Ontologies are ways of structuring knowledge so that computers can use it. Musen said ontologies define in computer-understandable form the concepts and the relationships among concepts that are important in particular application areas. Ontologies have become critical for processing and integrating disparate data sources. Information ethics helps generate a primary plot of what information ethics can entail. To begin with, and at a more abstract level, Luciano Floridi has developed a notion of Information Ethics(IE) that begins with ontology but with a novel and centrally important turn. Information ontology takes as its primary elements concepts of information objects in an info sphere (information universe). This ontology is expanded to include nothing less than a huge awareness of entropy or disorder measurement as the degradation of information as a starting point, coupled with an emphasis on autopoeisis as a way of developing an account of the universe as self-organizing. Floridi argues that these theoretical specifically ontological foundations of information ethics lead to an applied computer ethics (CE) or recipient of the consequences of our ethical choices more than traditional CE (Floridi , 2001). The technology is nowadays constitutive for our being-in-the-world. The world is enframed by numerous networks: water-supply network, transport network, supermarket network, telephone network etc., and, first of all, the Internet, the network that tends to gather and to reveal all beings and all other networks as standing-reserve. The Internet digitally controls all other networks. One of the main problems that nowadays technology poses is that of communication. The humans have always communicated. The first main switch in this process was the humanistic communication, the communication by means of books. Now, we arrived at a new point of discontinuity. The technology is nowadays constitutive for our being-in-the-world. The process of communication became mainly a process of digital communication. Digital communications are those forms of interpersonal and interactive relatedness by technical means, like telephone- and computer-mediated-communication (CMC). The ethics of digital communication, seems to me, is at the very core of ethical discussions concerning the ethics of information technology. The importance of the Internet is not, first of all, the availability of information, but the tremendous possibilities of communication (Arnãutu , 2006).

There is a plurality of morally relevant considerations. It depends on the context and on the concrete circumstances which morally relevant perspective is most important. It is a big difference between national authorities fighting in a global cyber war including ICT threats from terrorism; companies protecting themselves against organised crime and destructive hackers; down to the situation of individual IT operators in different work domains. Information security is mainly a technological domain, but it is also dependent on the human element which plays an important role in the holistic security work by their skills and awareness. Users’ security behaviour is to a large extent determined by defined work processes, the state of security technology, guidelines and procedures for secure acting. But still the human element is important, as there are some degrees of freedom for individual choices. Individuals may break rules deliberately, making short-cuts for convenience, or making trivial errors due to slips and lapses jeopardising vulnerable ICT systems. IT risk is distributed in modern organisations, but risk mitigation remains centralized. The awareness and behaviour of each user is thus important for an efficient approach to information security. The field of information security management has dealt with users in a duty oriented approach. This ethical mindset of information security management is on collision course with other ethical mindset of modern organisations: the utility-rationalistic ideas of technology driven organisational development; the democratic ideas regarding sharing and development of information and knowledge; and the information security digital divide and unconsciousness among users (Albrechtsen, 2006).

This full paper will be emphasis on CE, Digital Communication Security and how ontologies concerns information ethics in general .

Keywords

Computer ethics, Information Ethics, Ontologies, Object, Knowledge

Reference

1. Floridi, L. and Sanders, J. W. (2001) Artificial Evil and the Foundation of Computer Ethics. Volume 3, Number 1 / March, 2001. Pages55-66.

2. Ess, C. (2004)  What is Information Ethics?  Downloaded on December 4 th, 2006. http://www.drury.edu/ess/CAP04/cap04infoethics.html#sdendnote1sym

3. Arnãutu, R. (2006) Prolegomena to Digital Communication EthicsJSRI • No.13 /Spring 2006. Downloaded on December 4 th, 2006. http://www.jsri.ro/old/html%20version/index/no_13/robert_arnautu_articol.htm

4. Albrechtsen, E., Grøtan T. O., and Hovden, J. (2006) Ethical issues in information security management. Downloaded on December 4 th, 2006 http://www.anvendtetikk.ntnu.no/ecap06/program/Albrechtsen.doc