Cybersecurity Professional Career Paper: The Importance of Cloud Security Engineers
Raegan Adgerson
School of Cybersecurity, Old Dominion University
CYSE 201S: Cybersecurity and the Social Sciences
Professor Diwakar Yalpi
April 16, 2026
BLUF: This document will discuss the importance of Cloud security engineers. It will address how these engineers plan, secure, and upgrade security measures. It will also cover how important cybersecurity is to the modern world and how the social sciences affect cybersecurity.
The Importance of Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity is the backbone of our digital world. It is the practice of protecting people, data, and systems from malicious activity. As we become more connected with technology like the internet of things. We need cybersecurity more than ever. Cybersecurity threats that exploit users through phishing, vishing, and voice cloning scams have become more popular. One of the best ways to combat these threats is by using the social sciences along with cybersecurity to avoid these types of attacks.
Social Science Principles
The importance of the social sciences in cybersecurity is grave. Cybersecurity is not just about dealing with cyber attacks and dealing with frameworks. It is, at its core, a human-centric discipline. The social sciences help prevent cyberattacks by understanding the attacker. Some common theories amongst our course are Sigmund Freud’s Psychodynamic theory, cognitive theory, and behavioral theory. Based on those theories, we can determine the attacker’s behavior and why they act that way. There is also another set of identifiers that can be used to determine a person’s characteristics. This identifier is known as the Big Five personality traits or the OCEAN model.
Application of Key Concepts
In the specific career that this article is covering, cloud security engineers need to create a system that is not difficult for the next person to understand. An example of this would be if the engineer made a clunky login. The users would have a problem with this and may resort to unregulated workarounds like saving their password to their notes app. This is an obvious problem; engineers have to use social engineering to make their work user-friendly. Engineers have to apply the human factor to their job. Engineers have to understand how the human brain works. That’s why engineers have to learn about social engineering and its effects on people, because without it, people will bypass security protocols.
Marginalization
Marginalized groups often have a harder time being protected online. Women, the LGBTQ, and people of color are doxxed and harassed at a disproportionate rate compared to the majority. Tactics like Cyberstalking are used as a form of harassment. It is typically done through spamming a person via their email, phone number, etc. Cloud security engineers protect data. Their role is important when dealing with security measures and keeping people safe. An approach an engineer could use to address these problems is through multi-factor authentication. Multi-factor authentication will limit who can access a person’s information and keep them safe overall.
Career Connection to Society
Cybersecurity professionals are the backbone of our society. Infrastructure will soon depend on cyber professionals. As technology advances and becomes more cloud-connected. Cloud security engineers will protect millions of people’s data by ensuring any vulnerabilities are patched, and cyber professionals maintain risk mitigation strategies. Architecture like zero trust is also needed to keep our critical infrastructure, such as water, energy, or oil, safe.
Conclusion
In conclusion, these are the reasons why cybersecurity is so important for our infrastructure. Careers like cloud security engineers keep our data safe. By integrating the social sciences, we breathe new knowledge into cybersecurity as an interdisciplinary career path.
References
Gudimetla, S. R., & Kotha, N. R. (2018). Cloud security: Bridging the gap between cloud engineering and cybersecurity. Webology, 15(2), 321–330. http://www.webology.org/abstract.php?id=381
Quigley, K., Burns, N., & Stallard, B. (2014). The role of human behavior in cybersecurity. Technology Innovation Management Review, 4(10), 19–26. https://www.timreview.ca/article/835 Vogels, E. A. (2021, January 13). The state of online harassment. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/01/13/the-state-of-online-harassment/