Cybersecurity Issues in Crowdsourcing Engineering Initiatives

Cybersecurity Issues in Crowdsourcing Engineering Initiatives As crowdsourced engineering-related projects become more wide-spread and global, we must pay attention to cybersecurity issues that can emerge. Sharing data is fundamental to crowdsourcing, and that requires attention to protecting privacy. This issue is exacerbated if participants use common technologies, e.g., cell phones, that are used for other purposes and may be subject to cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Cybersecurity issues can arise during recruitment, by which social media is a prevalent tool, to projects in that bad actors can solicit input into malicious and false projects. Furthermore, the results of crowdsourced engineering projects may provide foundations for policy and legislation; thus, integrity must be maintained and bad actors prevented from manipulating data and/or results. Governance of crowdsourced projects must include attention to cybersecurity issues, regardless of their scope and scale. The exploitation of cybersecurity vulnerabilities are often result from ethical lapses. Just as engineers respect engineering professional ethics, so must citizens who participate in gathering data. In this paper, we will share a taxonomy that identifies how professional engineering ethics are represented and brought to life in 21st century crowdsourced engineering projects, which include commercial initiatives from Anheuser-Busch, Nokia, and FedEx as well as research initiatives like the Digital Humanitarian Network, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, and KeralaRescue.