Ethics and Security of Computing

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• Understand the core tenets of being a professional engineer or scientist, including the importance and benefits of diversity in engineering.
• Understand the threshold concepts underpinning the range of key ethical, legal security and privacy issues surrounding all technology projects.
• Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the key aspects and terminology related to legal licensing agreements, NDAs and contracts.

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Communicate about ethical and security issues using written and oral presentation.
• Work within a group to analyse a problem from an ethical and security perspective, and reflect on individual performance within a group.

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Assess, audit, evaluate, critically reflect upon, and discuss, potential legal, ethical, EDI, security, risk and privacy aspects of new technology projects.
• Identify, assess and critically review appropriate and relevant literature drawn from academic, technical, legal, professional sources.

Subject Specific Practical Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Choose appropriate licenses for hardware/software projects whilst considering implications of the licenses and conditions of third-party assets.
• Gain facility in designing experiments/evaluations involving human users and applying for ethical approval.

Topics in the four broad areas below will be covered by the module:

Legal:

• Professional responsibility of engineers and scientists
• Liability
• Data Protection Legislation
• Licensing & open source sw/hw
• Copyright and patents
• Contracts and NDAs

Security:

• Physical security
• Keeping hardware and software secure
• Security and Encryption of data
• Social engineering

Ethics:

• Ethical use and collection of data
• Ethics in ML and AI
• Ethical and sustainable computing (power, energy, environment)
• Ethical hacking (blackhat and whitehat)

Privacy:

• Anonymisation and de-anonymisation
• Data leaks
• Failure case studies
• Right to be forgotten

The module consists of:

• Lectures, seminars and panel discussions focussing on case-studies that cross one or more of the module themes
• Guided group research work and class presentation

Part of the assessment is through practical lab activities within the AICE Lab Programme.

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.