Drawing the Line

Cybersecurity research and development raises questions of ethics in many areas. The essay lists several areas where ethics considerations may confront researchers and practitioners and considers in more detail the ethics of data collection and human subjects. It proposes three actions: security researchers should inform themselves about the ethics of human subject experimentation, Institutional Review Boards need to expand their expertise so that they can properly review cybersecurity research proposals, and professional societies should begin developing appropriate ethical guidance for their members who must confront these issues.