ICT Professional Practice and Ethics

This article discusses the case study of Cambridge Analytica and Facebook, focusing on the process followed to achieve the data breach and Facebook's stand in the case. It explores the ethical issues and implications of the data breach and provides possible solutions to prevent such breaches. The article also highlights the importance of ICT professional practice and ethics in safeguarding user data.

Running head: ICT PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE AND ETHICS
ICT PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE AND ETHICS
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1ICT PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE AND ETHICS
Table of Contents
Background of the Case Study...................................................................................................2
The process followed to achieve the data breach...................................................................3
Facebook’s stand in the case..................................................................................................4
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................9
References................................................................................................................................10

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Background of the Case Study
Social Networks serve as a medium to connect people around the world. It is a
platform that has the potential to link individuals with their friends, family, social causes and
many more. As per the research done by Boulianne (2015), with the various advantages
involved the social media has gained popularity among the public and it is estimated that
there are almost 2.62 billion social network users as per the researches done in the year 2018.
The popularity of the social networking sites is not limited to any one age group as its craze
has been there in all irrespective of their age. The disadvantages of the social networking
sites are a growing concern especially in case of privacy breaches. The case study considered
to analyze the scenario is that of the Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. Cambridge
Analytica has been in the news since a revelation of a sting operation that showed the senior
executives of the company swaging about manipulating psychologies, entrapping techniques
and performing campaigns on fake news. The giant of the social media platforms that is
Facebook is also amidst a dispute regarding leak of personal information and making use of
the same illegally. The dispute was strong enough and roused questions such as whether these
data were used to influence the results of the presidential elections and the Brexit vote in the
U.S in the year 2016 when Mr. Donald Trump was elected as the president of U.S. As per the
research done by Persily (2017), it was reported on March 16, 2017 that a subgroup of
Cambridge Analytica named Strategic Communications Laboratory was suspended by the
social media giant, Facebook as it had been charged of user’s data collection and at the same
time passing it to Cambridge Analytica. The Britain’s Channel 4 News exposed the senior
executives of Cambridge Analytica along with the CEO of the company while they were
suggesting that the company can make use of sex workers, misinformation and bribes to help
the political candidates gain votes from around the world.

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In the report below the incident will be considered in details and an analysis would be done
referring to the ethics especially the DoingEthics technique.
The process followed to achieve the data breach
As per the research done by Epskamp et al. (2016), psychometrics is a branch of
science that successfully measures the personal traits of an individual. Five dimensions can
be made use of to demonstrate the personality of an individual namely: Neuroticism,
Extroversion, Openness, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. As per the research done by
Garcia-Portilla et al. (2015), The Five dimensions are collectively called the Ocean Method.
In the year 2008, Michael Kosinski a psychologist found out a method that could analyze
individual’s behavior based on the activities of the individual on Facebook. An application
“MyPersonality” was developed that permitted the users to take participation in
questionnaires on psychometric. This app provided results considering the Ocean Method and
many users took part in this leading to the development of huge psychological dataset. An
academic named Aleksandr Kogan wanted to access this dataset but when denied access by
Kosinki created his own app named “thisisyourdigitallife” in the year 2014 and collected data
in a similar process that of MyPersonality and this time the users undertaking the test were
paid for it. As per the research done by Cadwalladr and Graham-Harrison (2018), reports
suggest that the app collected the data of the Facebook users and their friends and it almost
went up to 50 million user accounts. Kogan shared the volumes of data with Cambridge
Analytica that used it to develop solution based software that helped influence choices of the
people in the elections as per Christopher Wylie who revealed about the data breach to the
newspapers. According to Wylie this data was used by the company to generate
psychographic profiles of the people and promote pro-Trump material to these profiles
making the online media a medium.

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Facebook’s stand in the case
As per the research done by Venturini and Rogers (2019), Facebook was of the
opinion that Cambridge Analytica has obtained the data of the users legitimately but Kogan
had lied to them and misused their policies when transferring the collected data. As per the
research done by Derrick et al. (2015), the social network giant banned “thisisyourdigitallife”
in the year 2015 and the parties that had taken the collected data were advised to destroy the
same. Reports suggest that inspite of warnings, Cambridge Analytica kept the data retained.
“The entire company is outraged we were deceived. We are committed to vigorously
enforcing our policies to protect people’s information and will take whatever steps are
required to see that this happens,” Facebook said. Facebook assured its users that the senior
executives of the company would certainly work on the facts related to the case.
Analysis of the case using the DoingEthics technique
As per the research done by Mandinach et al. (2015), DoingEthics is a tool that aids to
find out the ethical and the non-ethical issues that are related to any case scenario. The
technique encourages the researches to provide answers to certain questions. This helps in-
depth study of the case study. The ethical dilemma related to the case is also revealed by
using the technique. In this paper DoingEthics technique has been used to analyze the
Cambridge Analytical case.
Q1. What is going on?
As per the research done by Isaak and Hanna (2018), the data breach caused by Cambridge
Analytical by using the user information of Facebook is the issue in the above case study. It
was exposed by one of the ex-employees of the company name Christopher Wylie. As per the
research done by Zunger (2018), almost 50 million accounts of the users were mined in order
to gather the volumes of the information.

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Q2. What are the facts?
a) Facebook claims to be unaware of the fact that the data was being collected to be sold as it
was informed that the information will be a part of Global Science Research.
b) The mastermind behind the scam was Aleksandr Kogan, the professor of the Cambridge
University.
c) The policies of Facebook were not followed and data misused illegally to influence the
voters in the presidential elections in the year 2016.
d) Sting operation performed revealed that the firm was suggesting the usage of the sex
workers and bribes to aid the political candidates.
e) The ex-employee revealed the method in which the company was illegally using the data
collected in order to build psychographic profiles and promote pro-Trump material.
Q3. What are the issues?
The main issue in the case is that the personal information of the Facebook users were
misused and manipulated in the election campaigns. As per the research done by Cadwalladr
(2017), the trust of the numerous users of the social media giant was hurt and they all were a
victim of a huge data breach and the number of accounts illegally made a part of this is
touching the count of 80 million. The data breach is evident that in the age of technology that
data is vulnerable to attacks and can be misused by attackers for their personal benefits.
Q4. Who is affected?
The users of Facebook are the ones who are mostly affected in this data breach as the data
collected and used was their personal information. As per the research done by Houser and
Voss (2018), Facebook is another victim of the data breach as it lost the trust of its users and
is to be fined £500,000 for the part of the company in the big scandal.

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Q5. What are the ethical issues and implications?
As per the research done by Nyman (2016), data breaches serve as hazards to organizations
as they are detrimental to the growth of the business and go a step further in the leak of
confidential informations. The ethical issues related to the scam was that the personal data
collected involved the gender, date of birth, address and ZIP code of the users and thus
making the users vulnerable to engineering attacks making using of the information that had
been harvested. The ethics of the company are at stake and it does not matter whether
Facebook was directly involved or just another victim as the common public. The trust of the
users was manifested on the social giant and it was incapable in protecting the data of the
users. The implications of the data breach are that it could be primarily used as attack vectors
to disrupt many systems.
Q6. What can be done about it?
As per the research done by Hoel, Mason and Chen (2015), some of the measures that could
be taken to avoid these data breaches are as follows:
a) Ensuring transparency
b) Choosing partners wisely
c) Self-sovereign identity systems must be used
Q7. What are the options?
As per the research done by Lawler (2018), Facebook in order to resolve the issue and gain
back the users trust can focus on remedies such as:
 Examining the apps that use the data of Facebook and restricting their usage
according to their applications. The data of developers could be regulated with respect
to access the informations.

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 The update that is choosing profile picture selection to access the account is a possible
step to curb the attackers from recording the login information. Ethical encryption
may be a remedy for this case.
 There are options available for endpoint solutions for the protection of data and
electronic signature software.
The practicability of all the above remedies is possible but in then growing advancements of
the technology there can be serious issues that can break this protection walls.
The advantages of the above solutions are that in case of the first one the company will have
an in-depth knowledge of the apps that are using its data and can take certain steps necessary
to stop the same to mishandle the data (Hand, 2018). In the second case encryption of the
login details and the profile picture login can help to prevent attackers to some extent form
the accessing the user account easily. Endpoint solutions and electronic signature can be an
option to resolve the data breach issue as it is not that easy to forge signature that too in
electronic medium. The drawbacks of the options are that all these options can be broke
through though not that easily but are not full proof plans and in order make them more
secure and strong; the company needs to focus on the security aspects of the applications.
Q8. Which option is best - and why?
The best option from all the above is endpoint solutions for data protection and electronic
signature software. It is difficult to forge signatures and electronic signatures can be a
possible solution to the data breaches (Houser and Voss 2018). The electronic signatures are
not that vulnerable to attacks and these can be the best way to authenticate a user. The
Cambridge Analytica had wanted to collect the data for academic purpose but had misused
the same thus strict regulations must be made to stop such instances and it should be kept on
check that the data collected are not going to the hands of illegal users.

8ICT PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE AND ETHICS
According to the ACS code of ethics, the Professional Code of Conduct has six major
ethical values and these values should be an integral part of any organization. As per the
research done by Thomas, Duessel and Meier (2017), in case of the above case study the
professional code of conduct that should have been given the utmost priority is the interest of
the public, to improve the living standards of those people who are related to the work, to
incorporate honesty in the skills representing the company, services and products,
competence and working with diligence with the stakeholders (Thomas, Duessel and Meier
2017). The ICT professional needed to carry on the roles and responsibility in order to
accomplish the set goals regarding safeguarding the data of the people. The ICT professional
in this case must implement certain steps so that the new methods could be incorporated in
the company’s system (Tuttle 2018). They are as follows:
1. To develop and to design security devices and security software in order to ensure the
privacy of the users.
2. To manage the security measures considering the information technology framework in a
networked system.
3. To operate frequent inspections on the network systems in order to keep regular updates on
the security of the data of the users.
4. To conduct audit at a regular basis for safety and security purposes.
5. To customize access to the informations of the data of the users according to the
requirements and the regulations (Common 2018).
6. To maintain the policies related to the security of the informations of the users that must
adhere to a certain standard.
The ICT professional is responsible to conduct and plan research, give suggestions
and have a role in improvising the systems in the information security systems, the hardware

9ICT PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE AND ETHICS
and software and the concepts associated for developing certain applications, associated
documentation that include the principles and procedures. In the above case the ICT
professional of Facebook is responsible to perform audit in the organization in order to find
out the loopholes in the security and how is it possible that the social networking giant could
not know the intentions behind that of the data collection of the Cambridge Analytica.
Conclusion
From the above case study it can be concluded that data breaches need to managed
and avoided in organizations to retain their name in the market. The company Cambridge
Analytica illegally used the collected data and was able to do so as the social networking
giant did not check on them after giving permission to collect their user’s data. On the basis
of the analysis been made considering the Code of Ethics it can be said that had the company
reviewed its plans and prioritized the tasks, giving the topmost priority to the privacy of the
users and their confidential data. The social networking giant has been popular for its
continued service and thus it should find techniques to keep that position in the market. In
order to do so Facebook should restrict on downloads and define accessibility. In case of
choosing partners those who use its data it should be well aware of the background of the
firm. The social network site has been vulnerable to data breaches in the recent times and
thus it should keep in hand a plan ready to respond to the breaches and regular updates and
policies and regulations must be given to the clients and they should be advised to strictly
abide by the rules set by the company in order to work with them or use their resources. The
solutions to the data breach should be adopted only after its potential is checked and is proven
effective ad relevant for the scenario. The ICT professionals of the company need to guide
the social media giant in order to get out of the data breach scam.

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