PageUp Data Breach: Analyzing Ethical Perspectives

PageUp Data Breach
Assignment1: Three Distinctive Perspectives of Applied Ethics
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Word Count: 1430
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1. Introduction
Applied ethics is the branch of ethics that deal with the treatment of ethical issues, practices
and plans in professional as well as personal life and also with the technology. It is categorized
into a different arena and each arena has unique issues. But mainly there are three distinctive
perspectives of applied ethics which are professional ethics, professional ethics, and
sociological ethics. In this report, all three perspectives are explained that how these ethics has
helped to analyze and solved the issue of cyber ethic elaborate in the media article “PageUp
Data Breach”. Cyberethics, also called computer ethics means the issues related to the ICT
(Information and Communication Technology). This essay explains the cyber ethical dilemma
arose in the PageUp software of Australia and how these perspectives have been implemented
to identify this problem.
Media Article: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-06/australian-data-may-be-
compromised-in-pageup-security-breach/9840048
2. Perspective 1: Professional Ethics
Professional ethics is one of the perspectives of applied ethics and is widely used in ICT
(Information and Communication Technology) as most of the cyber ethical dilemma arises in
the professional area of the business, organizations, companies, and in websites. Floridi,
Sanders (2010, P.7) states that there is not much difference between the cyber ethics and other
professional ethics like engineering ethics, business ethics, and medical ethics. The objectives of
cyber ethics are to create the ethically-minded professional and not an ethicist. The cyber
issues arise mainly due to the ignorance of IT professionals in the designing and controlling of
software and hardware computer system.
From the media article “PageUp Data Breach”, the data breach occurred in the several
companies that come under the website PageUp and thousands of Australian people have
compromised with their personal information. PageUp is a company that provides HR software
provision to the biggest companies of Australia in the banking and retail sector and has more
than two million active workers in the 190 countries. The major companies that are associated
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with PageUp are Reserve Bank of Australia, NAB, Lindt, Telstra, Kmart, Jetstar, Medibank,
Linfox, Australia Post, Officeworks, and Coles. Among these companies, some have used the
software of PageUp to provide recruitment while some used for HR information such as bank
details, salary information, and other personal information. So those companies who provide
the only job does not suffer much from this data breach but other suffers great loss. This data
breach happened in the month of May 2018 and first noticed the unusual activity on 23 rd May
in the IT department of PageUp company. A malicious code has been injected into the system
of PageUp software and criminals gets access to breach the personal and professional
information of the clients associated with the company. The Department of Attorney-General
said that some departments of the Australian Government also tangled in this data breach. The
professional life of the clients has been affected by the data breach in the software of PageUp
company. Collste (2012) says that the “professional ethics is the ethics of one’s professional life
or ethics of work and it can be defined as the actions affected by the ethical dilemmas”. In the
case of ICT (Information and Communication Technology), cyber issues have affected the
professional life and result in the services performed. ACSC (Australian Cyber Security Centre)
and the computer emergency retort team of Australia was working on with the company
PageUp by taking help from the professional approach of the perspective of professional ethics
to investigate the security breach.
Different ethical norms are generated from the different parts of the specialized relations and
produce the general ethical summary of the profession. Professional ethics has many benefits,
that’s why it is used in identifying and analyzing the data breach occur in the PageUp company
which is identified from the media article. It seriously takes the cyber issues and finds the
solution to stops such dilemmas and avoid these kinds of risks. The primary result of the
professional ethics is to elaborate and adopt the codes and regulations of ICT, Florida, Sanders
(2010).
3. Perspective 2: Philosophical Ethics
Philosophical ethics has a different perspective from the professional ethics, although both are
used in identifying and analyzing the ethical dilemma. According to Darwall, philosophical ethics
is standardly separated into two parts, one is normative ethics and other is meta-ethics. Does
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