Research is a skill that often gets underestimated in cybersecurity, but it is foundational to the work. The threat landscape evolves constantly, and staying ahead of it requires the ability to read, evaluate, and synthesize new information quickly and accurately. At the same time, so much of modern cybersecurity work — compliance, incident response, policy development — depends on evidence-based decision making, not just technical instinct. The ability to research well is what separates professionals who react from those who anticipate.

IDS 300W: Interdisciplinary Theory and Concepts was one of the most eye-opening courses I took as a cybersecurity major. The premise of the class pushed students to approach a research topic not just from one discipline, but from multiple intersecting fields simultaneously. For someone who spends most of their academic time in a technical headspace, that was genuinely refreshing and challenging in equal measure.

My research focused on healthcare cybersecurity incidents and the legal issues that follow them, a topic I titled “Code Blue: Legal Issues for Healthcare Cybersecurity Incidents.” What made this research feel meaningful was how many fields it required me to actually think from: healthcare and health sciences, law and legal liability, risk management, criminal justice, and computer science all had a seat at the table. No single lens was enough to understand the problem, and that was exactly the point.

The hardest part wasn’t finding information — it was figuring out how to connect five genuinely different disciplines into a single, coherent argument. I’m naturally more comfortable in technical analysis than in legal or policy writing, and this course pushed me well outside that comfort zone. Learning to engage seriously with legal liability frameworks and healthcare regulations, and then weave them together with the technical dimensions of a cybersecurity incident, stretched me in ways a purely technical course never could have.

The course also included a writing workshop where I developed and refined my research through structured writing exercises and visual aids, building the argument piece by piece before bringing it all together in the final term paper.

This experience reinforced something I now carry into my career in cloud security and operations: the most complex problems rarely have purely technical solutions. Understanding the legal, organizational, and human dimensions of a cybersecurity incident is just as important as understanding the technical ones. And knowing that I can step outside my technical comfort zone and still produce rigorous, well-supported work is something I’ll draw on for the rest of my career.

Work Samples

DCaplinger-IDS300W-Term-Paper-

This term paper is the culmination of my research in IDS 300W, examining the legal liability and regulatory consequences that follow healthcare cybersecurity incidents. Drawing from five intersecting disciplines — healthcare, law, risk management, criminal justice, and computer science — it argues that no single field is sufficient to understand or respond to these incidents. It demonstrates my ability to synthesize complex, cross-disciplinary information into a cohesive, well-supported research argument.

DCaplinger-Workshop-4-Explanation

This piece is a visual collage I created as part of the structured writing workshop in IDS 300W, mapping the key themes of my research through images and explaining how each one connects to the broader argument of my paper. It showcases my ability to think conceptually about a research topic and communicate complex ideas in an accessible, non-traditional format — a skill that translates directly into presenting technical information to non-technical audiences in my career.