J Saintcyr

12-7-2022

Introduction

Cybersecurity, also referred to as IT (information technology) security, entails the practice utilized to protect sensitive data and critical systems from digital attacks (Moallem, 2021). It includes a number of measures that are specifically designed for combating any threat against networked applications and systems, whether it originates from outside or inside of an organization.

As highlighted by Hodyr (2022), cybersecurity is a broad discipline that encompasses a range of subfields, such as data governance, risk and compliance, mobile security and endpoint protection, incident response and digital forensics, penetration testing and intrusion detection, infrastructure and network security, and application security, among others. As a result, the field includes an extensive assortment of career opportunities, including CISO (chief information security officer), security architect, cyber security engineer, malware analyst, penetration tester, computer forensic analyst, and application security engineer, among others. What is more, due to the diversity of the field, cybersecurity applies principles from various other fields, such as social science, to accomplish its goal of protecting computer networks and systems from information damage, theft, and/or disclosure as well as from service misdirection or disruption. For instance, social science principles are largely utilized in computer forensic analysis as detailed below.

Application of social science principles in computer forensics 

Social science is a discipline of science that focuses on human behavior in its cultural and social aspects. It includes a number of principles, namely; economics, political science, psychology, sociology, and cultural (or social) anthropology (Weber, 2022). Computer forensics, on the other hand, is a branch and a career in cybersecurity that deals with recovering, investigating, examining, and analyzing materials found in digital devices, typically in relation to cybercrime. Computer forensic analysts apply some of these principles in the following ways:

• For characterizing, understanding, and forecasting cyber-mediated changes in human behaviors and political, cultural, and social outcomes.
• For building social cyber infrastructures which facilitate the elemental character of society to conform to a cyber-mediated information environment which includes cyber-mediated threats, imminent or actual social cyber threats, and fluctuating cyber conditions.

Computer forensic analysts also utilize psychology techniques from social science to analyze cyber-criminal behaviors. In particular, this involves identifying and authenticating the perpetrators who execute cybercrimes or proving or disapproving of their innocence.

Conclusion

The main role of computer forensics analysts is retrieving data and gathering digital evidence in the event of a cyber-attack. They work to recover stolen, manipulated, or deleted, manipulated data. In some cases, computer forensics analysts, which can also be referred to as forensic psychologists or criminal profilers, work with law enforcement groups to create brief profiles of cybercriminals, based on common psychological traits (Raval, 2020). In this context, they analyze the cybercriminals’ behavior addressing everything from psychological theories to legal matters.

References

Hodyr, E. (2022). Cybersecurity of Nuclear Weapon Systems. Cybersecurity and Law, 6(2), 91–101. https://doi.org/10.35467/cal/146469 

Moallem, A. (2021). Cybersecurity Technologies Classification. Understanding Cybersecurity Technologies, 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781003038429-1 

Raval, H. (2020). Artificial Intelligence Forensics, Machine Learning Forensics and digital forensics. Digital Forensics (4n6) Journal. https://doi.org/10.46293/4n6/2020.02.04.05 

Weber, K. (2022). Cybersecurity and ethical, social, and political considerations: When cybersecurity for all is not on the table. Humanities and Social Sciences Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.7862/rz.2022.hss.07