Moral and ethical requirements should serve as drivers which encourage a busines

Question

Moral and ethical requirements should serve as drivers which encourage a business to invest in or spend money on cybersecurity products, services, and programs.

You have been invited to participate in a "lightning round" panel on the above topic at a conference on Best Practices for IT Security Management. For this activity you must prepare a 3 to 5 paragraph briefing statement which answers the following questions. Use information from the weekly readings and Case Study #1.

What is stakeholder theory? How does it drive requirements to spend money on cybersecurity products & services?

How does social contract theory apply to purchasing requirements for cybersecurity products & services?

Name and briefly describe 3 ethics issues that IT Security managers and staff may encounter when selecting and evaluating cybersecurity products & services. (Use examples to drive home your points.)

Provide in-text citations and references for 3 or more authoritative sources. Put the reference list at the end of your posting.

Explanation / Answer

As businesses emerge as some of the most powerful institutions in the world, business ethics have never been more important, and given very recent history, more open to question. Corporations are relative newcomers to power, and for evidence of this we can look to Europe, where the oldest, largest, most elaborate buildings are the churches and cathedrals. For thousands of years, the church and its leaders were arguably the most powerful institution, but as the liberal notions of the Enlightenment supplanted church orthodoxy, the state supplanted religion as the more powerful institution. But at the dawn of the third millennium, the newest, grandest buildings are the corporate headquarters and facilities, an architectural phenomenon that neatly illustrates the transfer of power through history.It is not clear, however, that the business community has lived up to its obligations and responsibilities in proportion to its rapid increase in power. Witness the number of organizations and executives that are being exposed for immoral and fraudulent conduct. This is why the time is ripe for an in-depth examination of ethics in business. In this article, I will apply the principles of stakeholder theory to discuss questions that are central to the business ethics debate .

In my opinion, equating share ownership with firm ownership is unjustified because the firm is an independent entity that is not “owned” by anyone. By way of comparison, selected individuals are responsible for administering churches, universities and even nations, but there is not a compelling need to discern who “owns” these institutions. Why should business organizations be any different? And without the concept of ownership, maximizing shareholder wealth becomes less defensible as the primary, or sole, function of the firm.

A social contract is essentially a deal between industry and government wherein both entities agree to provide services and receive benefits resulting in a larger social good. The social contract ISA is proposing is based on the agreement between government and the utilities in the early 20th century which had the goal of providing universal phone, power and light service to Americans. That model worked. In the early 1900s the government realized that there would be enormous public benefits to universal utility service ranging from economic development to enhanced public safety. Policy makers understood that much of the needed infrastructure development would be undertaken thanks to the market incentives inherent in providing these services. However, government also realized that these natural market incentives would not extend to the entirety of the population. Moreover, policy makers realized that it was completely impractical for the government to either fund the infrastructure enhancements needed for universal service themselves or simply mandate that it be done. In an enlightened and pragmatic move, government struck a deal with the utilities. The utilities guaranteed to make the infrastructure upgrades necessary to provide universal service. In return government essentially guaranteed a return on the required private investment economically sufficient to make the investments good business decisions. The utilities maintained the investments over time because they were also provided exclusive franchises for the service area.

we examined ethical issues raised by IT capabilities, issues that all of us as technology professionals need to consider as we go about our duties. This time, we take a look at ethical issues more specific to management—and not necessarily just IT management. Once again, one of our themes is that advances in technology, just like advances in any other area of endeavor, can generate societal changes that should cause us to reexamine our behavior. The dynamic nature of civilization means some components of ethical codes that were perfectly appropriate in previous generations may no longer apply. Although space limits us to 10 issues, the ones we examine here are based on five main categories of particular interest to technologists: privacy, ownership, control, accuracy, and security. Governments collect massive amounts of data on individuals and organizations and use it for a variety of purposes: national security, accurate tax collection, demographics, international geopolitical strategic analysis, etc. Corporations do the same for commercial reasons; to increase business, control expense, enhance profitability, gain market share, etc. Technological advances in both hardware and software have significantly changed the scope of what can be amassed and processed. Massive quantities of data, measured in petabytes and beyond, can be centrally stored and retrieved effortlessly and quickly. Seemingly disparate sources of data can be cross-referenced to glean new meanings when one set of data is viewed within the context of another.

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse M
• Subjects

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.