Watch this video. As you watch the video, think about how the description of the cybersecurity analyst job relates to social behaviors. Write a paragraph describing social themes that arise in the presentation.

In the video, cybersecurity analysts are classified under many different career tiles and names, but typically have the same job responsibilities. As an analyst, you work as part of a team to protect an organization’s hardware, software, and networks from any threatening cybersecurity incident. Cybersecurity analysts work on both ends of Incident response/risk management and use their security expertise to continuously evolve an organization’s cybersecurity posture. It is important to note that cybersecurity is a massive field involving different subject niches and complex communication technologies to power our digital world. Therefore, as technology becomes more interdependent with society, more cybersecurity professionals will be needed. However, cybersecurity is a multidisciplinary field and involves other critical disciplines/social themes in the cybersecurity field such as criminology, physiologically, sociology, etc. Some of the social issues that are interdependent between cybersecurity analysts and the social themes are described below:

Political science is the study of politics, political decision making, and connection to human affairs. While cybersecurity analysts may not be totally connected to political science, they work under the umbrella of their respective organizations, and their profession/expertise assists officials in making those political decisions. For example, TikTok is the biggest social media company that has registered over 150 million Americans to the platform. With recent political debate, many legislators are pushing to ban the platform for the company’s ties towards the China Communist Party. Cybersecurity analysts consider the total amount of risk/threats TikTok poses to Americans and educate policymakers to make those necessary changes to protect our nation’s security.

Criminology focuses on the study of crime and criminal behavior that is relevant to cybersecurity as well. From a criminology standpoint, this principle helps outline what actions of cyber activities are considered a crime that hold criminal consequences towards the perpetrator. Cybersecurity analysts analyze the amount of risk or threat a cyber-attack poses on organizations. Depending on their approach and severity of the risk will help determine how severe the legal consequences would be needed to prosecute the adversary. Again, cybersecurity analysts use their cybersecurity expertise to educate judicial officials/criminologists to take these critical factors into account when determining laws and regulations about cybercrime.

Economics is another critical field of the cybersecurity analyst’s profession. While it may be obvious to patch any specific risk or threat that poses to an organization, it is important for cybersecurity analysts to take a dynamic look into the Return-On-Investment with their action. Working in the private sector, some organizations will take the risk if they are limited on financial resources or if taking down the service/system offline depletes their ROI during operations. Cybersecurity analysts must understand those economic problems and must correctly advise those executives. Rather, this principle is not as prominent in federal agencies, as the financial budget is much greater, and agencies prioritize threat prevention first.