Three Distinct Perspectives of Applied Ethics in Information Technology

This assignment discusses the ICT ethical dilemma situations and the obligations the incident puts forward in wrecking the ethical properties of the ransomware attack on Atlanta city. It analyzes the incident by three perspectives according to the ICT ethical policies, namely, Professional ethics perspective, Philosophical ethics perspective and Sociological or Descriptive ethics perspective.

SCHOOL OF COMPUTING AND MATHS, Charles Sturt University
Information Technology Ethics
Assignment 1: Three Distinct Perspectives of Applied Ethics
Your Name
Student Number
Word Count:

Information Technology Ethics
1. Introduction
Some time back this year in March, there has been an incident of Ransomware attack on the
entire city of Atlanta. As a repercussion of this incident, the entire city had to suffer data
hostage issues and the halt to all internet related activities, even in the major networking
hubs of the city. The malware had been transferred through an IT network infection which
had kept the confidential data under hostage of the entire city of Atlanta. Even after a lot of
months have passed since the attack, Atlanta city is still under the influence of the attack
and still is only recovering from the phase. The process of recovery is still due for
unspecified time. This had occurred only as the hackers claimed a huge sum of money as
ransom from the city authorities in exchange of the data (Consequences of ransomware
heat up in Atlanta -- GCN., 2018). The networking system of the city had been compromised
just as a huge sum of money from the authorized people. In this assignment, this incident
would be discussed in details for analyzing the ICT ethical dilemma situations and the
obligations the incident puts forward in wrecking the ethical properties. This would be done
by three perspectives according to the ICT ethical policies, namely, Professional ethics
perspective, Philosophical ethics perspective and Sociological or Descriptive ethics
perspective.
2. Professional Ethics Perspectives
Every profession has ethical standards to maintain which is not just bound by the
professional accord of a person but also should abide by the corporate behavior a person
pursuing the profession. This approach to a well-maintained professional status-quo of a
person is known as Professional ethics (Baer & Nagy, 2017). It is expected that a particular
professional must follow the Professional ethics throughout the entire period of their
service. Any professional should follow these codes of professional ethics that would enable
him or her to be true to their profession. This is to imply that any professional should not
perform any task in their entire professional life that would ethically harm themselves, their
profession, any organization they are working with or any people or organization associated
with it.
Before a person starts their professional life, they have to pass through various trainings
that would satisfy the needs of the particular organization the person is working under. This
Your Name

Information Technology Ethics
does not only satisfy the needs of the organization the professional is working under but
also makes the particular person understand every aspect of his or her profession and how a
behavior of an individual should be towards a profession. This would make a person be
extremely sure of what is the right thing to do in a particular profession so that it adds to
personal as well as professional benefit (Riglietti, 2017). In this way, a person can be
righteous to his or her profession, and for that he or she would be ready at their toes for
attempting any professional vocation for adding to the benefit of the respective profession.
Besides all the righteous steps or measures taken, ethically, it is also the duty of a
professional to take any step to protect individual profession and organization that the
professional is working for (Upadhyaya & Jain, 2016). From the professional point of view,
in behavioral ethics of a professional, the attitude of an individual also needs to be kept
under proper analysis to make sure that every professional in a particular organization has a
positive attitude towards their personal and professional front. Any professional must not
possess any behavior that works as a negative implication towards his or her personal and
professional conduct.
In the above case about the ransomware attack in Atlanta city, the activities of the malicious
hackers have breached all the Professional Ethics and its implications (Goldman, 2018).
Transferring of malicious software to a major computer holding the authority of networking
of an entire city is itself a major ethical implication that has been breached at the first step.
Gaining access over any unauthorized data is wrong according to the Professional ethics
perspective. From the perspective of a developer, the profession is meant for developing
softwares that would ease out an organization’s business process and not harm it altogether
to squeeze out data (Shinde et al., 2018). Rather, the hackers had developed this
ransomware to keep intricate data of an entire city under hostage further paralyzing the
entire network of the city. These actions defy the ICT implications of Professional ethics.
In addition to this, speaking from the point of view of the authorized personnel in charge of
the computers in the entire city that have fallen under threat, they should have been more
protective about the data from being hacked by any malicious user. Therefore, they have
also failed to comply by the ethical implications of a Professional.
3. Philosophical Ethics Perspectives
One of the most delicate aspects of ICT ethical laws is the Philosophical Ethics Perspective. It
can be defined as the perspective of an individual human being who judges their own
Your Name

Information Technology Ethics
actions according to the human morals (Turban et al., 2017). Although, this depends on the
self-explanatory terms of conduct, this ethical perspective depends on a person’s own
discretion. He or she would reach a conclusion of judging their own actions as right or wrong
based on the perspectives of human morals. For a person to be true to Philosophical ethical
conduct, it is necessary that the person is morally correct in their actions. It can also be
found that philosophical ethical perspective is not bound by the professional’s area of
profession. It extends to an individual’s personal life as well (Darwall, 2018). Ethical choices
are redeemed as one of the toughest choices to make within a professional life cycle. To
maintain proper morality in the tasks a person performs in their professional field is an
extension of what they ascertain in their daily life. If he or she is not morally correct in their
personal life, they could also not be able to abide by the ICT codes of philosophical ethics in
their area of work or profession (Zimba & Mulenga, 2018). However, this behavior of an
individual does not justify that if a person is being morally dishonest in their personal life,
the same can be extended as a view to their professional life. This particular case of
ransomware attacks in the city of Atlanta however has two perspectives of the approach.
From one aspect, where the malicious hackers have barged into the authorized computers,
it can be clearly said that all philosophical ethical conduct have been compromised. This is
because this particular ethical approach does not allow a person to be causing harm to any
person or organization related to their field of profession. Here, the attackers have not only
harmed the people of Atlanta, but also the entire networking system since the attackers
have also demanded an entire sum of 6,800 USD per computer or a total sum of 51,000 USD
in bitcoins for unlocking every computer in the city besides the haltering of the networking
system of the entire city (Crane & Matten, 2016).
On the other hand, the authorized personnel who had been in charge of protecting the
confidential data of the city as well as all the connecting devices including the devices that
control the entire system had been in dilemma of whether or not to pay the ransom. Paying
it would mean monetary loss for the city of a huge amount, and non-payment of ransom
would result in intricate data compromise. The city of Atlanta had thus proven to be
absolutely correct to their morals.
Your Name

Information Technology Ethics
4. Sociological/Descriptive Ethics Perspectives
There are many aspects of an ethics perspective in case of any phenomenon. These are
normative ethics, meta-ethics, applied ethics and descriptive ethics. The normative ethics
implies the ethical ways which every person should follow to maintain an ethical balance; on
the other hand, meta-ethics describes the actual ethical theories related to the ethical
implications behind a behavioral action of an individual (Brady, 2017). The perspective of a
descriptive behavior is a primary empirical research done on the attitudes of a group or
individual person and their approach towards their respective profession.
The developers who had turned rouge enough to steal the data and information of an entire
city with the SamSam virus spread over the networking system, had an idea of what the
virus might do if the entire networking system of a city is jammed. Still, they did not pay any
heed to the implications and carried on with their task of malware attacks and data hostage.
This behavior clearly showcased the lack of morality in the malicious hackers since they
knew that their actions are defying the laws of ICT ethics and human morals as well, but still
did not refrain from their malicious attacks.
On the other hand, the authorized personnel who had been in charge of protecting the
confidential data of the city as well as all the connecting devices including the devices that
control the entire system had been in dilemma of whether or not to pay the ransom. Paying
it would mean monetary loss for the city of a huge amount, and non-payment of ransom
would result in intricate data compromise. They considered this as a collateral damage and
paid the ransom to recover the confidential data (Basu, 2017). However, they have still not
recovered entirely from the attacks, but this behavior clarifies that from the descriptive
perspective if ICT ethical laws, the city of Atlanta have not been unjust.
5. References
Baer, R., & Nagy, L. M. (2017). Professional Ethics and Personal Values in Mindfulness-Based
Programs: A Secular Psychological Perspective. In Practitioner's Guide to Ethics and
Mindfulness-Based Interventions (pp. 87-111). Springer, Cham.
Basu, S. (2017). The fight within encryption. Cyber Security: A Peer-Reviewed Journal, 1(1),
44-47.
Brady, D. (2017). Aspects of professional ethics in the real world. Journal of Information,
Communication and Ethics in Society, 15(4), 362-365.
Your Name

Information Technology Ethics
Consequences of ransomware heat up in Atlanta -- GCN. (2018). Retrieved from
https://gcn.com/articles/2018/07/03/continuous-data-protection.aspx
Crane, A., & Matten, D. (2016). Business ethics: Managing corporate citizenship and
sustainability in the age of globalization. Oxford University Press.
Darwall, S. (2018). Philosophical Ethics: An Historical and Contemporary Introduction.
Routledge.
Goldman, J. (2018). The Ethics of Research in Intelligence Studies: Scholarship in an
Emerging Discipline. International Journal of Intelligence and
CounterIntelligence, 31(2), 342-356.
Riglietti, G. (2017). Cyber security talks: A content analysis of online discussions on
ransomware. Cyber Security: A Peer-Reviewed Journal, 1(2), 156-164.
Shinde, R., Van der Veeken, P., Van Schooten, S., & van den Berg, J. (2016, December).
Ransomware: Studying transfer and mitigation. In Computing, Analytics and Security
Trends (CAST), International Conference on (pp. 90-95). IEEE.
Turban, E., Outland, J., King, D., Lee, J. K., Liang, T. P., & Turban, D. C. (2017). Electronic
commerce 2018: a managerial and social networks perspective. Springer.
Upadhyaya, R., & Jain, A. (2016, April). Cyber ethics and cyber crime: A deep dwelved study
into legality, ransomware, underground web and bitcoin wallet. In Computing,
Communication and Automation (ICCCA), 2016 International Conference on (pp.
143-148). IEEE.
Zimba, A., & Mulenga, M. (2018). A DIVE INTO THE DEEP: DEMYSTIFYING WANNACRY
CRYPTO RANSOMWARE NETWORK ATTACKS VIA DIGITAL FORENSICS. International
Journal on Information Technologies & Security, 4(2).
Your Name