Keeno Montalban
4/19/25
Narrative Essay
IDS493
An Interdisciplinary Reflection: Skills, Artifacts, and Career Readiness
Introduction
As a student that’s in an interdisciplinary cybersecurity program, I have developed a wide range of skills that reflect the technical and social aspects of the field. This reflections essay serves as a way to critically analyze selected artifacts from my ePortfolio, evaluating the development of important competencies, and going over how my academic experiences have prepared me for a cybersecurity career. Counting on interdisciplinary theories, assignments from various courses, and also additional research, this essay will showcase the holistic nature of my learning and its alignment with real-world professional expectations.
Interdisciplinary Learning and its Importance to Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity is not purely a technical field. As shown by Brey (2007) and Carely et al. (2021), it requires ethical reasoning, psychological insights, sociological awareness, and some legal knowledge along with some computer science. Throughout my entire journey, I have applied most of these interdisciplinary concepts in my research papers, article reviews, and discussion boards. For example, On my career paper titled “Why Security Analysts rely on Social Science Principles”, combines concepts from sociology and psychology to examine attacker motives and user behavior. This correlates with the interdisciplinary model of problem-solving outline within Repko’s and Szotak’s (2020) interdisciplinary Research. Which puts an emphasis on integrating knowledge from multiple disciplines to solve real-world and complex problems.
Cybersecurity correlates withs many fields, and the consequences of certain cyber incidents often reach way beyond just a technical failure. For example, ethical issues come to light when handling date breaches, while the legal frameworks have influence how organizations respond to digital threats. Moreover, the psychological tactics that are behind phishing and other social media engineering attacks demand a sort of understanding of cognitive biases and behavioral patterns. Having the ability to integrate insights from different disciplines has become important in anticipating and responding to the evolving threat landscape.

1. Career Paper Overview: Applying Social Science and Security Analysis
   In my Career paper, I went over how security analysts would use social science concepts such as, trust-building, urgency, and authority, in order to understand phishing and social engineering. Based on of the drawing on Wang et al. (2021), I showed how these psychological factors contribute to user vulnerability. This artifact shows my capacity to integrate psychology into a technical discipline, thus showing the value of interdisciplinary research in building security frameworks that consider human behavior.
   This paper has taught me to evaluate both user and attacker behavior through a much more theoretical approach. It also challenged me to go over how human behavior influences data security and showcased the need for training programs that integrate social science insights into cybersecurity practice. This type of training can contribute to building a more effective user awareness campaign and resilience against any type of social engineering.
2. Article Review: AI within Cybercrime
   Another important artifact in my ePortfolio is my review of “Understanding the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Cybercrime” (Choi et al., 2024). This piece not only deepens my understanding of AI’s potential in both criminal and protective contexts but, it also introduced me to criminological theories such as Routine Activity Theory (RAT) and Cyber-RAT framework. These theories gave me the opportunity to explore AI’s societal implications, specifically concerning marginalized communities that faced more vulnerability due to very limited cybersecurity access.
   The article review reflected some interdisciplinary thinking by combining criminology, computer science and ethics. It also aligns itself with the integrative perspective being emphasized by Szotak (2004), who makes the argument that disciplinary boundaries often limited innovation within the applied research fields.
3. Discussion Boards: Victim precipitation to Human Firewalls
   The weekly discussions boards serve as a platform for combining course materials with current events and case studies. In one particular entry, I incorporated the concept of victim precipitation to cybervictimization, going over how risky online behavior such as, weak passwords or oversharing, can contribute to being targeted. In another post, I discussed the “human firewall” emphasizing the role of education and behavior modification in reducing cyber threats. These perspectives are both grounded sociological and psychological principles and reflect the soft skills that employers value in today’s security analysts (Karanja & Rosso, 2017).
4. Journal Entries: Ethical Problems and Digital Forensics
   My Journal has served as a space for deeper self-reflection. For example, in an entry about digital forensics, I went over Davin Tao’s TEDx talk and his emphasis on combing technical knowledge along with an understanding of human behavior. In another entry about DNA privacy, I went on to discover ethical dilemmas associated with genetic data, referring to Rizkallah (2018). This journal entries help showcase my ability to approach cybersecurity not just as a science, but also as a discipline with ethical and societal implications.
   I also explored some economic and social science theories through some breach notification case studies, which basically allowed to see economics (agency theory, behavioral economics), and sociology (Social contact theory) correlate with cybersecurity risk management. This type of perspective has helped me in ways of understanding how some organizations would weigh the costs of proactive protection compared to reactive damage control.
5. IDS 300W Influence: Building Interdisciplinary Arguments
   My foundational IDS 300W played a part in teaching me how to set up and structure arguments using interdisciplinary research. I learned how to identify disciplinary assumptions and synthesize with other viewpoints. This type of training was shown in my term paper on workplace deviance and cyber technology, where I recreated Table 5.1 from Repko and Szotak to identify disciplinary insights from various fields such as psychology, business, and law. This assignment has taught he how to construct integral frameworks that are both research-based and solution-oriented.
   Bridging Academics and Career: Paths to Professional Readiness
   Referring to the NICE Cybersecurity Workforce Framework (NIST, 2020), Cybersecurity roles require specific competencies in communication, analysis, and ethics in addition to technical aptitude. My academic experiences has allowed me to prepare in the following ways:

• Analytical Thinking: Through some of the research-based assignments I’ve been assigned such as the article reviews, and my paper on workplace deviance, I’ve showcased my ability to analyze threats from different perspectives.
• Ethical Judgement: By going ovr AI, DNA privacy, and Digital digital forensics, I’ve built a strong foundation in ethical reasoning.
• Communication: Assignments such as discussion boards and journal entries strengthened my ability to communicate my ideas and opinions to other students in a clear, accessible language.
• Adaptability: Assignments based on the emerging threats such as deepfakes, ransomware, and phishing and have trained me to think a lot more critically in such a rapidly evolving field.
  Moreover, some of the journal reflections on the “human firewall” and social media disorder assessments has improved my self-awareness and resilience, traits that are really important for careers involved in threat response and user education.

Future Career Plans: Using Interdisciplinary Knowledge
My career path is leaning towards the roles of a Cybercrime Analyst, Penetration Tester, and Security Architect. These positions often require technical skills of coding, vulnerability testing, and network defense, and also, benefiting from soft skills such as ethical judgement, communication and a deep understanding of human behavior. As being suggested by Brey (2007), an effective cybersecurity policy must be able to address not only the technology portion, but also the societal conditions that helps shape its use.
I plan on to acquire certifications such as CEH (Certified Ethical Hacker) and OSCP (Offensive Security Certified Professional), CompTIA Security + and A+, to lay a foundation that I’ve gained through coursework. I hope to contribute to research withing cybersecurity ethics and AI bias, also continuing the interdisciplinary inquiry that my academic experience has inspired.
Conclusion
My experience in interdisciplinary education has prepped me to enter the cybersecurity field with a very well-rounded perspective. By engaging in subjects such as psychology, sociology, law, ethics, and computer science have developed a set of tools that allow me to analyze and solve complex problems. The artifacts in my ePortfolio such as career papers, article reviews, discussion posts and journal entries demonstrate the integration of knowledge across multiple disciplines. More importantly, they show my growth and as a scholar and practitioner.
Within a world where technology that is always evolving rapidly and threats become a lot more complex, interdisciplinary training provides us the flexibility and depth that is needed to succeed. My academic experience has not only shaped my understanding of cybersecurity but also it has given me the skills to become an adaptable, ethical, and effective professional.

References
Brey, P. (2007). Ethical aspects of information security and privacy. In Security, Privacy, and Trust in Modern Data Management (pp. 21-36).
Carley, K. M., Cervone, G., Agarwal, N., & Liu, H. (2021). Social cyber-security: An emerging scientific discipline. Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, 27(1), 1–20.
Choi, S., Dearden, T., & Parti, K. (2024). Understanding the use of artificial intelligence in cybercrime. International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence & Cybercrime, 7(2), 1–3. https://vc.bridgew.edu/ijcic
Karanja, E., & Rosso, M. A. (2017). The role of soft skills in cybersecurity. Journal of The Colloquium for Information Systems Security Education (CISSE), 5(1), 1–7.
NIST. (2020). NICE Cybersecurity Workforce Framework (NIST Special Publication 800-181 Revision 1). National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Repko, A. F., & Szostak, R. (2020). Interdisciplinary Research: Process and Theory (3rd ed.). SAGE Publications.
Rizkallah, J. (2018, November 29). Hacking humans: Protecting our DNA from cybercriminals. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2018/11/29/hacking-humans-protecting-our-dna-from-cybercriminals/?sh=31cfac3a5287
Szostak, R. (2004). Classifying Sciences: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Theory and Research. Springer.
Wang, Z., Zhu, H., & Sun, L. (2021). Social engineering in cybersecurity: Effect mechanisms, human vulnerabilities, and attack methods. IEEE Access, 9, 11895–11908.