Introduction
One major career path taken by students of cybersecurity is a cyber security analyst. Cyber security analysts are responsible for auditing company devices and network infrastructure to prevent, mitigate, and respond to attacks in the company’s cyber systems. Salaries for cybersecurity analysts are typically in the range between $70,000 and $120,000. Generally, professionals in this career possess at least a bachelor’s degree in cybersecurity.
Links to Social Science Principles
The field of cybersecurity is largely a social science. The majority of threats in cyberspace are social engineering attacks, attacks by which the perpetrator attempts to manipulate users into unknowingly allowing access to devices or networks. As such, the role of a cybersecurity analyst is to determine vulnerabilities inside a network and its users, and to use this information to minimize risk to the business’ digital assets. This is done via audits of company devices, brainstorming of vulnerabilities, and patching of exploits. The most important factor of cybersecurity is an analyst’s ability to predict the actions and motives of a perpetrator – this is an overlap between sociology, psychology and economic sciences, because the perpetrator’s motives are almost always both social and economic in nature (Bandari, 2023). However, monitoring is required in order to recognize and respond to an active threat. This monitoring brings an ethical discussion – how much monitoring can we do before it becomes too intrusive or unethical?
Daily Life of Cybersecurity Analysts
Cybersecurity analysis is about predicting the angles of attack utilized by cybercriminals. As such, it is a research-intensive field. A cybersecurity analyst’s day is often spent monitoring network activity in search of anomalies, doing research regarding new threats, and ensuring that company devices are kept up to date and that exploits/vulnerabilities are patched.
How Cybersecurity Analysts are perceived by Society
Cyber analysts are an underappreciated profession. It is seen as a money sink; the benefits of cybersecurity analysts are not seen physically, so the money seems “sunk” into a “meaningless” profession. Businesses are reluctant to spend money on cybersecurity analysis until after they’ve fallen victim to an attack, which causes them to understand the true risk of unprotected systems. According to “Cyber Risk and Cybersecurity: a systematic review of data availability”, around 1 trillion dollars were estimated to be lost in 2020 alone, so it is clear that cybersecurity analysts are a very important profession to employ as a company (Cremer, 2022). Additionally, cybercrime does not only affect businesses; end users are affected by leakage of data and compromise of enterprise systems. Companies collect and maintain vast amounts of data about customers, so if their systems are compromised, a lot of dangerous info becomes available to malicious individuals regarding customers.
Marginalized Groups and Cybersecurity
A vast amount of cybercrime goes unreported or unresolved. Victims of cybercrime are often pushed aside in favor of solving physical crimes, as successfully catching and punishing cybercriminals is a difficult affair, with criminals often residing in separate nations from their victims. This marginalization of victims is a major reason for cyber analysts being in demand, as by preventing and mitigating cybercrime, we also reduce the amount of cybercrime that goes unresolved.
Conclusion
The most common cybersecurity profession is that of cybersecurity analysis, where professionals audit businesses and networks to prevent and mitigate possibility of attacks. This profession deals in social engineering to predict and prevent cyber attacks. It is a lucrative field, with many opportunities to acquire wealth so long as the professional is willing to constantly research and adapt to new threats.
Resources
“Protecting Information with Cybersecurity” Frank Cremer 1, Barry Sheehan https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8853293/
“The Fundamental Principles of Social Sciences” Medani P. Bhandari, https://armgpublishing.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/BEL_2_2023_8.pdf
“Protecting Information with Cybersecurity” John M Borky 3,✉, Thomas H Bradley, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7122347/