Call for Chapters: Information Assurance and security Ethics in Complex Systems: Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Call for Chapters

Chapter Proposals Due: February 20, 2009

Information Assurance and security Ethics in Complex Systems: Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Melissa Jane Dark, Editor

Purdue University

To be published by IGI Global

http://www.igi-global.com/requests/details.asp?ID=584

Introduction

Information assurance and security is inherently normative, dealing with complex social and ethical issues such as privacy, access, ownership, and liability, reliability and safety. For example, questions such as “What ought this system do in order to preserve privacy?” and “To whom should access be granted?” are at the core of information assurance and security. Norms, an integral part of human life, vary greatly among peoples and cultures and are regulated through social structures such as policy and economics. A primary goal of this book is illuminate how ethical issues in information assurance and security are technical, economic, political and cultural in nature. Using each disciplinary perspective as a framework for considering the various information assurance and security issues, it recognizes how ethical issues in information security evolve and co-evolve in the current technical, economic, political and cultural milieu. This book uniquely takes a system-of-systems approach to investigating ethical and social issues in information assurance and security. By equipping readers with sufficient grounding, it is the aim of this book that they will be more inclined and more prepared to suspend premature judgments that can lead to oversimplification when solving problems regarding matters of information assurance and security ethics.

Objective of the Book

This objective of this book is to address ethical and social issues in information assurance and security, e.g., privacy, ownership, access and safety, liability and reliability, from a system-of-systems, multi-disciplinary perspective to include technology, economics, policy, and culture. Clearly information is of value to people, organizations, institutions, governments and societies. Societies, and their composite groups, organizations, institutions, and governments, are cultural systems. This approach does not necessarily advocate particular tools, methods and practices. Rather the aim of this book is to consider the emergent and complex co-constitutive relationships among technology, policy, economics, and culture with attention to the interaction of each in the context of secure information systems design, implementation and use and the implications of these systems for social infrastructure.

Much of the existing literature on policies and procedures includes the numerous and growing number of federal and state laws and regulations, standards and guidelines, and organizational policymaking and procedures for assuring and securing information assets. This book will not focus on the nature and scope of policies and procedures already enacted, except by way of illuminating the process. After all, there are numerous social and ethical issues that never become a part of the legislative agenda, let alone enacted. What is and is not on the policy agenda, the manner in which various solutions are debated and deliberated and by whom, influences the information assurance and security field. This book will wrestle with questions such as why certain social and ethical issues in information assurance and security seen daylight on the legislative agenda while others have not. Other issues include when such legislative actions might occur and how.

Then there are economic considerations. A secure information infrastructure is critical to several constituencies, including citizens, consumers, firms and governments. How do these economic constituencies interact in the area of information assurance and security? How are existing policies meeting social welfare needs in the USA and how are they not? How does knowledge and understanding of issues about information security (or the lack thereof) affect information assurance decision making at the national, state, organizational or individual level? What choices are we making in information assurance and security technology development, and more broadly in information assurance policy, and how are these choices being influenced by incentives and resources? And what might be the implications of these interactions and decisions on policy and technology and what does this suggest regarding social and ethical issues in information assurance and security?

The objective of this book is to explore the prominent cultural factors that shape information assurance and security and how culture is influential in information security technology development, policy making and economics. It will uncover the salient patterns of activity in the information age, how these patterns have changed in the recent past, and what the implications for social and ethical issues are in information assurance and security.

Target Audience

This is a book for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as faculty in information assurance and security courses. It will be a valuable reference for those participating in programs in Information Assurance and Security as well as in the arenas of computer science, information systems, management information systems, software engineering, electrical and computer engineering, information science, informatics, technology management, homeland security and information technology. This book is also for practitioners who are in the field and regularly confront ethical issues in information assurance and security that arise in the implementation and use of information systems.

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