Julian Pablo
CYSE201S
Professor Trinity Woodbury
Due Date: October 4, 2026
Cybercrime Investigator Career Paper
Intro
Similarly to real-world investigators, cybercrime investigators gather evidence and clues in order to track down criminals that commit cybercrime. While the process does heavily utilize technical tools in the cyberspace, cybercrime investigators still rely on social sciences to understand the full picture of their field.
Principles
One of the big principles in social sciences that can relate to this job is relativism. It essentially means different systems/factors will affect another system. One of the key roles of a cybercrime instigator is figure out why did the perpetrator commit the crime. “A range of factors, such as a high rate of unemployment, a lack of legitimate economic opportunities, a prevalence of cybercrime subculture, a lack of strong cybercrime laws, and a high level of corruption, have motivated them to obtain illegal wealth through cybercrime”(Chen et al, 2023). All of these societal factors play a role in possibly incentivizing actors to commit the crime.
Another aspect that cybercrime investigators must uphold is ethic neutrality. It’s the idea of any research/investigation staying ethical. Investigators have to always consult with legal and ethical experts to make sure their procedures are meeting these standards (Nicolás-Sánchez and Castro-Toledo, 2024). This helps investigations not overstep in the gathering of personal data of innocent civilians.
Concepts
There are many concepts from social sciences that affect the role of cybercrime investigators. First is “Psyber Security” where the application of psychology is needed for cybersecurity. This applies to the role of cybercrime investigators getting inside the head of the criminals. It helps identify the motivations and narrow down the list of possible suspects. For example, if motivation is identified as revenge, then it narrows down the list to a few disgruntled employees in a company.
Human factor integration is also essentially what the process of investigations are. It’s a combination of using technical tools while identifying the certain behaviors and motivations of the criminal. “In order to provide adequate support for cybercrime investigators, there needs to be a better understanding of the challenges they face at both technical and socio-technical levels”(Nouh et al, 2019).
Victimology is another crucial part of the process. It’s very helpful for an investigator to understand why a victim may be targeted, and it paints a full picture of the cyber scene of the criminal and victim side.
Lastly, as previously mentioned things like unemployment and poor economic state are called social forces that affect someone’s experience. To improve cybersecurity, approaches to social, political, and economical issues that cause cybercrimes are needed “(Chen et al, 2023).
Marginalization
In the field of cybercrime investigation there will be issues with certain marginalized groups. There are those who feel not heard by authorities due to lack of communication and direction after reporting the crime. It’s been reported of experiences of a cybercrime getting reported to the cops but due to lack of knowledge of the cyberspace action either gets delayed or reported to the wrong department (Nouh et al, 2019). This could lead to cybercrimes not being passed to cybercrime investigators in a timely manner.
There is also the issue of people apart of the digital divide. Not everyone has the same technology access and especially education on proper use. This leads to some areas where if a cybercrime occurs there may not be available resources like investigators to help out.
As mentioned before, it’s important to understand why people may be a target for cybercrime. That means hate crimes as motivation for cybercriminals to hack is also a very likely cause cyber investigators will come across within the cyberspace.
Society
Cybercrime investigation will always be intertwined with society. The state of society is what can motivate a person to turn towards cybercrime or make a victim vulnerable. Investigators rely on many technical tools in order to track the criminals, but it’s important to take into consideration the perspective of the people on these tools. “The involvement of citizens and communities in assessing the societal impact of security technologies is essential to enhance the quality of research and public confidence”(Nicolás-Sánchez and Castro-Toledo, 2024). The investigation of cybercrime may be within the cyber space, but the most important sources of evidence and understanding will come from the people.
References
Nicolás-Sánchez, Alejandro, and Francisco J. Castro-Toledo. “Uncovering the social impact of digital steganalysis tools applied to cybercrime investigations: a European Union perspective.” Crime Science 13.1 (2024): 11. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40163-024-00209-7#Abs1
Nouh, Mariam, et al. “Cybercrime investigators are users too! Understanding the socio-technical challenges faced by law enforcement.” arXiv preprint arXiv:1902.06961 (2019). https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.06961
Chen, Shuai, et al. “Exploring the global geography of cybercrime and its driving forces.” Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 10.1 (2023): 71. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-023-01560-x