Cybersecurity Risks and Software Development

This assignment examines the risks associated with launching software without implementing a crucial security feature: encryption. It delves into the potential consequences for users, highlighting the vulnerability of their data to cyber threats like phishing, viruses, and hacking. The analysis also emphasizes the ethical implications of prioritizing an early launch over user safety and data protection.

Running head: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ETHICAL ISSUES
Information Technology Ethical Issues
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ETHICAL ISSUES
1. What are the ethical problems you identified in your chosen YouTube video?
In the video, a situation has been presented where the Project Director of a software
development company receives a call from the CEO of the company regarding the release of the
Willies software. In the video, the CEO of the concerned company orders the project director to
launch the Willies software a month early. A conversation is presented between the project
director and the project manager. The project manager is approached with the idea of the CEO.
The demand is to launch the Willies software early without the encryption portion. Hearing this
proposal, the project manager states that launching the software on time will be difficult to
manage and let alone the early release. The project manager feels extremely skeptical about the
early launch proposal as he states that encryption is a crucial portion of the software and to
release the software without that feature would prove to be harmful. The project director tries to
convince the project manager that he and his team will be paid bonus handsomely if he agrees
with the proposal and that the encryption part can be added to the software using updates
("Scenario 3: Early Launch", 2017). Therefore, in this video, the ethically questionable situation
or activity is that the project director is pressurized to launch the software early without it being
fully functional.The project manager is forced to agree to the proposal when he knows that the
encryption part is extremely vital.
2. Why are these ethical problems?
The project manager faces an ethical dilemma as he fails to figure out whether he should
turn down the proposal or should command junior developers to agree with the early launch of
the software. This is completely an Information Technology related ethical issue because the
early launch of the software compromises with the security features as it will not contain the

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encryption feature. This can result in security holes in the software making it vulnerable to
hackers. This early launch proposal is already in breach of ethical conducts such as honesty and
public interests (Myers & Venable, 2014). Lacking encryption features will comprise the security
of its users, which is not an ethical decision by a software firm.
3. Who is responsible for these problems?
People who are responsible for raising the ethical problems are the management authority
of the company. The financial state of the company has been compromised and to manage that
situation, the CEO is pressurizing the managers to launch the software early without proper
validated developments. The CEO has convinced the project director to command the early
launch of the software and this raises the ultimate problem.
4. Who is affected by these problems?
The early launch of the software has pressurized the software development team as
developing the software on the planned date has been known to be a difficult task. The
encryption portion has not been developed and the a few other modules of the software are yet to
be integrated and hence, testing process will fall behind the planned date. Therefore, these ethical
issues have blatantly affected the development team and the project manager.
5. What project management strategies could have prevented these problems from arising
in the first place?
The main problem that caused the crisis is the financial problem. The management
authority of the company should have identified the possibility of the financial problem and
should have provided a forecast to manage the financial crisis without taking an unethical step

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INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ETHICAL ISSUES
(Stahl et al., 2014). Review of budget could help in managing operational costs of the company.
If the company is suffering from a sudden financial crisis then the company could have taken
loan to avert the crisis. Prediction of the financial problem is the best way to manage such crisis
as the financial problems do not arise overnight in a company.
6. Which of the three actions in your chosen YouTube video is better? Why?
The third action is better where the project director listens to the project manager.
The action taken by the project manager was an ethical one. The project manager tried to
convince the director that without the encryption feature in the software, it will be vulnerable to
all the available cyber threats. Releasing an update will take a few months and till that specified
timeline, the users will have to use the software which has no security features at all. In this way,
the sensitive information shared by the users will be exposed to the world wide web, which will
in the long run will damage the reputation of the firm. The company is basically trying to handle
its financial problems by taking shortcuts. However, releasing software with no security will
jeopardize the future of the company. The project manager does his best to make the project
director understand the seriousness of the situation and the director heeds his words. The project
director sees his point and agrees to talk to the higher authority.
As the consequence, the project director makes a call to the higher authority stating about
the concern of the project manager. He explains that release of the software a month early will
only compromise the future of the company and the authority agrees to convince the CEO to
launch the software on the previously allocated timeline.

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7. What action, other than the three in your chosen YouTube video, can best resolve the
problems?
The firm is obviously going through some financial crisis and hence, the CEO of the
company has decided to launch the software early to manage the financial problem. Apart from
launching the software early, there can be another way to solve the problem (Burmeister et al.,
2014). Launching in early will jeopardize the reputation and future of the company; however, it
will be better if the company takes a loan to avert the short-term crisis. This will not comprise
the development of the software and no unethical issue will be faced by the company. Upon the
timely release of the software, the company will be able to repay the bank in time.
8. Who should take the best action? Why?
The project director should take the best action because the director has been pressurized
by the CEO for the early release of the software. This in turn will lead to bribe the development
team unprofessionally (Carvalho, Polidoro & Magalhães, 2016). It is the responsibility of the
project director to understand the developmental crisis of the software and what unethical
treatment the team is facing. Therefore, the project director should understand and talk to the top
level management authorities to cancel the early launch of the software.
9. What are the implications of the best action on the project’s time, cost and quality?
The best action which is the project manager cancelling the proposal of early release of
the software. The decision of launching the project in time will provide the appropriate amount
of time required to efficiently complete the development and testing of the software. It will also

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manage the cost as timely release of the software will help in proper development of all the
modules and cost estimation of the overall integrated software will be easy (Miloradova &
Ishkov, 2015).. Launching the software within the predetermined timeline will surely provide
enough time for testing and troubleshooting of the software modules and thus will ultimately
assure quality of the software. Timely release will contain the encryption feature and hence, no
important features will be compromised leaving the quality intact.
10. What are the consequences of the best action on the project stakeholders?
A software has features enabling it to exchange data over the internet. Internet is
vulnerable to various cyber threats such as phishing, worms, viruses, Torjan Horse etc. and
hacking of data is extremely common. Users may utilize data exchange feature to exchange
various forms of data. To facilitate a safe exchange of data, a security mechanism is required.
When a data is sent through the internet medium, every bit of the data needs to be protected and
to protect the bits, a process called Encryption is required. Encryption is a process that can
employ specific algorithms to hide the original data bits produced by the software and a
respective decryption method is required to decrypt the encrypted data (Bannister & Connolly,
2014). This encryption solely serves the security purpose of the users. However, in the video, it
has been presented that the software will be released early without the development of the
encryption feature. This will jeopardize the bulk of information shared using the software and
this will endanger the biggest stakeholders of the project which are the users. (Vidlička,Lang &
Maršavelski, 2016). Therefore, through the best action, the user data will not be compromised
and all the sensitive information exchange will be safe.

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References:
Bannister, F., & Connolly, R. (2014). ICT, public values and transformative government: A
framework and programme for research. Government Information Quarterly, 31(1), 119-
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Burmeister, O., Al-Saggaf, Y., Schwartz, M., & Johnson, L. (2014). Internet resources to help
Australian ICT professionals identify and solve ethical challenges. ACIS.
Carvalho, V. S., Polidoro, M. J., &Magalhães, J. P. (2016, April). OwlSight: Platform for Real-
Time Detection and Visualization of Cyber Threats. In Big Data Security on Cloud
(BigDataSecurity), IEEE International Conference on High Performance and Smart
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Miloradova, N., &Ishkov, A. (2015). Environmental ethics as a social, professional and personal
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Scenario 3: Early Launch. (2017). YouTube. Retrieved 30 November 2017, from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5M7ohdZ6qA
Stahl, B. C., Eden, G., Jirotka, M., &Coeckelbergh, M. (2014). From computer ethics to
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