IBM-GSA had been issued a tender in December 1999 that comprised of the violation of data and information integrity. The minister facilitating the process rejected the Office of Asset Sales and Information Technology Outsourcing (OASITO) call to halt the process.
IBM-GSA received the last minute information regarding the tender amounts of the rivals and modified its own tender to be accepted by the decision makers.
It is a case of data integrity as the tender pricing was revealed to IBM-GSA well in advance and the process was not cancelled by the minister even after the information regarding the occurrence.
The rival tender parties along with the Departments of Health, Aged Care and the Health Insurance Commission (the Health Group), along with CSC and EDS have been affected.
There is a clear ethical violation as the integrity of the information has been avoided and there are negative virtues associated with the case. The ethical correctness is not justified as per ethical theory of Virtue Ethics, Theory of Deontology and Consequentialism (Annas, 2014).
The process of tender allotment should have been aborted and carried out with fresh tenders.
There shall be information protection rules that shall be applied along with ethical trainings to be imparted to all the parties involved.
Use of encrypted information will be best in the tender process as the information will not be revealed till the very end (Birkholm, 2016).
Jean is a statistical database programmer and is unable to finish up the programming with due date approaching close. She copies the code from other program developed by a co-worker for another client and does not include it in the documentation.
Jean was asked by her manager to finish up the programming before the deadline. She found that the required code was developed by a co-worker for other company and uses it in her own program.
Q3. What are the issues?
The case is a violation of professional code of conduct and ethical conduct.
Jean, her manager, the co-worker and the organization as a whole as plagiarism charged may be levied and the reputation may get affected (Ehrbar, 2015).
There will be negative consequences that will emerge for organization and Jean and her team. Also, the rules of sticking to professional code of conduct have been violated. There is a clear ethical violation that is involved.
Jean should have taken help from her co-worker by informing them about the similarity and applicability of the codes and shall have developed fresh code (Glover, 2009).
Fresh code should have been developed by seeking help from co-workers.
Use of professional and ethical practices would have been best and the fresh code should have been developed.
Andrew started working on a government health project that was under development since 9 months and found out that the development technique was incorrect which will lead to a complete data loss in future.
The development approach used in software is sure to lead to data loss and therefore deadline will be required to be extended so that fresh code may be developed (Heeney, 2016).
In case of extended the deadline, the reputation of the company will be negatively impacted.
Andrew and his team, the organization and the project client will be affected.
There is knowledge about the damages that the project may cause and in spite of the negative consequences, the manager wants to go ahead with it. There is violation of corporate ethics involved (Mandal, Ponnambath, & Parija, 2016)..
There shall be patches and modifications done in the timeframe available and extra workforce shall be used for completion of project.
There shall be use of fresh development methodology and code applied in the project.
Use of agile practices will be best as it will leave scope for incorporation of changes (Hoeyer, 2012).
Whistle blowing is an activity in which an employee that is associated with a particular organization attempts to inform the other employees or management regarding an illegal or unethical activity taking place. It is done with a hope to put a check on such practices. However, it is also done externally by involving third parties and government agencies in the process.
It is often argues that whistle blowing is an unethical practice as the information related with a particular activity is provided by an employee to a party that may or may not be concerned with it. However, it is also necessary to put a check on the incorrect practices that are going on. It shall therefore be assured that the employees have a proper reporting structure available in the organizations so that the information is handed over only to the concerned people. Also, there shall be ethical trainings that shall be given so that there is no need for the whistle blowers to come to action. There are scenarios wherein the employees are purposely asked to observe and report the incidents to other parties so as to cause damage which is unethical in nature (Mesmer-Magnus, 2015).
As per the ethical theory of Utilitarianism, an act can be termed as ethically correct if it causes benefits to larger people. The impact or the results should therefore cause great benefits to the parties involved. In this case, the organizations benefit from the whistle blowing activities as the risks that may occur are prevented and controlled. However, there are cases in which the information gets exposed to a number of unauthorized entities. The act that has been stated in the case study did not cause benefits to the majority of sections and therefore is termed as ethically incorrect act.
As per the ethical theory of Deontology, it is necessary for the processes to stick to the rules and standards that are associated with it so that the ethical correctness can be achieved. It is the duty of the resources to report the wrongdoings to the senior management and to abide by the ethical rules. The analysis that is carried out on the case study as per the theory of Deontology infers that the whistle blowing act is ethically correct.
Every human being considers happiness as a prime virtue and goal in life. Virtue Ethics states that if an act causes happiness to self then the act is correct on the basis of ethics. There are usually cases in which the employees carry out whistle blowing for their own benefits and selfish interests rather than the goodwill of the organization. Since, the virtues that were involved in this case are not correct on the ethical grounds; the activity is termed as ethically incorrect.
Social guidelines are required to be followed as per the rules and guidelines that are defined in a particular community or a society. There are various companies that come under and carry out operations in the field of ICT. The primary goal for all of these companies is to provide high-quality services to the clients and the customers without causing any sort of damage to any entity. If all the companies that work in similar areas and domains start copying the features and functionalities of each other then there will be a lot of mess created. Whistle blowers put a check on such activities. As per the theory of social contract, the act is ethically correct.
Conclusion
Two out of four theories have evaluated the act as ethically correct and two have termed it the opposite. Organizations shall therefore carry out the steps through which ethical practices are known to every employee and any violation associated with it may be avoided. Also, a transparency between the employees and the management shall also be ensured.
Penetration testing is an activity that is carried out by the individuals to find out the vulnerabilities that may be present in a particular computer system. The people and resources that carry out this testing activity are termed as white hat hackers. There is often a close comparison that is made between penetration testing and ethical hacking.
The two terms and practices as penetration testing and ethical hacking are often inter-changes and are believed to have the same meaning. However, these are two different practices as penetration testing is one of the features and components of ethical hacking. It is necessary for ethical hackers to be certified and qualified for performing ethical hacking whereas white hat hackers can be the testing associates and analysts without any specialization. Also, the time required to perform ethical hacking is more than the penetration testing. In case of ethical hacking, not only the vulnerabilities are identified, but the entire security infrastructure is investigated and hacked with adequate permissions to do so (Caldwell, 2011).
According to this theory, an act can be termed as ethically correct if it causes benefits to larger people. The impact or the results should therefore cause great benefits to the parties involved. In this case, penetration testing causes avoidance of the defects and bugs that may be present in the systems and processes and there is a permission that is granted for the same. There are no violations caused in terms of ethical practices and therefore the activity is ethically correct.
As per the ethical theory of Deontology, it is necessary for the processes to stick to the rules and standards that are associated with it so that the ethical correctness can be achieved. It is the duty of the resources to carry out the testing processes included in penetration testing so that the deviations can be reported in a timely manner. The analysis that is carried out on the case study as per the theory of Deontology infers that the penetration testing and activities around it are ethically correct.
Every human being considers happiness as a prime virtue and goal in life. Virtue Ethics states that if an act causes happiness to self then the act is correct on the basis of ethics. In case of penetration testing, virtues such as happiness of the clients and customers along with the goodwill of the organization are given top priority. Since, the virtues that were involved in this case are correct on the ethical grounds; the activity is termed as ethically correct.
Social guidelines are required to be followed as per the rules and guidelines that are defined in a particular community or a society. There are various companies that come under and carry out operations in the field of ICT. The primary goal for all of these companies is to provide high-quality services to the clients and the customers without causing any sort of damage to any entity. It is required that there is ethical adherence maintained and ethics are followed in all activities. As per the theory of social contract, the act is ethically correct.
Conclusion
The two terms as ethical hacking and penetration testing are different from each other and also the role of ethical hackers and white hat hackers varies from each other. It is required to estimate and analyze the requirements of particular testing process to be applied out of the two. As per the ethical theories, the act of penetration testing is ethically correct.
Information is a key asset for the organizations and it is necessary to make sure that the privacy of the information is safeguarded at all times. However, there are many cases that take place in which the privacy is violated and many such cases have been reported in the past. Privacy is necessary to be maintained irrespective of the information type and category.
There are several threats that are associated with the privacy of information such as the ones related with the breaching and loss of information. In such cases, the information is passed on to the entities that are not authorized to access it and there is violation of privacy that is observed. Also, there are cases that are seen in which network agents are used so that the information traveling and being exchanged on the networks may be acquired and again the unauthorized access violates the privacy of the information. There shall be measures taken to make sure that such cases do not occur and the privacy of the information shall be safeguarded by enhancing the basic security and advanced security along with the network security (Ziegeldorf, 2013).
As per the ethical theory of Utilitarianism, an act can be termed as ethically correct if it causes benefits to larger people. The impact or the results should therefore cause great benefits to the parties involved. Violation of information privacy is caused by execution of several risks and attacks. It leads to the violation and harms to the information owners and does not cause any benefits. The act is therefore ethically incorrect.
As per the ethical theory of Deontology, it is necessary for the processes to stick to the rules and standards that are associated with it so that the ethical correctness can be achieved. It is required to maintain the privacy of information as per the rules under Intellectual Property. Violation of the same is unethical as per this ethical theory.
Every human being considers happiness as a prime virtue and goal in life. Virtue Ethics states that if an act causes happiness to self then the act is correct on the basis of ethics. There are cases in which privacy is compromised to cause personal benefits and these reasons comprise of negative virtues. Therefore, violation of information privacy is ethically incorrect.
Social guidelines are required to be followed as per the rules and guidelines that are defined in a particular community or a society. There are various companies that come under and carry out operations in the field of ICT. The primary goal for all of these companies is to provide high-quality services to the clients and the customers without causing any sort of damage to any entity. Information privacy leads to the violation of the information properties and is ethically incorrect as per this theory.
Conclusion
Violation of privacy is an unethical activity as stated under each of the ethical theories. Information related with any user or an organization is critical in nature and information privacy is one of the essential properties of the information that must be protected. It has been observed that protection of privacy is not always achieved and there are threats executed by the attackers in which the privacy is violated. These cases shall be avoided by use of mechanisms and measures to prevent such occurrences.
References
Annas, J. (2014). Applying Virtue to Ethics. Retrieved 23 March 2017, from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/japp.12103/abstract
Birkholm, K. (2016). HYLE 22-1 (2016): The Ethical Judgment: Chemical Psychotropics. Hyle.org. Retrieved 23 March 2017, from https://www.hyle.org/journal/issues/22-1/birkholm.htm
Caldwell, T. (2011). Ethical hackers: putting on the white hat. Retrieved 2 June 2017, from https://jeffh.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/93696356/Ethical%20Hackers-%20Putting%20on%20the%20white%20hate.pdf
Ehrbar, J. (2015). Ethical Considerations of Genetic Manipulation in Sport. The Sport Journal. Retrieved 23 March 2017, from https://thesportjournal.org/article/ethical-considerations-of-genetic-manipulation-in-sport/
Glover, J. (2009). “Doingâ€Â Ethics in Rural Health Care Institutions. Retrieved from https://geiselmed.dartmouth.edu/cfm/resources/ethics/chapter-04.pdf
Heeney, C. (2016). An “Ethical Momentâ€Â in Data Sharing – May 13, 2016. Journals.sagepub.com. Retrieved 23 March 2017, from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0162243916648220
Hoeyer, K. (2012). Transgressive ethics: Professional work ethics as a perspective on ‘aggressive organ harvesting’ – Oct 26, 2012. Journals.sagepub.com. Retrieved 23 March 2017, from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0306312712460341
Mandal, J., Ponnambath, D., & Parija, S. (2016). Utilitarian and deontological ethics in medicine. Retrieved 23 March 2017, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4778182/
Mesmer-Magnus, J. (2015). Whistleblowing in Organizations: An Examination of Correlates of Whistleblowing Intentions, Actions, and Retaliation. Retrieved 2 June 2017, from https://ecampus.nmit.ac.nz/moodle/file.php/4599/Whistleblowing/Mesmer-Magnus_Viswesvaran_-_Whistle-blowing_in_Organizations_2005.pdf
Ziegeldorf, J. (2013). Privacy in the Internet of Things: Threats and Challenges. Retrieved 2 June 2017, from https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2822904/Ziegeldorf-Jan-Henrik-Privacy-in-the-Internet-of.pdf
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