Ethical Issues in Cyber Crime for Verizon Data -myassignmenthelp.com

Question: Write about theEthical Issues in Cyber Crime for Verizon Data. Answer: Introduction Information and Communications Technology or ICT is the extension of IT or Information Technology. It acts as the unified communications with the amalgamation of various wireless signals and telephone lines with storage, software and audiovisual systems. It allows the users to manipulate, store, access and transmit various information (Niebuhr, 2013). In spite of providing a huge amount of benefit to the society, ICT has also welcomed several cyber attacks and security breaches in the modern technological world. These attacks and breaches are extremely dangerous for the cyber world. These breaches are also threat to ethical world. The following essay outlines a detailed description of the case study of Verizon Wireless of United States of America. This cyber crime took place in July 2017. This was absolutely non ethical for the cyber world. The essay provides the detailed discussion about the four classical theories of ethics. The case study is described with these four classical theories. Discussion Verizon Wireless Data Breach Verizon Wireless is the telecommunications organization of United States of America offering various wireless products and services. There was a leakage of data in the organization that caused a dangerous cyber attack ("Verizon customer information exposed in data breach", 2017). This was caused because of the partner of Verizon wireless. They did not take care of the data and the data was leaked in cloud. The reason for this cyber crime was the cloud-based repository files that was non configured. Data of approximately 14 million clients were leaked in the cloud. All of them were customers of Verizon. Utilitarianism Theory This is one of the four classical theories of ethics. The Utilitarianism Theory states that the best activity is that particular activity, which maximizes utility. This theory can be defined as the summation of satisfaction that can be obtained from a utility. This does not count the amount of suffering an individual has faced during that activity (Arntzenius, 2014). There are two types of utilitarianism to maximize the utility. They are the total utilitarianism and the average utilitarianism. These two assumptions are made on the utility of the situation that is, how much utilization can be obtained from that situation. In this particular case, Verizon Wireless has faced a cyber attack. The data of their clients were leaked in the cloud and the partner of Verizon did this. They have utilized the cloud server for leaking all the data. These data contained all the details about customers including the account name, pin numbers and all the confidential information. This is a non-ethica l act (Crimmins, 2017). The confidential data should not be breached at all. The partner of Verizon should be put behind bars and serious actions should be taken. The utilitarianism theory does not apply in this situation. The situation does not gain any utility and thus is non-ethical according to the four classical theories of ethics. Deontology Theory The Deontology Theory is the standard position in ethics, which takes the decision according to the morality of a particular activity that is based on the rules. This theory can also be defined as the ethics based on obligations and duties. The moral obligation forces an individual to act perfectly in any situation. This type of obligation depends on either internal or external sources (Chen Schonger, 2017). This theory focuses on the fact that a person should be morally ethical in nature no matter what situation arises. The external sources are the religious rules, universal rules, legal laws, whereas, the internal sources are the cultural and personal values. The internal sources mostly depend on the character of the individual, the surrounding where his upbringing has taken place and the lessons he has got from family, friends or acquaintances. In this particular case study of Verizon Wireless, the partner of Verizon leaked the data, which caused tremendous problems to both Veriz on and its customers. This is ethically wrong according to the Deontology theory of ethics (Lazar, 2017). The partner should not have leaked the data. All the customers have faced tremendous problems due to this leakage. Moreover, all the account details of the customers were leaked, this could have been a major problem in future for the customers. When an organization is dealing with its clients, it is the responsibility of that organization to give their customers a safe and secured surrounding. According to deontology theory of ethics, the partner of Verizon Wireless should have been morally ethical. It was their duty to protect the customers (Dewey, 2016). The opposite happened. They backed off from their duty. They leaked the data, which was ethically wrong, as well as a dangerous cyber crime. Virtue Theory This is third theory of the four classical theories of ethics. Virtue ethics is a type of ethics, which focuses on the character of an individual as the major component for ethical thinking. Virtue ethics states that when an individual taken an ethical decision or solves an ethical dilemma, he takes the decision from this own thinking (Van Hooft, 2014). This thinking is completely controlled by the character of the individual. If the individual is good from heart and has good character, he will definitely take a good decision. However, if the individual has a darker side, he might take a negative decision. In this case study, it is not known that why the partner of Verizon Wireless has leaked the data. There is a high chance that they did not take the decision from their heart and may have a strong reason (Audi, 2012). However, according to Virtue theory of four classical theories of ethics, they took the decision and since the character of the individual is the major component of fo r ethical thinking, it can be said that the partner of Verizon wireless does not have a ethical character. Contract Theory This is the fourth classical theory of ethics. According to this particular theory, the moal values of an individual depend on the presence of a contract (Fried, 2015). A contract is an agreement that brings out the ethical and moral regulations of an individual. Several individuals form the society. If the human beings will not behave properly and ethically, the society will not reach success and will not be able to meet its goals and objectives. The contract is a sign of motivation and ethics for all the employees of an organization. it promotes the values of ethics within all the employees (Niebuhr, 2013). In this case study, there was a contract between the organization and the clients of that organization. However, they were not able to protect the contract and thus was ethically wrong towards their clients. Conclusion Therefore, from the above discussion it can be concluded that information and communications technology or acts as the unified communications with the amalgamation of various wireless signals and telephone lines with storage, software and audiovisual systems. It allows the users to manipulate, store, access and transmit various information. In spite of providing a huge amount of benefit to the society, ICT has also welcomed several cyber attacks and security breaches in the modern technological world. These attacks and breaches are extremely dangerous for the cyber world. These breaches are also threat to ethical world. The above essay focuses on the case study of Verizon Wireless organization. Data was breached and leaked in the cloud by the partner of Verizon. This is ethically wrong. The essay describes the case study with the help of the four classical theories of ethics. References Arntzenius, F. (2014). Utilitarianism, decision theory and eternity.Philosophical Perspectives,28(1), 31-58. Audi, R. (2012). Virtue ethics as a resource in business.Business Ethics Quarterly,22(2), 273-291. Chen, D. L., Schonger, M. (2017). Social preferences or sacred values? theory and evidence of deontological motivations. Crimmins, J. E. (Ed.). (2017).The Bloomsbury encyclopedia of utilitarianism. Bloomsbury Publishing. Dewey, J. (2016).Ethics. Read Books Ltd. Fried, C. (2015).Contract as promise: A theory of contractual obligation. Oxford University Press, USA. Lazar, S. (2017). Deontological Decision Theory and Agent-Centered Options.Ethics,127(3), 579-609. Niebuhr, R. (2013).Moral man and immoral society: A study in ethics and politics. Westminster John Knox Press. Van Hooft, S. (2014).Understanding virtue ethics. Routledge. Verizon customer information exposed in data breach. (2017).Fox Business. Retrieved 13 September 2017, from https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/07/13/security-lapse-leaks-data-from-millions-verizon-customers.html