Three Distinct Perspectives of Applied Ethics on Recent Ransomware Attack in Atlanta

Assessment item 1
Three Distinct Perspectives of Applied Ethics
Value: 10%
Due Date: 05-Aug-2018
Length: 1400-1500
Task
Proceed according to the following instructions.
 Identify a recent (within the last six (6) months) ethical dilemma or ethically
questionable situation relating to ICT that you are familiar with. This situation can be
either in the media (for example one you have sourced from a newspaper, or online
through social media) or through your workplace.
o a. If using a workplace example, to maintain confidentiality, do not use real
names.
o b. If you use a media article you must include the link to the media article in
the references list of your assignment.
 Identify the key ethical issues contained in your chosen case and use the three distinct
perspectives of applied ethics including professional, philosophical,
sociological/descriptive ethics to analyse the ethical issues involved in the case. The
word limit should be between 1400-1500 words. Note: Headings, citations, references
and any appendices do not count towards your word limit, but quotations do. At the
start of the assignment indicates in brackets the word count of your assignment
excluding those items mentioned above.
 Include a Reference list at the end of your work, in the correct APA referencing style,
corresponding to in-text citations. You must include at least THREE (3) quality
academic references (one for each ethical perspective) from different sources. Please
note that these references are in addition to those provided to you through this subject
(for example, you still must reference, Tavani textbook, the Interact subject lecture
notes etc BUT these references cannot be used as one of your three quality academic
references from different sources). Only include references that have been cited in the
body of your assignment and ones that support what you have presented in your
assignment.

Template
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[Type the document title]
Student name
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Word Count:

1. Introduction
In March 2018, a ransomware attack carried out by malicious hackers affected the whole
city of Atlanta. The hackers kept an eye on various data which affected the whole nation.
The city was suffering from the effects of attack even after several months have passed. It
ultimately created an issue since data hostage demanded a lump sum amount of money
after the attack (Peters, 2015). It ultimately becomes a vital matter for various authorities
to pay the ransom value or not. According to the ICT solution, the given situation can be
analyzed for various ethical issues. The analysis will be done with the help of major
factors of applied ethics. In the coming pages, some important aspects of the report that is
professional ethics, philosophical ethics, and sociological ethics have been discussed in
details.
2. Professional Ethics Perspectives
Corporate development professionals are focused to maintain their professional ethics. It
is generally expected that the person working the corporate platform will follow the same
standard throughout their lifetime service (Sorokin, 2017). The professional aspect of
personal behavior should be just considered as a part of the project only. This ultimately
relates to the fact that professionalism should not perform any kind of activities which
will harm the organization, people or their profession.
Various professionals around the globe have to pass through training procedures before
getting into professions. This ultimately relates to the fact behavior performance of an
individual should be just towards their profession only. That particular individual should
be prepared for any step which would benefit his profession. The professional implication
can be stated as the protection of an individual. A professional should have a positive
attitude towards his profession (Christians et al., 2015). Activities which can harm the

profession of the individual should be banned or abandoned. People who are associated
with the respective organization should be barred as per the professional ethics.
In this case, attackers have gained an accesses to computers which have provided them
with activities of the whole city. It has ultimately break various ethical implication
imposed by professional ethics. Ransomware transfer is a major kind of ethical
implication which should be kept away from developing for malicious attackers that
breach out data and are not authorized to use (Bertrand, 2018). Every professional should
come up with sole ownership of authorized use and professional ethics so that no one else
should be able to use it in a proper way. Every personal data should come up with sole
ownership of an authorized user. By professional ethics, no one should have an easy
access to them. By this method, a proper balance is maintained between the user and all
of the substrate for which data has been working. In this case, all the professional codes
of ethics have been violated as a ransomware attack has victimized all the people who are
associated with the profession. A hacker is the only guy responsible for a data breach.
Any developer should have a positive intention for creating a software which can be used
for providing benefits to the associated organization. Ransomware developer, develop
software which can not only harm other but can help in gaining financial ransom in
exchange of data provided. It ultimately defines the laws of professional ethics in the
much better way (Gupta, Agrawal & Yamaguchi, 2016). Apart from this, various
organization or authorities should be careful regarding the fact of handling the enormous
value of data. Along with this, they must understand the confidentiality of data. If there is
a failure against the protection of data against hacking can be considered as the disobey of
professional ethics.
3. Philosophical Ethics Perspectives