Cybersecurity Professional Career Paper: An Insight to Cybersecurity Analysts
Student Name: Jared Amonoo-Harrison
School of Cybersecurity, Old Dominion University
CYSE 201S: Cybersecurity and the Social Sciences
Instructor Name: Diwakar Yalpi
Date: April 16, 2026
Introduction
A cybersecurity analyst is a professional within the IT department who is responsible for the protection of an organization or a company’s networks, computer systems, and data from the threats of cyber attackers and unauthorized third parties. This career has become highly important withing the modern world organizations such as healthcare, finance, government, and even education since they are heavily reliant on technology and digital systems. Cybersecurity analysts take it upon themselves to understand how humans think, how they behave, the actions they take, and they gather information for decisions in order to respond quickly and prevent attacks successfully. This paper examines how social science principles are used within a cybersecurity analysts’ career, the key concepts that are applied to the job, how cybersecurity affects marginalized groups, and how the profession impacts society as a whole.
Social Science Principles and Career Role
Social science research is crucial in cybersecurity because majority of cyberattacks are the result of exploitation of the human psychology and behavior. A common attack method, phishing, is used to manipulate individuals into interacting with suspicious links or giving away sensitive information by taking advantage of emotions such as curiosity, urgency, pity, or fear. Social science principles come into play by highlighting human factors and relationships that cause security behaviors. Human-computer interaction is needed for designing security systems that understand whether something being done is going against protocol and preventing it. Professionals develop phishing simulations to help test employees or those learning to be able to recognize and avoid attacks. They are able to identify the attempts of manipulation and shut them down before they can go further.
Application of Key Concepts
A key concept is the CIA Triad. Confidentiality protects information from unauthorized access. Integrity ensures data is accurate and not altered improperly. Availability ensures systems and data are accessible when needed. Professionals use the CIA Triad to assess organizational risk by identifying threats to attempted breaches of data and for information accuracy. Some techniques are encryption, multi-factor authentication, intrusion detection, and backups. These are some of the things used to make sure the CIA triad is applied within cybersecurity.
Marginalization and Cybersecurity
When it comes to marginalized groups, cybersecurity plays a big part. For people that have a low-income, there is a sort of digital rift. They don’t have the most secure devices, and their software isn’t always up to date. That makes them an easier target to scams, identity theft and even fraud. Elderly people are also targeted heavily due to their lesser knowledge about technology since majority are used to everything being done in person rather than through a screen. The cybersecurity field responds through awareness campaigns, public education, policy enforcement, threat detection, access controls, and two-step verification.
Career Connection to Society
Cybersecurity analysts contribute to safekeeping of different things such as financial systems and healthcare networks. For finance, they monitor attempts at fraud and make sure transactions are secured and go through effectively. For healthcare, they protect patient records and maintain the availability of the systems, which is very essential for patient safety and trust. Some public cybersecurity policies include data protection laws such as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). These help improve trust privacy and accountability since an organization is required to protect data and report and incident that happens.
Conclusion
The role of a cybersecurity analyst goes beyond just completing technical tasks for computer systems. Social sciences are a big part of it with principles such as psychology, sociology and ethics. Overall, cybersecurity analysts play a vital role in protecting society’s digital infrastructure and ensuring modern life will be safe and stable.
Scholarly Journal Articles
Source 1: The Human Factors in Cyber Security: Strategies for Effective Defense
Source 2: Improving Cybersecurity Awareness in Underserved Populations – CLTC UC Berkeley Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity
Source 3: What is the CIA Triad and Why is it important? | Fortinet