Ethical Frameworks in Organizations for Cybersecurity
Year: 2022
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Cybersecurity is of critical ethical significance, because cybersecurity technologies have an\nimportant impact on human well-being as they make possible many contemporary decisions,\nwhich affects the human organizations that rely on the accessibility and integrity of data and\ncomputer systems. In cybersecurity it is important to have ethical principles and guidelines\nwhich are effective. The reason for this is that cybersecurity has a critical impact on ethics,\nsince cybersecurity technologies have an important impact on human well-being as well as\nethical trade-offs and complex moral issues, such as whether to pay hackers or not. There are\na lot of ethical issues raised by cybersecurity such as what type of sensitive data to keep and\nwhat to remove, paying ransomware or testing and deceiving the employees through social\nengineered testing. Therefore it is important to choose an ethical framework that helps solve\nthose issues. In this master thesis the researchers try to address what type of frameworks are\nused for cybersecurity and which framework should different Norwegian organizations\nchoose to implement for their organization. The thesis will also use interviews to achieve and\nfind out what ethics organizations use, by using a list of questions through semi-structured\ninterviews, which are based on our research questions, and what was discovered in the\nexisting literature. Furthermore, the researchers examine the different ethical theories that the\nframeworks are based on and what the differences are in those theories. The research outcome\nwill help to choose what type of framework the organizations should choose when it comes to\ntheir ethical issues, dilemmas and values. The three main frameworks that were examined are\nthe principlist framework, human-rights/right-based framework and\nConsequentialist/Utilitarianism Framework. The study uses a qualitative exploratory research\napproach, with semi-structured interviews to gather data from several organizations within\ncybersecurity in Norway. The results are analyzed and compared to existing research, to\nachieve a theoretical understanding of the result. The study identifies what type of ethical\nframeworks exist and uses different characteristics on how to compare ethics, ethical\nguidelines and values to the ethical frameworks. In this research work the researchers focused\non examining different types of organizations and businesses operating in Norway by looking\nat what ethical frameworks organizations use and how ethical frameworks, guidelines and\nstandards are used in Norwegian organizations in the context of cybersecurity. Main outcome\nof this study shows that none of the organizations uses a specific ethical framework, but the\nethics of the organizations can be compared to two of the different types of ethical\nframeworks for cybersecurity. These two are the principlist framework and the\nhuman-rights/rights-based framework and some of the organizations use a combination of\nboth of them. This research work contributes to raising awareness on the lack of knowledge\nand interest around ethical frameworks used for cybersecurity in Norwegian organizations.\nFurthermore, the outcomes of this exploratory study provided an overview on how different\nsectors work with ethics when it comes to cybersecurity. The work presented in this thesis\nprovides insights to Norwegian organizations on existing ethical framework in cybersecurity;\nthese insights can help guide strategic planning on organizational level, policy making and\nguidelines, which will help maintain their overall security and improve decision making.
Authors: Mikkelsen, Daniel, Zakariassen, Robert
Language: English
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7056476573