Linda
Morales (A&M-Commerce photo by Craig Buck)
(Commerce)—Computer science is young, but already it runs our world.
It has grown so quickly that the questions on how to protect its security
have yet to be fully answered.
The U.S. is losing hundreds of billions of dollars a year from viruses,
hackers, computer corporate espionage, computer crashes, sabotage, and
other kinds of information crime.
Linda Morales at Texas A&M University-Commerce is one of the people
seeking answers. She was recently awarded a $50,000 grant by Microsoft
to prepare curriculum materials for ethics in computer security.
"There are people in this world who think it a challenge to write a virus," says
Morales. "And there are also those who hack into computers. They feel
no responsibility for the havoc they create."
Morales hopes that the materials she is creating will help to change those
attitudes.
While there is a well-acknowledged need for some way to teach ethics in
computer security because of the critical nature of the work students will
do after graduation, the established codes of ethics are for the computing
profession in general.
Morales is, however, developing a curriculum package in ethics for computer
security that can be handed to an instructor. It will introduce and deal
with the various laws that deal with privacy and digital rights, among
other topics.
This work will also be disseminated through organizations like the National
Information Assurance Training and Education Center and the Microsoft Developer
Network Academic Alliance Curriculum Repository, a digital library.
Later this year, Morales will also attend the Trustworthy Computing Curriculum
Workshop at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Wash.
Morales is the recipient of several National Science Foundation grants
for research and education in computer science.
A Rockwall resident, Morales and her husband have five adult children,
one living in Greece.