Cybersecurity Professional Career Paper: Cyber Security Analyst
Student Name: Aiden Johnson
School of Cybersecurity
CYSE 201S: Cybersecurity and the Social Sciences
Instructor Name: Diwakar Yalpi
Date: 11/16/25

Cyber Security Analyst
A Cyber Security Analyst performs many tasks in their job, including planning,
implementing, and upgrading their controls and measures (Surya et al., 2023). Their role is to
monitor the network and ensure there are no security issues. The reason cybersecurity is so vital
in the modern world is that everything is online, including your personal and financial data. You
do not want to share your Social Security number or where you live with anyone. Without
cybersecurity, this data would be vulnerable, and someone could just access a company’s
database and steal your information. This situation can become a serious problem for the
company and the privacy of the people who trust the company. This paper will discuss the
cybersecurity analyst’s role, challenges women face in entering the cybersecurity field, and why
cybersecurity plays a significant role in Society.

Social Science Principles
A cybersecurity analyst has a rewarding and fun career. Their success depends not only
on their skills but also on understanding human behavior. Their job is to detect cyber-attacks
and determine why people fall for them. They do this by thinking like the person who falls for
the attacks (Dawson & Thomson, 2018). Principles such as the Big Five personality traits are
also incorporated into cybersecurity. The article discusses how this point is used to determine
where a person should work and whether they should work at a place they hate or agree with the
company’s points. For example, if someone doesn’t agree with a company’s points or hates the
company, it risks an insider attack (Dawson & Thomson, 2018). This can be worse than an
outsider attack, as all an insider has to do to steal the company’s data is to insert a flash drive into
the computer and copy the data onto it. A cybersecurity analyst has a combination of technical skills and social intelligence to understand the computer network and the people with access, to
keep it safe.
Dawson & Thomson (2018) found that situations influence how individuals act. For
example, changes in a person’s life, such as religious events or bureaucratic rules, can have a
significant effect on their freedom (Dawson & Thomson, 2018). In contrast, a military officer
will behave in the same way regardless of their role in the military. Someone without limits can
think or act differently, raising more points and questions. (Dawson & Thomson, 2018).

Application of Key Concepts
A key concept discussed was the Big Five personality traits. But it is an excellent point in
understanding why people think and do on the internet. The reason why these Big Five
personality trait concepts are talked about is that, for a cybersecurity analyst, you have to
understand these five traits as they provide a reasonable basis to start thinking about why some
fall for an attacker, which is a good point to begin thinking neutrally. As a cybersecurity analyst,
you have to think about a situation neutrally, don’t use options or what you may know, just stick
to the facts of the attack. When you start thinking neutrally, you understand what is wrong and
what needs to be fixed. Thinking neutrally means focusing on the facts rather than just guessing.
It is also argued that companies should hire people based on their values rather than their skills
(Dawson & Thomson, 2018). In other words, if you hire someone whose values match the A
company’s, it can allow people to think more neutrally, rather than someone whose values
disagree with the company’s and can’t consider both sides of the situation.

Marginalization
In relation to cybersecurity careers and marginalized groups. Women face significant
barriers when seeking jobs in STEM fields, including cybersecurity. There are a few reasons they
struggle to get jobs in cybersecurity, including social expectations, family conflicts, a lack of role
models in the field, and a lack of mentors (Giboney et al., 2023). Social stereotyping is a
problem with people thinking they can’t do the job or just not getting sponsorship. There are
many more sponsorship opportunities for women to get jobs in cybersecurity. And a more social
system for women in the field, too (Giboney et al., 2023). In addition, more companies are
working to eliminate toxic work environments for women, removing stereotypes and providing
training and skills to help them gain experience (Giboney et al., 2023).

Career Connection to Society
The ways that cybersecurity professionals contribute to the safety and stability of societal
infrastructure are that they understand how to take care of vulnerabilities. Which
vulnerabilities will always be a problem in any digital system. So, they use their skills and
knowledge of digital security to keep the risk as low as possible. Cybersecurity professionals do
not think about it in a company or society until a problem comes up. Cybersecurity professionals
have to keep the CIA-Triad in place so that, if societal infrastructures like healthcare or financial
systems get hacked, people’s data doesn’t breach confidentiality (Cavelty et al., 2023).

Conclusion
A Cyber Security Analyst plays a key role in the Cybersecurity field. They have a
combination of technical skills, domain specific knowledge, and social intelligence (Dawson,
2018). They understand how attacks occur and how people fall for them. An analyst’s goal is to
monitor the online environment and identify situations and people that make it easy to fall for
these attacks. A cybersecurity analyst has to consider both sides of an attack to understand what
is going on and to identify the facts. We also need to consider the broader side of the
cybersecurity field. Women entering the career still face challenges in the field. Women can
offer different perspectives about cybersecurity and offer different ways to approach situations.
In that case, because women think differently, it may lead to finding a better solution to the
problem. And with the digital age we live in, we have to think about cybersecurity’s overall
impact on society, as it is no longer just a company problem. Now, if an attack happens to an
organization, we can not have access to fuel, cars, houses, or food. If this happens to our banking
system, it can be devastating. Bank systems could be shut down because of an attack. Using your
bank system would not work, so the only way you would be able to buy anything would be with
cash.

References
Giboney, J.S., Anderson, B. B., Wright, G. A., Oh, S., Taylor, Q., Warren, M., &
Johnson, K. (2023). Barriers to a cybersecurity career: Analysis across career stage and
gender. Computers & Security, 132, 103316–103316.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cose.2023.103316
Dawson, J., & Thomson, R. (2018). The Future Cybersecurity Workforce: Going Beyond
Technical Skills for Successful Cyber Performance. Frontiers in Psychology, 9(9).
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00744
Cavelty, M. D., Eriksen, C., & Scharte, B. (2023). Making cyber security more resilient:
adding social considerations to technological fixes. Journal of Risk Research, 26(7), 801–814 https://doi.org/10.1080/13669877.2023.2208146
Surya, L., Patel, M., & Ravi Teja Yarlagadda. (2023). Current Trends in Information
Technology. Current Trends in Information Technology, 11(1).
https://doi.org/10.37591/ctit