Generally speaking, Cybersecurity as a career is an interdisciplinary collection of technically, academically and research focused subject disciplines. It is a career relevant to secure the social and technological domain of human life. Even though this career depends on software and hardware technologies, understanding human behavior to the different social dynamics in securing systems, data and information is essential. Social science provides this career a cognitive processing aspect by which an individual can draw disciplinary perspective to understand complex problems. Social science disciplines which can necessary be tenets of this career are Criminology, Sociology, Economics, Psychology, political science, and leadership. Cybersecurity careers have one of the best job opportunities out there in the job market. In the US Cybersecurity have zero percent unemployment rates with more than half a million job opening as of the year 2021. It is one of the good paying technology jobs as well. Cybersecurity career carries many job titles. Such are Cyber Security Analyst, Software Developer, software Engineer, Systems Engineer, Cyber Security Manager, Cybersecurity Administrator, Network Engineer, Network Architect, Cyber Security Consultant, Systems Administrator, Cyber Security Specialist, Cybersecurity Technician, Vulnerability Analyst, Penetration Tester, digital forensics, cyber policy maker, cyber risk manager, and cybercrime researcher.
One of the Cybersecurity careers which professionals depend on social science research to conduct their job is cybercrime researcher. A cybercrime research career combines social science ability and training to develop a structured research by obtaining, evaluating, organizing, and maintaining information within security and data protocols. It uses critical thinking, problem solving and team work skills to identify and evaluate complex cybercrimes. It is semi-independent careers which can allow a researcher produce a concise, documented and assessed report in an organized manner. In general, even though females are underrepresented in overall Cybersecurity career, in Cybercrime research career because it demonstrates many social science disciplines, which more women graduates are than men, more women Cybercrime researchers are likely to enter to the work force relatively to other Cybersecurity careers out there. Cybercrime research career focuses in the critical piece of cyber domain, the people, to unlock many entwined crime patterns and provide guideline solutions for future preventions. It highlights that the end user is the single most exploitable vulnerability in the area of cyber defense. Cybercrime researchers tend to be sympathetic, rationally decisive, more investigative, and less trusting than other IT experts. They prefer to be first investigators and second technical expertise. They are highly motivated to go down to the granular level for they believe that “looking doesn’t mean seeing” therefore capturing the smallest details is essential. They are objective and have good memory to combine multiple clues as well as to memorize facts, dates, names and places.
Cybersecurity Analyst career also depend on social science and demonstrate use of logic and interpreting analysis to evaluate, synthesize and interpret multiple sources of information mainly based on social science disciplines. In Cybersecurity analytical career for example, Psychology as a field of social science participates as a cognitive support in refining and reaching a sound and logical judgments and decisions. For example, A Cybersecurity analysts need to analyze all of the possibilities which an employee can be exploited by a malicious code and convey and explain the message to employees and leaders in plain English. This career also requires a professional to be an excellent verbal and written, legal, political and intelligence articulated communicator to the point of explaining and briefing his/her findings. Proficient understanding of Security’s role in the overall structure of the organization which the professional works is important in this career as well. Because of some factors like, discouragement of majoring in certain fields, non-preparation in high school for a future career, few technology classes in high school and misconception of computing in general, Cybersecurity analyst career compared to of all other careers are underrepresented in females and minority groups. One estimate suggests that just 3% of Cybersecurity information analysts in the U.S. are African American and 11 percent of all Cybersecurity workers are women which Cybersecurity Analysts are much less than this figure. Cybersecurity analysts are decisive, rational, assertive and highly self-efficient professionals. They are intellectually imaginative and creative, taking into account all the possibilities to unveil the facts to formulate conclusions. They have a natural desire and tendencies to learn new tactics.
The shares of these two careers to the minority and marginalized communities are very low compared to other disciplines of science. Even though the general study on diversity of career jobs suggests that diversity promotes organizational growth, diversifying these careers has not been successful. The rational is that if these careers are dominated by a certain group of race, which lacks diversity of minority group for example, advantages like better decision making gained from different mindset, organizational growth, fair work environment, employees satisfaction, attracting new employees, global relations are hard to attained. Research in this matter shows that diversity and inclusion on executive teams increases financial performance of businesses. When marginalized careers professionals serve the same marginalized community they came from, these careers provide better safeguard against the threats that might target women and minorities .
Reference:
- -Dalziel, Henry”Introduction to US Cybersecurity Career”, 2015, Elsevier Inc.
https://books.google.co.za/books?hl=en&lr=&id=1TJOBQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=cybersecurity+careers&ots=Iltc1Oe-pZ&sig=vt4TnSU9X1uAKQtzcBcqF5nn3lg&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=cybersecurity%20careers&f=false2.- Sharmistha Bagchi-Sen; H.R. Rao; Shambhu J. Upadhyaya; Sangmi Chai, “Women in Cybersecurity: A Study of Career Advancement”, 02 Feb, 2010, IT Professional.
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/5403174
3. -Bhattacherjee, A. (2012). Social science research: Principles, methods, practices
http://repository.out.ac.tz/504/1/Social_Science_Research-_Principles_Methods_and_Practices.pdf