Analyzing Ethical Dilemma Of Early Launch Of Software: Doing Ethics Technique (DET)

Background

1. What’s going on?

The problem that is described in this scenario is about the early launch of software of a company. The Project Director got an instruction from the CEO of the company to submit the ongoing project before its deadline so that the client gets happy and this would help them to get more projects from the same client and helps in flourishing the company. The Project Director consults with the Project Manager about the issue (“Scenario 3: Early Launch”, 2017). He suggests submitting the software beforehand without conducting the encryption process of the software. The Project Manager explains the consequences about not doing the encryption and submitting the software to the client. Program Director has also nothing to do as because he is also instructed by his senior to do the work. The situation arrives where the Program Director and as well as Project Manager does not know what to do.

2. What are the facts?

The facts that are involves in this scenario is about delivering the product before the date that was scheduled and that too without doing the encryption process. The early date that is schedule by the CEO in the provided scenario is too early and is impossible to complete the encryption process within that time period. The encryption process is an important part of any software testing before delivering a process (Daemen & Rijmen, 2013). Converting the electronic data into a form of cipher text that is not understandable by third parties except the sender or the receiver is known as encryption. Primarily the purpose of encryption is to give a security to the digital data that are stored in the system or secure the transmission of data through Internet or any other networks. There are many elements of security. Authentication of the original message is one of the main aspects of security. Maintaining the integrity of the message is the second aspect. The contents of the message should not change while sending. The last element is the non repudiation of the message.

3. What are the issues?

More than one issue arises if the software is submitted without being encrypted. Doing the encryption process makes the software more reliable and stable. An unstable project may hamper the reputation of the company (Tasch et al., 2014). The mainly issue that arises is regarding the data security and privacy of the data. The software may face data insecurity if the encryption is not done. The main motive of encryption is to provide proper authentication, maintain integrity of the data and also look after the non-repudiation of the software. The chances of getting hacked increases if the software is not encrypted (Brech et al., 2017). The software becomes unstable which may lead to future risk of the client.

Identification of Ethical Dilemma

4. Who is affected?

The person who directly gets affected by this issue is the client whose project is undergoing and the company who is undertaking the project. The client gives the tender to the company of doing the software within a fixed time period. If the company does not looks after the security of the software they are delivering to the client, then the client faces the problem in future. The data integrity of the client gets lost if there is no security of the software (Dotcenko, Vladyko & Letenko, 2014). Consequently if the customer gets affected, the company also gets affected. The reputation of the company gets lost. The particular customer will not provide any other projects to that company and they may not get any similar kinds of software in future. The company loses the trust of the client. The company gets ruined by getting a legal notice from the court regarding the fraud issue.

The persons who are indirectly affected are the employees of the company and all the users who use the software.

5. What are the ethical issues and their implications?

The ethical issues that can arrive if the encryption is not done are some functions of the system may not work properly creating a problem among the users about authenticating the software. The main ethical issue of the data encryption is to protect the data in terms of availability, integrity and confidentiality. The data breach of information may lead to great extend of economic cost (Shin et al., 2013). The data that gets breached are much more valuable than other hardware of a system or software. The loss of data security leads to emotional harm. Breaches of software or system may even lead to death or injury which occurs in safety critical systems (Daniel et al., 2014). To protect the data in terms of availability, integrity and confidentiality is also involved in the issues if the system is not tested. The data breach of information may lead to great extend of economic cost (Shmueli et al., 2014). The data that gets breached are much more valuable than other hardware of a system or software. The loss of data security leads to emotional harm. Breaches of software or system may even lead to death or injury which occurs in safety critical systems (Brakerski & Vaikuntanathan, 2014). The implication that mainly comes from the fact is that each and every function of the system should be checked separately to avoid the implications.

Facts Related to the Ethical Dilemma

6. What could have been done about it?

More than one way of solutions are available that can be done. As security of the customer is the main issue related with the software, so that should be kept in mind. The software should be kept stable and secure. The client should be satisfied and should be given assurance about the security of the software they are delivering. Without securing the software, delivering the project before its scheduled date is not at a work of pride. If the software is good enough and stable, more such assignments would come to the company. For that no need to deliver the project before the scheduled date without securing the process.

7. What are the options?

The options that are highlighted in the scenario are as follows.

1. The Project Manager suggests the Program Director to convince the CEO of the company to ask for one month extension of the project and deliver the project with a stable condition.
2. When the Project Manager gives the suggestion to the Program Director to have a talk with the CEO of the company to extend the deadline, the Program Director refuses to do so and orders the Manager to do the way as suggested by the seniors.
3. Lastly, the Program Manager succeeds in convincing the Project Manager to submit the project as stated by the CEO beforehand. He pressurize the Manager so that he gets all the remaining work done by the his team members and deliver the software without the encryption process done. He suggests that the Manager may work with the encryption process after the delivery and can attach the files afterwards.

8. Which option is the best and why?

The best of all the option is the option where the Program Manager suggests getting an extension of one month and submitting the software without any drawback. Security of the client should the main aspect of the company and it is the best thing to do.

References

Brakerski, Z., & Vaikuntanathan, V. (2014). Efficient fully homomorphic encryption from (standard) LWE. SIAM Journal on Computing, 43(2), 831-871.

Brech, B. L., Crowder, S. W., Franke, H., Halim, N., Hogstrom, M. R., Li, C. S., … & Williams, M. D. (2017). U.S. Patent Application No. 15/474,207.

Daemen, J., & Rijmen, V. (2013). The design of Rijndael: AES-the advanced encryptionstandard. Springer Science & Business Media.

Daniel, W. K., Chen, D., Liu, Q., Wang, F., & Wei, Z. (2014, September). Emerging issues in cloud storage security: Encryption, key management, data redundancy, trust mechanism. In International Conference, MISNC (pp. 297-310). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

Dotcenko, S., Vladyko, A., & Letenko, I. (2014, February). A fuzzy logic-based information security management for software-defined networks. In Advanced Communication Technology (ICACT), 2014 16th International Conference on (pp. 167-171). IEEE.

Scenario 3: Early Launch. (2017). YouTube. Retrieved 6 August 2017, from

Shin, S., Porras, P. A., Yegneswaran, V., Fong, M. W., Gu, G., & Tyson, M. (2013, February). FRESCO: Modular Composable Security Services for Software-Defined Networks. In NDSS.

Shmueli, E., Vaisenberg, R., Gudes, E., & Elovici, Y. (2014). Implementing a database encryption solution, design and implementation issues. Computers & security, 44, 33-50.

Tasch, M., Khondoker, R., Marx, R., & Bayarou, K. (2014, November). Security analysis of security applications for software defined networks. In Proceedings of the AINTEC 2014 on Asian Internet Engineering Conference(p. 23). ACM.