Nicholas Robertson
Cybersecurity 201s final paper
There are many job options out there for someone who is planning on pursuing a majoring in the field of cybersecurity. The cybersecurity career I would choose to pursue would be a digital forensic analyst, so that I can contribute in solving crimes. While this job does require a high level of technical analysis, such as having extensive knowledge in the legal and computer science field, it also requires a great deal of softer cybersecurity skills as well. Soft skills like communication and writing are essential for a field like this. This paper will be focusing on the different ways a digital forensic analyst uses social science research and principles to conduct their work, along with understanding how this career field relates to marginalized people/society as a whole.
Social science research is a big contributor to digital forensic analysis, as research methods like archive research, field studies and even psychological experiments to see what type of person might be committing these crimes. Archival research will be used to look through an individual’s metadata to see what sites that individual had gone on and to see when they went onto said site. This is because computer systems “retain vast quantities of information-either intentionally, in the form of log files and archives, or inadvertently, as a result of software that does not cleanly erase memory and files.”(Simson L. Garfinkel, 2013). Field studies such as honeypots to lure the individuals into grasp of the federal agents looking into them, as well as social engineering attacks like phishing emails that can be loaded with a virus that can root though an individual’s computer and see what they can dig up is an important part of their process and it’s one of the ways they end up catching individuals as well. It is important that social engineering is not left out of the evidence collecting process as “the need for social engineering to understand the links between criminals or internal complicity relationships cannot be ruled out.” (Natalia Campana, 2022). It’s important to dig deeper in a lot of these situations, because for the most part there are always deeper motives to the actions of criminals.
Social science principles are used with digital forensics as it is used to actively understand the motives that criminals might have to commit such crimes to begin with. As digital forensics, you have to study the activities that the person has taken from website to website to firmly grasp the mental space of the criminal. For instance a person’s electronics could be confiscated by the police on suspension of possessing child pornography, and so the analysis comes in and takes a look into their drivers and computer history. They find incriminating evidence of child porn on their hard drive, but they also find a list of names and contact numbers not previously known by the police and organize them under the titles of sellers and buyers. This would open up a whole new investigation looking into the people on said list, along with additional charges added, such as possession and distribution of illegal material. Which intern could lead to the police uncovering a human trafficking ring, which can lead to the rescue of a ton of woman and children.
Digital forensic analysis is pivotal in the apprehension of criminals promoting violence towards a marginalized group of individuals. They excel in collecting evidence on said criminals so they can be tried in the court of law. This apprehension of criminals will help marginalized people and the general public stay safe depending on the crime that these people commit. To give an example, let’s say that the police or the FBI confiscates the electronics from a suspected neo-Nazi because of the extreme rhetoric that they were using on social media in an attempt to make a call to action from a bunch of other like minded individuals. The electronics are then handed over to the analysis, so that “investigators can gain access to a modern and diverse subset of sources of data, including demographic location, photographs, contract list, geo-locations, and text messages.” (Mohammed I. Alghamdi, 2020). The analysis goes through and finds evidence of a crime and it’s relayed in a report to the prosecutor and the suspect is found guilty and is jailed. The extremist is sent to jail for promoting and planning to commit acts of violence towards a minority group and the minority group can feel safe in going on with their lives like normal with one less worry they have to deal with.
Digital forensic analysis is a genuinely interesting career path to take and being a part of an operation to take down a criminal is enticing. The work done can have a huge impact in helping society and keeping people safe and I would love to be a part of that. The main point to take away is that while this digital forensics can be very technical and heavy in terms of math and engineering, a large amount of this work in this field revolves around soft skills like writing and presenting. In fact if information is presented and is not clearly conveyed within the document, the entire case could be compromised. It takes a fine balance of both skill sets to successfully get the job done.
Work cited:
https://www.freelancermap.com/blog/what-does-digital-forensics-analyst-do/
https://www.americanscientist.org/article/digital-forensics
https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/76151