Ethical Issues, Product Liability, Social Impact

Ethical Issues:

• Database has valuable information about the user's network. 

  • Information can be leaked or compromised if database is not secured properly according to industry best practices.

  • Information can be sold to 3rd party companies or governments without the knowledge of the users of the service.

  • Could add telemetry in software that is not explicitly mentioned to user, resulting in their data being collected by NodeStitch.

• Algorithms or code could be stolen from another company / researcher by NodeStitch without their consent.

• NodeStitch could not provide proper customer support to help with troubleshooting and other issues that may arise.

• Sell faulty or damaged equipment to user, or sell renewed hardware without mentioning it to customer.

Product Liability:

• NodeStitch is responsible for continuously managing software updates and patching exploits.

  • Known critical bugs in software must be prioritized, else they may result in downtime and loss of efficiency.

• Self-healing does not entail self-repairing. The network reroutes until the faulty nodes can be repaired.

  • If a company does not have trained professionals on hand to monitor and repair these nodes, NodeStitch can fail.

• If data about network is leaked, then attacker will know more about users network architecture, than if they did not use NodeStitch.

• NodeStitch algorithm may not work well when users have other applications and services running on their servers that is not made clear by NodeStitch

Social Impact:

• "End of Life" isn't as much as an issue in our product being more software oriented than hardware.

• No downtime so all the children will be inside on their computer screens.

• Large collection of user data that can put users at risk if compromised; gives NodeStitch access to data from many different types of networks for companies that can be used as leverage for the benefit of NodeStitch not the users.

  • May cause need for more transparency from companies such as NodeStitch to disclose data collection, which can result in more users turning to FOSS alternatives. (Click here find some examples of FOSS that you can use today)