Knowledge-Base Practicality for Cybersecurity Research Ethics Evaluation

TL;DR

This paper explores the use of a knowledge base of cyber security research ethics to improve ethical analysis of research papers, showing it can match or surpass expert evaluations in depth and efficiency.

Contribution

It introduces a knowledge base approach for ethical analysis in cybersecurity research, providing a practical tool that enhances and extends expert ethical evaluations.

Findings

KB-based analysis yields comparable or more extensive ethical insights.

KB approach improves efficiency of ethical evaluations.

Preliminary evidence supports KB's usefulness over traditional standards.

Abstract

Research ethics in Information and Communications Technology has seen a resurgence in popularity in recent years. Although a number of general ethics standards have been issued, cyber security specifically has yet to see one. Furthermore, such standards are often abstract, lacking in guidance on specific practices. In this paper we compare peer-reviewed ethical analyses of condemned research papers to analyses derived from a knowledge base (KB) of concrete cyber security research ethics best practices. The KB we employ was compiled in prior work from a large random survey of research papers. We demonstrate preliminary evidence that such a KB can be used to yield comparable or more extensive ethical analyses of published cyber security research than expert application of standards like the Menlo Report. We extend the ethical analyses of the reviewed manuscripts, and calculate measures of the efficiency with which the expert versus KB methods yield ethical insights.