IS 350 – Final Report
Scenario: Cyber-attack retaliation by a company.
Scenario: NJIT has been attacked by hackers in a foreign country who have taken personal information about staff and students. NJIT’s Head of Cybersecurity has figured out where the hackers are located and that the hackers are not agents of the foreign country. The Head has proposed to the President of NJIT that NJIT attack back, destroying the hackers’ stolen copies of the information and damaging their equipment in retaliation. But this action is against US law. The President is considering the proposal made by the Head of Cybersecurity.
Dilemma: Is it ethical for the President to authorize the proposed action?
Ethical Case Analysis of Your Current Events Topic
Due Date
Due date is posted in the Summary of Required Coursework module in Canvas and a number of other places.
Aim
To demonstrate ability to conduct an ethical analysis of a socio-technical scenario (an issue that affects people), as well as preparedness to use ethical theories and professional codes of ethics to analyze a socio-technical scenario.
Final Report
This ethical analysis will count as the IS 350 Final. You will write a full analysis of the scenario that was assigned as your current event topic. This is an individual examination project, not a group project. Students will do the full analysis (all parts) on their own, submitting that analysis to Canvas as their Final.
Scenario Notes: The Final analyzes the current events scenario and ethical dilemma assigned to you earlier in the term as part of the Current Events assignment.
Preparation
Review The Ethical Analysis slides on doing an ethical analysis and watch the 5-video series on How to Do an Ethical Analysis., Then practice doing an ethical case analysis on some cases from class or the Quinn text.
Analysis Format
Citation Note: If you utilize materials you’ve found, be sure use inline citations (e.g., [1] or superscripts1) at the appropriate places within your statement and analysis sections that refer to the references in a bibliography.
Identification Section
Include “IS 350 Final”, and your name, section of IS 350 and current events topic, as part of the first page.
Statement Section
Describe your Current Events scenario, giving any necessary background on your current events topic. This section should be at least two full paragraphs.
Copy/paste your assigned scenario and dilemma
Explain your scenario in enough detail so the rest of the analysis is clear. Include any additional information necessary for understanding the rest of your analysis (including, if necessary, any background information regarding your current events topic). You may modify and use appropriate text from your midterm.
Let the reader know why your topic is an important topic.
Clearly state the ethical issue(s) that arise in your scenario.
Analysis Sections
Format: As you know, an ethical analysis includes the following sections. Write each section separately, marked with its own section title. You must include your Scenario and Ethical Dilemma in the beginning of the document as noted above.
Unique Analysis: Everyone’s analysis will be different. Your scenario will lead you to identify its particular moral agents, stakeholder, courses of action and consequences. You will uniquely apply the ethical theories to your scenario and choose the most relevant clauses from the codes of ethics for it.
Identify the moral agents (agency).
What of value is at stake?
Who/what are the stakeholders and briefly explain why each is a stakeholder?
2 possible courses of action (the moral agent doing the action of the scenario and the. moral agent not doing the action of the scenario at minimum must be included).
Start a new paragraph for each. Begin that paragraph by stating: “A possible course of action is XXX”.
Describe the course of action clearly enough for the reader to understand your analysis.
Be sure that one course of action is doing the action in the dilemma and another course of action is not doingthe action in the dilemma.
Consequences associated with each course of action for each stakeholder.
For each, state: “A(nother) consequence of the action XXX is YYY”.
Based on the Moral Agent DOING the action: Analyze the scenario by applying the 5 objective ethical theories
You will need 5 clearly marked subsections, one for each theory (Kantianism, Act Utilitarianism, Rule Utilitarianism, Social Contract Theory, Virtue Theory). How to apply each theory is shown in the assigned materials for Weeks 2 and 3.
REMEMBER: You are to analyze the scenario based on the premise that the Moral Agent does the action.
Identify relevant clauses. in the two Codes of Ethics. Explain why each is relevant and if the clause is violated or not and why that is so You will need 2 clearly marked subsections, one for the ACM Code of Ethics and the other for the Software Engineering Code of Ethics.
You must have a minimum of three (3) clauses from each Code of Ethics.
Give the clause number, summarize the actual clause and then state how and why each would apply to this situation.
The clauses in the codes are generic enough that several codes can easily apply.
Please Note that you should not state that no clauses apply because they are software related if your case study is not about software. There are broader principles that do apply because your ethics scenario does concern computing and/or the design of systems with socio-technical aspects.
Which concrete action do you would recommend (supported by your analysis). This must be one of the actions proposed in number 4 above. Justify by clearly explaining why. State specific results of the analysis that support your recommendation
Bibliography: The bibliography is not part of your page count BUT must include at least three (3) sources. Use APA or MLA format – see the “Understanding Citations” link on Canvas.
