonphysical attack that, mostly, avoids physical harm. For the current technological progress we have made, there are plenty of chances for possible negatives towards civilians. These negative can be both physical and non-physical depending on what infrastructure was targeted. That is why my stance was that I do not think that, given the current technology, examples of attacks, and the possible effects on civilians, cyberwarfare can be just or part of a just war. If we can ever get to the point where civilian harm can be completely avoided, then my stance on this will change. The associated reading really helped me get a better understanding of deontology. I have always been somewhere near the middle of the deontology perspective. While I do agree that people should act with the respect of other in mind. However, I also somewhat agree with “an eye for an eye” and that some people deserve certain punishments for certain
actions. Punishments aside, as far as normal acts go, I strongly agree with deontology. I believe that there are so many issues in the world that could be/could have been avoided if people acted with these principles in mind. I am also a believer that people are inherently “evil”. It is this reason that I believe someone’s view on deontology comes down to how they were raised and what they grew up around. I hope that as time progresses, more and more people act with deontology in mind. With all this being said, I know that I also have to work on this. There are times where I too act with my own personal interest being put over others.