Professional Practices

Assignment 03

Ethics in Software Engineering

Submitted By: Faiza Mushtaq

Registration No: 2017-BSE-065
Submitted To: Mam Marium Jalal
Semester: VI B
Date: 10th May 2020

Fatima Jinnah Women University, Rawalpindi

Contents

Question No.1.............................................................................................................................................2
Ethics Awareness in Software Industry...................................................................................................2
 Ethics..............................................................................................................................................2
 Software Ethics..............................................................................................................................2
Ethics and Software Engineering.........................................................................................................2
Need for Ethics Coverage in Software Engineering Courses.............................................................2
Ethics Examples from Software Industry...........................................................................................3
Question No.2.............................................................................................................................................3
Confidential data...................................................................................................................................3
Response to situation.............................................................................................................................3
 Question No.1
 Why Universities include ethics awareness in software engineering courses? Give
answer while keeping in mind current changes in the software industry. For example,
social media application, mobile games and flourishing ecommerce industry.

Ethics Awareness in Software Industry

 Ethics can be defined as the disciplined concerned with what is morally right and wrong or
good and bad for individual and society. They are well-defined standards or rules that tells a
human what to do in terms of rights, obligations and for welfare of society.
 Software Ethics are a kind of business ethics that defined ethic principles and examines
ethical problems arise in software environment.
Ethics and Software Engineering
Software Engineering is the practice of engineering to build, design, develop, deploy and
maintain software. Software engineering is important because nowadays every industry or
business needs software for its functionality. Software engineers are professionals whose work
impacts public, so just personal code of ethics is not enough they need well defined code of
ethics. Its importance is just keep growing as important fields like medical also need software
now for better performance. Including these critical fields, it is very important for software
engineer to keep in mind the set of engineering ethics like protecting data, work for safety of
people because software can affect people life on personal level and it can make it better or
worse and failures in critical software can cause heavy loss. Daily life examples online
shopping, ordering food, games and list goes on, software’s become a part of our lives.
Need for Ethics Coverage in Software Engineering Courses
Generally, students in software engineering made to learn the algorithms and engineering
techniques that are basically necessary for them to work in practical for development of software
products. But it makes them to think that their actions and consequence of actions or their work
product is not their proper concern. When these students solve real world problems they find its
solution specifically focusing on technicality they just think everything is fair enough and the
ethical issues should handle by others that is not their concern. When they go to work in industry
they have to work in teams, so students should have a sense of professionalism. The ethics
course helps the students to have practical wisdom and strength to work for the ethics problems
in industry with their team-mates, who can also be facing same issues they can also guide them
for development of better working product.
There are many ethical problems arise in making a new product whose solution is not easy and
students who become software engineers need a practical wisdom to solve them because a
software engineer better knows benefits and risks of new technologies and products.
In Comparison with developers who doesn’t join a regular institution for practicing engineering
their difference with these students is ethics. One can become a software expert by self-learning,
but they lack in code of ethics necessary to work for building better software keeping in mind all
aspects.
Students should know the code they are writing how serving the public. So, a course is needed
that covers these ethical issues for having a good software engineers in our industry whose work
can have better impact on society.
Ethics Examples from Software Industry
If we talk about hackers or other cybercrimes these are also software experts, but the difference
is that they don’t consider the code of ethics. Today, as the software industry growing there are
many changes in mobile games, social media and e-commers applications. Taking an example
from mobile games that was Blue Whale it impacts the life of youngsters so much that they even
commit suicide the developers of this game violated the safety measure ethics. These unethical
developers can harm the society. Did this game pay positive contribution to world?

Question No.2
 You are the owner of XYZ Software house. One of your employee leak confidential
information of your software house accidently. How would you respond to that in a way
that is legal, moral, and ethical? Briefly explain.
Confidential data is most valuable data for any company. The data leaks can cause a heavy
penalty for the company also customers confidence will be lost in security of company.
Response to situation
If an employee leak confidential information first I want to know the scope of information that
has been leaked by conducting meeting with that employee. Our software company will face the
consequences and try to compensate the loss caused by leak of information. I’ll make the person
go through the disciplinary policy to know how data was leaked, what are the gaps still present
that would let leakage of information. My company will introduce measures that could not let the
that happen again in future and will update the privacy policy mechanism. Also, I’ll conduct a
meeting with rest of employees to update them about policy and deter them not to do a similar
action.