Ethical philosophy as a whole implies a search for definitions and mechanisms for the systematic distinction between right and wrong. Applied in the field of cyberspace, the ethical principle demonstrates itself as necessary to protect users from unwanted invasions of privacy. It is required to consider and analyze two examples that show the similarities between the ethics of cybersecurity and similar aspirations in the software development environment.
Over the past few years, the issue of ethics in cybersecurity has become quite acute in connection with which it became necessary to develop common programming models that ensure ethical distinctions and rules. There is a present need to apply ethical parameters in the development of programs that oppose offensive cyberspace operations at the level of one country’s intervention in the cyberspace of other countries (Iftimie & Wilson, 2020). Anticipatory analysis of raw data is used to counter such cyberattacks, which is an example of ethical integration between software developers and cybersecurity.
As a different example of ensuring an ethical framework, the Association for Computing Machinery should be mentioned, creating encodings that provide ethical standards for their professional niche. Inner decree codes are created by individual organizations and serve specific purposes. Thus, the development of an ethical code can be understood as a set of rules constantly changing depending on the tasks of the organization. In this context, a global development called Cybersecurity Body of Knowledge should be mentioned (Shoemaker et al., 2019). It presents a set of basic skills that a programmer should have in this environment. The list is not so much a fixed regulation as recommendations that should stimulate a critical judgment of the programmer. Thus, one can talk about both the existence of individual intracompany ethical codes, and about a certain general ethical integral that can be applied by a programmer when developing a specific code. The ethical principle can be perceived, firstly, as an individual criterion, and secondly, as a general standard for critical thinking. The ethical set of basic rules serves as an example of integration between all software developers in the cybersecurity field.
References
Iftimie, I. A., & Wilson, R. L. (2020). The use of signals intelligence in offensive cyberspace operations: An anticipatory ethical analysis. ICCWS 2020 15th International Conference on Cyber Warfare and Security, 270-276. Web.
Shoemaker, D., Kohnke, A., & Laidlaw, G. (2019). Ethics and cybersecurity are not mutually exclusive. EDPACS, 60(1), 1–10. Web.