Information System: Ethical Dilemmas of Hiring Hackers in Business

This essay presents an argument against hiring hackers in businesses, assessing the strengths and weaknesses of both sides. It acknowledges the opponent's point about organizational vulnerabilities and the increasing need for cybersecurity. However, it argues that the employee background and potential hacking addiction of reformed hackers pose significant risks. The essay emphasizes the difficulty in determining a hacker's trustworthiness and the potential for malicious actions, such as leaking private customer data. While acknowledging the human element in cybersecurity and the possibility of mistakes, the essay concludes that the arguments against hiring hackers are more compelling due to the inherent risks involved. Desklib provides access to this and other student-contributed assignments.

Running head: INFORMATION SYSTEM PROFESSIONAL
INFORMATION SYSTEM PROFESSIONAL
Name of the university
Name of the student
Author Note

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Introduction
In the following report, an argument against the hiring of hackers in businesses have
been mentioned. The strengths and weaknesses have been assessed as well.
Opponent strength
The only strength of the opponents are lack of vulnerability reporting and
organisational problems. Businesses which suffer from organisational problems are more
prone to cyber-attacks than business which do not. Moreover, the lack of proper cyber
security tools and detection system elevates this issue and is a good argument for availing
expert hackers. The number of cyber security attacks have increased over the recent years.
The Y2K issue and the WannaCry ransomware has shown that organisations need to
constantly upgrade their cybersecurity infrastructures to stay ahead of the hackers (Coleman
2013). The argument of the opponent stays strong as hackers are capable of defeating another
hacker and businesses need them for their long term sustenance.
Argument 1 Employee background
The employee background of the hacker that the prospective company is hiring needs
to be evaluated and checked. A reformed hacker is someone who has conducted hacking for
illicit purposes in the past but has now turned his or her intentions towards organisational
betterment. The argument against hiring hackers for the businesses is that there are no
possible way to determine whether or not the reformed hacker will go back to his old ways.
Providing him or her with the entire security measure of the institution s risky and can have
serious consequences if it is not well monitored (Hatch 2014). Moreover, there are a number
of experienced hackers whose backgrounds are not trustful. The argument against the hiring
process stands valid as there are no rules to determine if the hacker is going to abide by the

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organisational regulations The employee background of the hacker needs to be analysed
whether
Argument 2 Hacking addiction
The second argument on the proposed topic is related to hacking addiction. Hacking
can be conducted due to several intents such as criminal, personal or political. Research has
shown that the hacking intent has increased with the younger people and people with no
criminal academic background. These hackers perform these activities as they it as exciting
and risky. Despite of the colour, race or background of the individual, they remain hackers at
the basic level. There are several examples where a white hacker had turned into a malicious
hacker due to some temptations. Marcus Hutchins is an example of this. He was the
accidental hero in stopping WannaCry ransomware (Taylor, Fritsch and Liederbach 2014).
But upon investigation by the FBI, they found that he was previously involved in dark chats
with other malicious hackers and designed a malware known as Kronos (which had the
capability to extract private credentials of online banking).
Weakness of opponents
The weaknesses of the opponents’ arguments is that they forgot to take into context
that cyber-attacks are conducted by humans. Humans can make mistakes and there is no
paradigm that can determine when a person will stay ethical towards his profession and when
he would not. The hackers that the opponents are wanting in an organisation will have full
access to the organisational security and can extract critical information from the system if
they want (Regalado et al. 2015). They can potentially leak private customer data of the
company if they want which can hurt the reputation of the company.
Conclusion

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To conclude, it can be stated that the arguments against the topic are conclusive and
up to the point. The argument stays relevant against the argument of the opponent in this
scenario.

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References
Coleman, E.G., 2013. Coding freedom: The ethics and aesthetics of hacking. Princeton
University Press.
Hatch, M., 2014. The maker movement manifesto: rules for innovation in the new world of
crafters, hackers, and tinkerers. New York: McGraw-Hill Education.
Regalado, D., Harris, S., Harper, A., Eagle, C., Ness, J., Spasojevic, B., Linn, R. and Sims,
S., 2015. Gray Hat Hacking The Ethical Hacker's Handbook. McGraw-Hill Education Group.
Taylor, R.W., Fritsch, E.J. and Liederbach, J., 2014. Digital crime and digital terrorism.
Prentice Hall Press.