Analysis of ACS Code of Ethics Breach: Case Study of Mr. Inside Hack

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CSC8507 Assignment 1

Contents
Question 1 With regard to the ACS Professional Code of ethics (See Assignment 1 resources),
discuss the respective consequences and the actions of Mr. Inside Hack, the Fake Bank and the
Police...............................................................................................................................................3
References........................................................................................................................................5

Question 1 With regard to the ACS Professional Code of ethics (See Assignment 1
resources), discuss the respective consequences and the actions of Mr. Inside Hack, the
Fake Bank and the Police.
The incident that took place in the FakeBank and the way Mr. Inside Hack acted was totally in
oppose with the ACS professional code of ethics. According to the ACS code of ethics, a
professional should have considered the social values, ethics and dignity of being a professional
(Acsorgau 2019). These values should be considered above everything while working as a
professional. The incident of inside hacking which took place because Mr. Inside Hack got to
know that the midnight transactions are having a glitch and he took a step to know the reason
behind it and he didn't inform anyone about it. The actions taken by him violate every social
value that is defined by the ACS code of ethics.
Being a professional, one should always place the interests of public over his personal or
business interests. Therefore Mr. Inside Hack should have reported the glitch immediately before
taking actions on his own and giving priority to what he wanted to do to solve that issue. Being a
professional his first duty is to serve his organization. He should have tried to report it to the
senior authorities so that immediate actions could be taken to solve the issue thereby resolving
the issues faced by the users of FakeBank. The most important value in ACS code of ethics is to
stay honest regarding your knowledge, work and skills. Even when Mr. Inside Hack thought that
this issue won't be taken care of even if i report it, it was his responsibility to stay honest towards
his work and may have told and asked for the permission to look upon the matter. As he didn't
follow any of the values and rules of ethics, he had to face severe consequences. As a result he
got jailed and had to pay penalty for inside hacking. Also it led to decrease his professionalism
towards the work. A professional should always work together with its staff to enhance the
professionalism but this whole incident affected the reputation of FakeBank and also its workers.
After this incident, reputation and respect of all the workers and FakeBank as a whole, decreased
down due to a single act of hacking that took place because of its own employee (Leicester,
2016). It also affected the professional development of whole staff and the bank may now even
stop believing its employees. Actions taken by FakeBank dropping the charges against Mr.
Inside Hack was not appropriate although it saved time and resources of bank but this act can be

proved to be very dangerous for future because it will set a wrong example for all the employees
who are honest towards their work and the organization. The actions taken by the police however
was appropriate because the police have been true to their duties and honesty, as the actions of
Mr. Inside hack was not appropriate (Utexasedu 2019). ACS code of ethics states that a
professional should always be true and honest towards his/her work and always work to serve the
organization.

References
Acsorgau 2019, Acsorgau, Viewed 20 April 2019, <https://www.acs.org.au/content/dam/acs/acs-
documents/Code-of-Ethics.pdf>
Leicester, N 2016, ‘Ethics in the IT Profession: Does a Code of Ethics have an Effect on
Professional Behaviour?’
Utexasedu 2019, Utexasedu, Viewed 20 April 2019, < Available from:
http://users.ece.utexas.edu/~perry/education/SE-Intro/ACS-COE.pdf>