Select four other majors offered by ODU and explain how those majors relate to cybersecurity.
- Applied Mathematics: Applied Mathematics is the study of equations and proofs. This field of mathematics assists the cybersecurity area by studying mathematical algorithms to better understand things like cryptography standards used to protect data from unauthorized access, or big data analytics. An example of cryptography is the Hill Cypher that uses linear algebra to turn plain text information into a secure cypher and then uses the same algorithm to return the cypher information back into plaintext.
- Psychology: Psychology is the study of human behavior. This relates to cybersecurity because human behavior is one of the driving forces behind criminal activity in the cyber world. By studying the human actions behind the decisions made to be a criminal in the cyber world versus an offender in the physical world (like bank robbers, car jackers, drug dealers) it could effectively help curb the outlandish cybercriminal activity we see today through understanding the problem.
- Criminology: Criminology is the study of crime and laws that are meant to prevent harm. This major relates to cybersecurity because it answers queries like identifying if current local, state, national, and international laws used are curbing cybercrime; examining if the current laws being enforced are appropriate, equitable, and enforceable; looking to see if new laws need to be created; what are the penalties if these laws are broken?
- Sociology: Sociology is the study of the factors of a social society that includes race, gender, religion, age education level, etc. Social factors are another root cause of why cybercriminals perform these actions. Several considerations promote cyber-criminal behavior are like international governments like China, Iran, Democratic Republic of Korea, and Russia backing, funding, and protecting local cyber groups so they have no fear of repercussions, raised in a low-income environment (need to steal to live), even the thrill of getting away with it (it’s fun and entertaining or to prove they are smarter) just to name a few reasons. By studying the social causes and its effects, it can help identify the social disparities which affected cybercriminals or groups of criminals to choose this life.