Three Distinct Perspectives of Applied Ethics in Information Technology

SCHOOL OF COMPUTING AND MATHS, Charles Sturt University
Information Technology Ethics
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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
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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
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