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

One ethical issue that arises when storing electronic information about individuals is that the information could be compromised. This would unleash all of confidential user information to whoever is attacking the system. For example, imagine the information at a bank was only all digital information, such as a social security number, account logins, card information, etc. If that bank gets hacked then all of that information is compromised and the attacker could then abuse the users directly. Another ethical issue presented is pretexting. This is when an attacker contacts a service posing as the user that is having trouble logging in. The attacker then uses generic information to convince the service provider that the attacker “is the user” and then gets access into the actual user’s account. This causes an ethical issue because by storying individuals electronically, it can prevent security advisors from actually telling whether it is the correct user or an attacker. A third ethical issue presented is making sure the information is confidential. This would mean to make sure that the sensitive information is not accessible to the general public and would only be accessible to authorized users. Additionally, the information should be heavily regulated to ensure that if it is my credit card number that only I and the authorized personnel can access it and not some bus driver that is curious. The fourth ethical issue that is present when storing individual information electronically is spillage. This is when the confidential data is “spilled” onto an unclassified or lower-classified information system. This means the data has an even greater chance of being compromised if it has not already been compromised. It also means that the information can be compromised without the usual authentication that was needed previously. This would put user confidential information more accessible to attackers.