A Care-Based Stakeholder Approach to Ethics of Cybersecurity in Business

Abstract

This chapter focuses on ethical issues in cybersecurity in business. It first sketches the main ethical issues discussed in the academic literature thus far. Next, it identifies some important topics that have not yet received the attention they deserve. The chapter then focuses on one of those topics, ransomware attacks, one of the most prevalent cybersecurity threats to businesses today. It provides a brief overview of the main types of ransomware attacks and discusses businesses’ responsibilities to their stakeholders to respond to them. Daniel Engster’s care-based stakeholder approach is used to assess the responsibilities that businesses have to their stakeholders. The analysis involves establishing who counts as a stakeholder when a ransomware attack occurs and what the stakeholders’ interests might be. Based on stakeholders’ interests, the analysis concludes on whether businesses have an ethical responsibility to their stakeholders to (1) respond to grey hat demands by patching identified vulnerabilities within the given timeframe and (2) respond to black hat demands by paying the ransom.