Cyber Security Essay: Balancing Security and Privacy Concerns

This essay explores the crucial balance between cyber security and privacy in the digital age. It begins by defining cyber security and highlighting the increasing instances of privacy violations and security compromises, emphasizing the challenges posed by the expansion of the internet and technology. The essay discusses the ethical, social, political, legal, and technological dimensions of cyber security, examining the impact on various stakeholders, including individuals, organizations, governments, and society at large. It delves into ethical issues such as organizations' decisions regarding employee privacy and security measures. The essay analyzes cyber security through ethical theories like utilitarianism, deontology, virtue, and contract, suggesting that a deontological approach, with established standards and procedures, is the most effective course of action. It concludes by emphasizing the need for collaboration among stakeholders, the importance of external consultants, and the continuous evolution of cyber security strategies to address ethical concerns and ensure a secure digital environment.

Running Head: CYBER SECURITY
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STUDENT NAME
NAME OF THE INSTITUTE

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Cyber Security: The Balance Between Security And Privacy
The balance between security and privacy is important to realize. With the expansion of
Internet and Technology, organizations and individuals have found it difficult to obtain the
balance between security and privacy. It is often believed that additional security comes at the
price of compromised privacy and vice-versa. Therefore, it is important that organizations and
individuals should realize the importance of obtaining the balance between security and privacy.
Simply defined, cyber security means the protection of digital information against external
threats and attacks. In terms of what going on it can be said that there are increased cases of
privacy violation and security compromises in this world (Scott & Wynne, 2016). The incidences
like Wiki-Leaks bring forward the issue of privacy. With the increase use of Internet and
Technology there has been some new risks in the area of cyber security. For example, a survey
suggested that close to 40% of the companies in the world have witnessed a data theft. One
another interesting fact is that the investors want to invest in the companies that have strong
policies towards data security. A survey suggested that close to 80% of the investors does not
want to invest in the companies where there are chances of data breach. It can be said that cyber
security touches various aspects of human life. The cyber security is a concern not only for
organizations and individuals but also for political parties as cyber security is also linked with
terrorism.
The holistic issue of cyber security can be analyzed or broken down into number of
issues. It can be said that the elements of ethical and social issues are evident prominently in
cyber security. Apart from the ethical and social issues, there are issues associated with political,
legal and technological dimension. The issue of cyber security is a social issue as this issue
directly links to the society (Manshaei & Zhu, 2013). The people in the society are apprehensive
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of cyber security and this issue affects society at large. It is also a political issue as in in the wake
of devastating terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels, security experts are increasingly discussing
whether governments should have exceptional access to digital information and data in order to
disrupt and intercept terrorists’ use of online communication to recruit members, raise funds and
plan attacks. In the end, it is a serious ethical issue, as organizations have to decide the cost of
privacy or freedom provided to employees. Someone has to draw a line somewhere and it
constitutes the ethical issue (Ohana & Dunkelman, 2016).
There are various stakeholders involved in the case of cyber security that are affected.
The individuals or the employees of the organizations are impacted a lot. The leaders and the
organizations are other stakeholders that are affected. In addition to these two stakeholders, the
other two key stakeholders are government and society at large. One of the key ethical issues is
that the organizations have to decide the cost of privacy or freedom provided to employees.
Organizations have to decide freedom of privacy that should be given to employees. It is an
important ethical issue as organizations have all personal information of employees and they
must decide the additional layer of security that they should put around it (Wang & Lu, 2013).
It can be said that there is no easy solution to this. However, there are certain things that
can be done about this. For instances, different organizations should collaborate together to form
the set of common standards that should be applied as guidelines for cyber security. The cyber
security issue can be analyzed from the four ethical theories of utilitarianism, deontology, virtue
and contract (Goel, 2015). The utilitarianism theory suggests that we should do the things that
give us maximum happiness or utility. In this case, it means that organizations should establish
the privacy policy as they wish to manage cyber security. The utilitarianism theory suggests that
different organizations can have different policies of cyber security. The deontology theory of
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ethics is a normative ethical position that judges the morality of an action based on rules. In this
case, organizations can actually collaborate to develop common set of rules and standards around
cyber security. The virtue ethics theory prioritizes the individual character as the key element of
thinking and the contract theory if ethics suggests that person’s ethical action is dependent on his
or her contract. Based on the above theories the available options for organizations would be to
establish common standards for cyber security or to have individual and stand alone rules for
cyber security (Roman & Zhou, 2013).
Among all the theories and actions the theory of deontology ethics is the best possible
course of action. This is the best course of action as this theory is based on the defined rules.
With this theory, the specific action item for organizations would be to establish a set of standard
and procedures that could be used by different organizations to set common guidelines around
cyber security. The presence of common standards would also ensure that organizations are not
confused when they have to deal with the issue of cyber security. It is important to mention that
the issue of cyber security is an important issue that can stick to people any time (Baskerville &
Spagnoletti, 2014).
To conclude the essay, it can be said that the issue of cyber security is a critical issue. The
true solution of this issue can be achieved when different stakeholders join hands. For example,
government across the world should join hands to develop common set of standards for cyber
security. It is also important that organizations and governments should take the services of
external consultants to develop the strategies and policies for cyber security. Initially, it may be
challenging to develop the policies. However, it is expected that the standards would be helpful
in long term. There would always be ethical issues associated with cyber security. It is also
correct that it may not always be possible to solve the ethical issues. The important thing is that
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the decision maker should analyze various internal and external factors before making any
decision towards cyber security. It is expected that the issue of cyber security would continue to
be a major issue for different stakeholders. From the organization perspective it is important that
they must be open and willing to learn about cyber security and implications of cyber security.
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References
Baskerville, R., Spagnoletti, P., & Kim, J. (2014). Incident-centered information security:
Managing a strategic balance between prevention and response. Information &
Management, 51(1), 138-151.
Goel, S. (2015). Anonymity vs. security: The right balance for the smart grid. CAIS, 36, 2.
Liew, J. (2016). Cyber Security: The Balance Between Security And Privacy. Retrieved from:
http://www.conventuslaw.com/report/cyber-security-the-balance-between-security-and/
Manshaei, M. H., Zhu, Q., Alpcan, T., Bacşar, T., & Hubaux, J. P. (2013). Game theory meets
network security and privacy. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR), 45(3), 25.
Ohana, M., Dunkelman, O., Gibson, S., & Osadchy, M. (2016). HoneyFaces: Increasing the
Security and Privacy of Authentication Using Synthetic Facial Images. arXiv preprint
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Roman, R., Zhou, J., & Lopez, J. (2013). On the features and challenges of security and privacy
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Scott, C., Wynne, D., & Boonthum-Denecke, C. (2016, April). Examining the Privacy of Login
Credentials Using Web-Based Single Sign-on-Are We Giving Up Security and Privacy for
Convenience?. In Cybersecurity Symposium (CYBERSEC), 2016 (pp. 74-79). IEEE.
Wang, W., & Lu, Z. (2013). Cyber security in the Smart Grid: Survey and challenges. Computer
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