Individual and Collective Responsibility for Cybersecurity

Abstract

Abstract In this final chapter, it is argued that the ethical issues in cybersecurity can be framed as dual-use issues: various cybertechnologies, including social bots, automated drones and blockchains, can be used to achieve great benefits, but in the hands of malevolent state and nonstate actors, they can cause great harm. The satisfactory resolution of the resulting ethical issues involves the discharging of collective moral responsibilities. These collective responsibilities need to be institutionally embedded in webs of prevention. Cybersecurity is, in the end, a collective moral responsibility of both individual citizens and organizations, but a collective responsibility that requires new regulation and the redesign of institutional roles, as well as technical countermeasures to cyberattacks (e.g., passwords, encryption, firewalls, patching, and the like) in order to be discharged. It also involves at times, we suggest, offensive as well as defensive measures.