Security Scruples Poll
Dark Reading is conducting a Security Scruples Poll. Some of the preliminary results are disturbing. I'll withhold commentary until I see the poll is closed and results are disclosed. Please consider taking the poll. It has some interesting questions, and it takes about 5 minutes.
Comments
I think you are correct, that the right, enthusiastic people can be trained to do what needs done in tech, although it still helps to have people with tech backgrounds. ;)
I took this survey a few days ago (although I won't get follow-up questions as I didn't supply my email), and while I really am interested in the results, some of the questions didn't incorporate the answer I would have given or were fairly ambiguous. I wish I could review the questions again and point them out, but the link currently goes to a staging server login box...oops!
Anyway, I think ethics can be dealt with on a large scale in the industry, but I think that will be very difficult to really pursue without a real exam/body to govern it, like the BAR for law, etc. Otherwise, you basically just have "don't access information you shouldn't have access to," or other corporate standards.
Being in security, it is a bit odd. In my personal life, I may be a bit more grey than I am at work. At work, I have a career to protect, which means a high level of integrity must be maintained (thankfully, not hard with my personality). But at home or on my personal time, I might be a bit more curious about things, although not malicious by any stretch of the term.
If the survey is available again, I'll check it out. But otherwise, as a body, we're still all human beings from varied backgrounds and personalities and will have ethics levels across the board. This is natural and I would argue no different than most any other field, really.
i'm from the school of business thought that says that a mix of good, smart people with very varied backgrounds and ethics makes a good team / good environment. if everyone can learn from each other - more is accomplished and there are greater returns.