A career that I’m interested in is information security analyst. The average salary of this career is $102,913. The main role of this career is to protect the company’s computer networks and security. Information security analysts monitor systems for security branches, investigate and report security branches, research IT security trends, create strategies to help their company stay secure, and help users with security procedures. This is one of the most common careers in the cybersecurity field. The most common certifications required for this career are CompTIA Security+, GIAC Certified Intrusion Analyst, and GIAC Certified Incident Handler.
Now that you have the background of the career I selected, I will explain how this career relates to social science. Social science provides techniques that can help the challenges in cybersecurity. Social science examines the behavior of humans and how it relates with systems. The first concept of social science I will be talking about is parsimony. Parsimony is when scientists keep their explanations as simple as possible. This can relate to cybersecurity in a lot of ways. People may ask an information security analyst, why they protect networks and security. The answer is very simple, they do it to protect people’s private information. Understanding the process of protecting these networks and security may not be as simple. But making sure humans understand your explanation is very important. This will make people research your explanation to get a full understanding. The next concept I will be discussing is Determinism. Determinism explains how behavior is caused, determined, or influenced by preceding events. When somebody commits a cybercrime, I always feel like there’s an influence. This influence may be caused by a lack of money, or thinking it’s cool because hackers get glorified. The way society is today people follow trends. The new trend is to hack and scam systems in order to manipulate people for personal gain. This is why cybersecurity is so important today. My third concept I will be discussing is empiricism. Empiricism explains how scientists can only study behavior that relates to human senses. This basically means we can’t rely on opinions to help understand cybercrime and cybersecurity. As a cybersecurity analyst you may ask why people hack. You may even know the answer to this question. But you can never fully understand the reason for that person hacking. The last concept I will be discussing is ethical neutrality. Ethical neutrality refers to how scientists must adhere to ethical standards when they conduct research. When studying ethical neutrality through cybersecurity it creates numerous ethical issues. In which people can explore and study.
Now that you understand the social science involved in cybersecurity, I will explain the challenges that arose in this field. The three biggest cybersecurity issues are ransomware extortion, cloud third party threats, and mobile malware. Ransomware breaches are faster than ever. They are harder to detect, and they can’t be fixed using backups. This makes them more effective for cybercriminals. Targeting cloud service providers allows cybercriminals to gain access to customers’ sensitive data. Mobile malware is now being used to infect mobile devices. People are using fake apps to take advantage of people’s information.
Now that I’ve explained the issues related to cybersecurity, I will explain the interactions between society and the career. Society has a prejudged view on cybersecurity. They think the field is very nerdy and geeky. Their image of a hacker is a dork sitting in a room on a computer. That’s extremely far from reality, hackers can look any way. Hacking requires a lot of practice and knowledge of computer systems. Cybersecurity is starting to become a popular field though. People are extremely interested in the hybrid job style. They also see that the field pays well and there’s always job opportunities.
Hoffman, Lance. Social Science, Computer Science, and Cybersecurity Workshop Summary Report. 2013.
Dalal, Reeshad S., et al. “Organizational Science and Cybersecurity: Abundant Opportunities for Research at the Interface.” Journal of Business and Psychology, vol. 37, no. 1, 4 Feb. 2021, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-021-09732-9.
]Posey, Clay, and Matthew Canham. A Computational Social Science Approach to Examine the Duality between Productivity and Cybersecurity Policy Compliance within Organizations.