Ethics in cybersecurity research and practice

Kevin Macnish and Jeroen van der Ham

Technology in Society, 2020, vol. 63, issue C

Abstract: This paper critiques existing governance in cyber-security ethics through providing an overview of some of the ethical issues facing researchers in the cybersecurity community and highlighting shortfalls in governance practice. We separate these issues into those facing the academic research community and those facing the (corporate) practitioner community, drawing on two case studies. While there is overlap between these communities, there are also stark differences. Academic researchers can often rely on research ethics boards (REBs) to provide ethical oversight and governance which are typically unavailable to the practitioner community. However, we argue that even within the academic community the constitution of REBs is such that they may be (and in some cases at least are) unable to offer sound advice. Our recommendations are that ethics should be taught in far greater depth on computer science courses than is currently the case, and that codes of conduct should be developed and deployed provided they can be seen to be effective. In tandem with these, an active discussion regarding the ethics of cybersecurity and cybersecurity research is urgently needed.

Keywords: Cybersecurity; Ethics; Privacy; IRB; Personal data; Discrimination; Trust; Research (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160791X19306840
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:teinso:v:63:y:2020:i:c:s0160791x19306840

DOI: 10.1016/j.techsoc.2020.101382

Access Statistics for this article

Technology in Society is currently edited by Charla Griffy-Brown

More articles in Technology in Society from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().