1. Describe four ethical issues that arise when storing electronic information about individuals.

Cybersecurity has to deal with the safety and protection of many different types of information. It may be simple to believe that cybersecurity is an extremely important asset to have, especially when it comes to an individual’s personal data, information, and privacy. However, there are serious ethical issues that cybersecurity creates due solely to its existence and how it operates. I will present a total of 4 ethical issues that can happen when storing personal data online.

CONFIDENTIALITY

By nature, someone who works in the cybersecurity field has a very important and heavy-duty job. These people are assigned to access people’s private and individual data without anyone ever knowing exactly what they do with it or who it falls under. Information can fall under the wrong person and lead to a chain of private data being exposed. It is unfair to place your private data in the hands of an unknown individual who claims to be a cybersecurity specialist that can do whatever they can with your information if they want.

DATA USAGE

You may sometimes notice when you’re on a website where you can login, accept cookies, saving passwords, and allow notifications to run on the website. These are all ways of a service trying to collect your data to better understand what your interests are and try to have services and advertisements that you may consider looking at. While this may seem like a nice quality of life improvement, it can create higher risks than what the benefits are. Not everyone knows that people can use the stored data you used on that website or application and have access to your personal data.

DATA SELLING

Similar to what I said above, Websites and companies would love to know everything about you. These companies can use your data and sell it to other companies or even suspicious individuals that want to take your personal information for themselves. They can sell your data as sell products that fit your preferences. That may not sound bad on paper, but you never consented to the fact that they can share your personal data with other companies. Only you should be allowed to choose what you want to do with your data.

DATA DELETION

This is something I’m glad to learn in my Cyberlaw course. When you store data such as phone calls, emails, pictures, texts, or other forms of information, even though you may think that data can be deleted with a simple delete button, that’s not entirely true. Specifically, if you store data on cloud storages, that data is saved on metadata, so legal authorities can access your information by accessing the data stored in metadata. This has been a hot topic because this can be used to solve crimes and problems that would’ve originally been impossible to solve. However, what if one day that data is breached by someone who has unauthorized access? creating a backdoor or front door access to information is a double-edged sword, which is precisely why it’s an ethical issue.

2. Compare cybersecurity risks in the U.S. and another country.

The United States of America is possibly the most diverse and popular country in the world. The U.S receives cyber-attacks from a plethora of different other countries and groups especially in its own country. Most attacks are targeting the economy as most of the goods in America are from import and export trading. Compared to other countries, America just has to deal with cyber-attacks and threats constantly and at a faster rate compared to other countries. China is the leading role for cyber espionage, and they’ve been trying to win the cyber economy war by targeting America. Due to so much division and diversity, most cyber-attacks occur within America itself rather than from other countries such as China, Korea, and/or Russia.