Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone acted rationally and out of the best interest for the collective good?  Unfortunately, unethical behavior in the IT space is best described like a coin, with the “good guys” on one side and the “bad guys” on the other.  

Let’s start with the “good guys”:  IT professionals are human beings, prone to lapses in judgment or mistakes. 90% of all cybersecurity incidents occur due to end-user error or actions that are otherwise avoidable. Recent high-profile events, such as the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack, occurred due to lapses in best practices.   

In short, even the good guys can get lazy or make mistakes.   

James Turgal, former executive assistant director for the FBI Information and Technology Branch (CIO) and current VP of Cyber Risk, Strategy and Transformation at Optiv, is convinced that internal IT best practices are the main problem. “I have always said cybersecurity is more about people behind keyboards than the actual technology. No matter the size of the organizations, businesses that seek to innovate faster than their competitors are fighting for the same qualified talent.”   

When looking at the “bad guys”, the explosion of the Dark Web is a major cause for concern. The Dark Web is a digital gathering point for all different types of individuals who may wish to act unethically.  Most recently, 700 million users’ data was made available after a breach at LinkedIn.com.

​​​​​“Hackers” and other malicious actors will often gather on the Dark Web and place bounties on organizations that they need help penetrating. Lists of passwords, known software exploits, and planned attacks are all available for anyone who has the skill to find them. Therefore, organizations are now starting to view the Dark Web as a new defensive strategy.  

In short, by having a person on the “inside”, IT professionals can be much better equipped for whatever unethical actions are about to come their way.   

At the end of the day, IT professionals need better training. James Turgal says, “Gaps in technology skills can hold a business back from achieving further success and far more negative business impacts can occur if you have a CIO or a CISO who is ill-equipped to secure the organization but claims to senior leadership that the company is safe.”   

Organizations that invest in proper cybersecurity training, such as CyberSec First Responder™ and Certified Dark Web Analyst are better equipped for the current unethical landscape that they face every day. Contact JediJon@LogicalOperations.com to learn more.

Companies, motivated by business intelligence use cases, collect more data than ever before. How do consumers feel about that? A 2020 KPMG survey says:

• 97% of consumer respondents believe data privacy is important.
• 87% thought it should be a human right.
• But 54% of respondents did not trust companies to use data ethically.

Clearly, data privacy matters to consumers. And it should. Cyber-attacks and data breaches are at an all-time high. Furthermore, when data use is misaligned with ethical standards, it creates inequities across race, gender, and marginalized populations. An ethics violation could truly devastate a company’s reputation and financial standing.

Fortunately, leaders are taking note. Many companies recognize the need for ethics professionals to help them design inclusive, secure, responsible, and trusted technology. To get there, they either must upskill their teams, or find the right talent. And that’s a big reason why Certified Ethical Emerging Technologist™ (CEET) professionals draw, on average, a 25% higher salary than other candidates. 

Find anyone who has taken a course that supports analytics or data science and you have found someone who has wrestled with the “Is this the right thing to do?” question. For example, I once worked in the healthcare space and an analyst was able to predict whether or not a person would contract an incurable disease. Should this information be reported and acted on?

If you think about telling the person who is likely to be impacted by this, your answer might be something like “Sure, this will help them prepare and value the healthy time that they have left." But, what if the use for the analysis was to inform the person’s employer and the likely impact might be that the person’s career hits the brakes, or worse…? What then?

As more and more people, through their growing skills with emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Data Science, get more and more capable of producing data-driven insights, they will most certainly encounter the “ethical use” challenge. And this is different than legal vs. illegal, it is right vs. wrong, and that is quite a different conundrum.

While our new course, Certified Ethical Emerging Technologist™ (CEET), doesn’t give a student the answer, it does provide them with the framework for asking questions that help set boundaries for ethical use. So, the key to selling CEET is to simply find those students who extract insights from data (they likely took Python®, SQL®, Tableau®, Power BI®, or Excel® training) and let them know that this is available. They’ll thank you for the opportunity.

I was privileged to participate recently in the test run of Logical Operations’ Certified Ethical Emerging Technologist™ (CEET) class, created for LO by our wonderful partners, the organizational ethics experts at Principia. My main response to the material? “Ooh, that’s scary.”  

It’s exciting to see the power and potential of emerging technology in courses and certifications such as Certified Artificial Intelligence (AI) Practitioner (Exam AIP-110) and Certified Data Science Practitioner (CDSP) (Exam DSP-110) from our partners at CertNexus. But when you confront the ethics of what can be done with those tools and practices, things start to get a little uncomfortable.   

• When powerful technologies enable you to deploy automatic solutions by aggregating infinite data, how can that be done ethically and without bias?   
• Why should you care?  

There’s no perfect answer to the first question. Each machine learning algorithm has its own risks and tradeoffs. But I have a few responses to the second one.   

• Governments and standards bodies around the world are gearing up to establish standards and enact legislation regarding the ethical use of data and AI. Your business might need to demonstrate compliance sooner than you think, so it makes sense to fund and prioritize internal ethics initiatives starting now.   
• Public concern with ethical use of technologies impacts even the world’s largest organizations on a business level.  Just do a Google search on “Google AI bias” and you’ll see what I mean. You can save your organization from this kind of pain by baking appropriate ethics protections into your data projects from the start.  
• And finally – it’s your data too. AI is out there, constantly gathering information from all of us from all sources, and it’s making invisible decisions about it on our behalf all the time. As members of the human family, we owe it to each other to ensure this is done prudently, respectfully, and fairly.   

Pursuing CEET training using curriculum from Logical Operations, as well as the associated CEET certification from CertNexus, are steps you can take down the road towards a more ethical and just technical society.  

• NEW CMMC Kickstart: A Practical Guide to Getting Ready for CMMC
• NEW ETBIZ: Emerging Technology for the Business Professional (Exam ETZ-110)
• NEW ETBIZ: Emerging Technology for the Business Professional (Exam ETZ-110) (eLearning)
• Certified Data Science Practitioner (CDSP) (Exam DSP-110) 
• Certified Ethical Emerging Technologist™ (CEET): Exam CET-110
• CMMC-CP Boot Camp
• Introduction to Programming with Python®
• Advanced Programming Techniques with Python®
• Certified Dark Web Analyst Guidebook for Labs and Activities
• Certified Dark Web Analyst Body of Knowledge 5th Edition and Lab Activities
• Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP®): Sixth Edition 

Logical Operations revises student and instructor materials based on technical changes, customer feedback, and our own assessment of necessary changes. The revision notes for the most recent updates are below as well as posted on the new Content Revisions page. Use this page as a resource to quickly access and view all revision details for any of our recent course updates. 

Reminder: When viewing a product on the store, check the Revision Information tab to see the summary description of the most recent revision for that product at any time.

Looking for a 1 day CEET course, a ½  day course, or just a simplified road map? With our Custom Services Department, you can get just that and in the timeframe you need it.   

Nothing available to meet your specific needs? Just contact the Custom Services Department, and we will create a custom book for you. 

Whatever you choose to customize, there are always options available.   

You can mix and match lessons, delete topics, and add your logo and personalization.   If you do not have a need for customization, just pop your logo on the front cover and call it a day with branding!  

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Reach out to discuss your goals, options, and requirements. You will be glad you did!  

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