A Career in Cybersecurity
What is a System Administrator?
Cybersecurity has a wide variety of careers that can cover several types of areas of social science topics that were covered in this class. System Administrators in particular, require skills that implement several concepts we have learned. To fully understand how a System Administrator, or Sysadmin depends on social science research and social science principles, we must know what a Sysadmin is and what they do. In a nutshell, a Sysadmin maintains an organizations computer system while also troubleshooting and solving various I.T. problems that staff may have(https://www.coursera.org/articles/what-is-a-system-administrator-a-career-guide).
System Administrators Social Science Concepts
System Administrators (or Sysadmins as they will henceforth be referred to as) must not only manage the technology within an organization but in most cases, they must manage and assist all the individuals that interact with it as well. While doing this, their line of work touches on a few of the social science concepts that we touched on earlier in the class. The first of which would be Parsimony. Parsimony in the science community means keeping the level of explanation as simple as possible. When dealing with the public as a Sysadmin, it’s always best practice to try to keep things as simple as possible for the public to understand. There are terms and concepts that may be familiar with someone well versed in the field of cybersecurity but keeping thing simple for the general public would make passing on information a lot easier.
Ethical Neutrality is when scientists must adhere to ethical standards when conducting research. This concept is frequently touched on by sysadmins due to the nature of information they have access to. A sysadmin that has access to company emails would be able to see what goes in and out and would have to maintain a level of professionalism and confidentiality when handling all the data with sensitive company and employee information.
Determinism is the principle of science that means that behavior or events is caused, determined or influenced by preceding events. If there is a problem within an organization, this principle almost always plays out during an investigation. For example, if there was a breach within a company, a sysadmin has to investigate. Why did this happen? Who is responsible? How did this happen? Assuming this information is discovered, the sysadmin would investigate and then find out why, who and how, thus giving them the preceding information.
This leads to one of the final social science concepts: Relativism. For these purposes Relativism essentially means that all things are related. In the world of a sysadmin, this means that everything that they touch for their daily routine is related. The Software they manage is related to the employee, who’s email is related to the server. That server is related to the firewall that the sysadmin must manage. That firewall also protects the organization from most malware. However, if it fails and the organization falls victim to a cyberattack, that’s also connected to all employees and other systems within the organization. The sysadmin will have to work their way through everyone and everything through their day-to-day routine
Conclusion
Being a System Administrator requires a lot of attention to detail and numerous interactions with people and their technology. Because of this they must rely on the aforementioned principles in order to do their job successfully. Depending on the situation at hand, they may only have to use one or two social science concepts, or if a situation I dynamic enough, it could require the use of several if not all of the concepts in order to get the job done. It’s important to also note that regardless of the level of system administrator, these concepts are still relevant and will continue to be so long as technology keeps advancing at it’s current pace.
References:
What Does A System Administrator Do?, accessed 28, November 2023, <https://www.coursera.org/articles/what-is-a-system-administrator-a-career-guide>,
System Administrator Job Description, accessed 3, December 2023
SysAdmins: System Administrator Role, Responsibilities & Salary, accessed 3, December 2023