Information Security Ethics and Social Issues:  A Moral Development/Constructivist Approach

Research Areas: Human Centric Security,

Principal Investigator: Melissa Dark

This project considers ethical and social issues in information assurance and security including privacy, ownership, access and safety, liability and reliability. These issues will be examined using a system-of-systems, inter-disciplinary perspective to include technology, economics, policy, and culture. The system-of-systems approach considers the integration of individual, usually trans-domain, systems into a network of systems that ultimately contribute to social infrastructure. This approach does not necessarily advocate particular tools, methods and practices; rather, the focus promotes a new way of thinking where the interactions among technology, policy, and economics are carefully considered when conceiving grand challenges. This project will consider the emergent and complex co-constitutive, and therefore necessarily uncertain, relationships among technology, policy, economics, and culture with attention to the interacting roles of each in the context of secure information systems design, implementation and use.

Cybertrust is a priority in the information age. Future advances in computing promise substantial benefits for individuals and society; but trust in computing and communications is necessary in order for such benefits to be realized. Cybertrust depends upon software and hardware technologies that people can justifiably rely upon. However, repeatedly research has shown that technical feasibility alone is not sufficient for widespread adoption of a technological innovation. Large-scale adoption of technology is shaped by user acceptance, economics, policy, and organizational practices. The scholarly value of this project is that it will address information assurance and security ethics from these co-constitutive perspectives and by doing so, will advance the conversation on cybertrust in a meaningful way.

Keywords: ethics, information assurance, security, policy, cybertrust