Journal entry 1

After reviewing the NICE workforce framework Text, I realized that product support management stands out more to me than the other choices. After reviewing what it means to be such, I get to do a little of everything within my career that fits my personality. I would be able to Dabble in budgeting, management, and product enforcement. With handling multiple different activities, I can infer that I wouldn’t get bored of doing the same things throughout my career in the cybersecurity field. The cyber security legal advice Area seems stressful. As technology grows, the laws around it change consistently. The thought of always taking notice rather than being told by someone specializing in this area doesn’t sound easy. I would have to follow the new rules and regulations accurately. While also having to essentially forget old rules that may now go against The new regulations. Mentally, it doesn’t seem easy to keep up with consistently. I could see myself becoming a liability to the company rather than an asset.

Journal entry 2

The principles all relate to cybersecurity because they all play a part in the total operation of cybersecurity. These principles make the foundation of cybersecurity, like parsimony, which makes the thought and focus of security systems simple and cost-efficient. Then we have empiricism, which helps create better cyber security programs as they use past system threats to create things to prevent those same attacks from happening again. Another important principle is objectivity, which means having evidence to conclude factual data without bias and assumptions successfully. An important principle would be determinism because its objective is to know how the actions taken would turn out. For example, would there be any security breaches if we continued with said action? It would be a cause-and-effect relationship. In conclusion, I can understand how the principles play crucial roles in cyber security.

Journal entry 3

With the information available online, researchers can benefit in many ways. One significant way is to use the information to create programs to prevent the same breach from happening again. Data breaches can be devastating for a company as they release valuable information, using history and how the breach occurred before researchers can implement new policies to regulate further and prevent the same results. Another way this information can be useful would be how educational it is for someone like myself within the cybersecurity field of study to have indirect knowledge of the trials I may face within the field. I can use the information given to further understand how the data was corrected and may even use some of the strategies to succeed in protecting my information alongside my employers. 

Journal entry 4

After I reviewed Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, I felt pretty confident in my knowledge of how it relates to my use of Technology. With my basic needs met with Technology, I feel secure using the Internet. Safety and being online go hand in hand with me. I’m not on a website where I think my information is at risk of falling into the wrong hands, and I don’t go online to share all my information. Therefore, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat give me no ill sense of security as I use them correctly. My psychological needs for Technology may not be the best. I’m only 20 years old, so Technology grew as I grew, so I’ve only become accustomed to using it. I am pretty educated in Technology, so I use different social platforms daily. In doing so, I’ve created a routine where if I go a day without using my technology, I would almost be miserable, but that’s not to say I can’t go without it. I would have to learn to be without Technology and do my favorite things outside of Technology to keep myself busy. When it comes to the self-fulfillment needs within the hierarchy, I can’t say that it is all I need to feel satisfied. Yet I can say that Technology helps me calm myself after a long work day. I’m not just a person who lives mostly online, but if I can’t fulfill my need to speak with others like family and friends, I just get on my device and enjoy time with myself.

Journal entry 5

1. For Money, as the article states, I can understand how cybercriminals have immediate needs that may cause the illegal route. I may disagree with ever doing anything illegally, but I can appreciate someone who does it to survive.
2. Revenge: emotions are one of the hardest things to control. When in the heat of the moment, you do things to cause pain as they caused you. I may not agree with “revenge porn.” but I do agree that when someone causes you emotional discomfort, we as humans resort to wrong actions to hurt them back. I can at least find this reason more logical than the others.
3. Entertainment: As the passage states, he did this for pure enjoyment and made a pretty penny doing so. I agree that doing it for money is the top logical reason, and I can understand why with people like Tom, who makes 700 million dollars.
4. Boredom: While the passage discusses online child grooming, I find that portion unacceptable. But children are just smaller human beings. They have the brain as well as the rest. When it comes to boredom, we all would instead do something that brings some form of enjoyment than not. Unfortunately, these children often get groomed, but I can say that boredom is a logical reason for them to be online, as it brings them some form of enjoyment.
5. Multiple reasons: This passage listed reasons such as money, economics, and technical skill, which I agree are logical, but it also listed reasons like ego, which I disagree with as logical.
6. Political: While I agree with taking a stand for your beliefs, there are correct ways to bring awareness to your cause. Hacking and becoming a cybercriminal is not one of those correct ways.
7. Recognition: Without even observing the passage, I would disagree with its statements simply because using something illegal like cybercrime for social validation makes absolutely no sense.

Journal entry 6

Fake websites are a rising issue, as scammers are making them look more identical to the original as time passes. They often use this scamming method to easily lure people into sharing their accurate information and putting themselves at risk. While they can make it look convincing, there are key things they can’t accurately replicate that would help identify these fakes. Most notable would be the search engine. They often don’t use the actual website’s name. For example, if you get an email from Navy Federal telling you to log in, the engine domain won’t say navyfederal.org. Often, it says something completely unalike. In further research on what ways to identify a website’s falseness, an article by Arua says to “Look for a padlock symbol, Use a website checker or safe browsing tools, Look for poor spelling, design issues, and other red flags, and Check the domain age.” All these steps can be of vital use in protecting against the rising threat of fake websites

Work cited:

Toohil, Ryan. “How to Identify Fake Websites: 11 Warning Signs to Know.” Aura, Aura, 15 Jan. 2025, www.aura.com/learn/how-to-identify-fake-websites. 

Raath, Sonja. “List of Scam Websites to Avoid in 2025.” ExpressVPN Blog, 14 Jan. 2025, www.expressvpn.com/blog/list-of-scam-shopping-websites/?srsltid=AfmBOopUTGZEF4sm7QU7c9BC8NN_zT08MhLgY55A4iufeVOCsD4MRIYC. 

Journal entry 7

1. Photo 15: 

When the email from “Navy Federal” doesn’t come from the official Navy federal email.

• What’s going through my mind is why they would email me about something urgent when they usually send a letter. Also, why does the sender’s email address seem entirely random? It looks completely fake and not official.

2. Photo 13:

When my grandmother makes her banking passwords, her name plus 123, I must shake it up.

• The older generation does not understand how easily hackers will try to guess your information and often times lack in password complication putting them at significant risk in that field. 

3. Photo 14:

The hackers wondering why they can’t successfully get me to click on phishing email links they send. 

• Whenever I get strange emails or any email that I didn’t request that has links attached, I know it’s best to delete them and move on. That’s the easiest way to avoid any complications that could come from clicking any link, so the hackers are left wondering why they are never successful, as I never click their links.

Journal entry 8

 I believe that the media influences people to think of cybersecurity somewhat as a joke.  Oftentimes, within movies, hackers seem to have easy access to complicated systems, which is not the reality of things.  Cybersecurity is a full network of people, so it’s hard for just one person to outsmart a whole network the way they portray in movies.  Also, hackers tend to be very sloppy in film compared to how they would be in real life, trying to hack secretly, making cybersecurity workers seem like they don’t do their job well.

Journal entry 9

Based on the questions asked, I scored a three. Ironically, I found myself only saying yes to only three, even though I thought I would’ve said yes to more. The questions seemed quite specific and based on a better understanding of how addicted to social media you are. The questions focused on different destructive behaviors people have within their addiction levels. It goes to show that these behaviors align with a very excessive and problematic severely online person has. The patterns show how these behaviors can control, interfere, and be concerning with a person’s mental state and how they operate in daily life. 

Journal entry 10

The article states, “Traditional cybersecurity involves humans using technology to ‘hack’ technology.” This quote fits the summary of the article as it speaks on how people use technology to influence public opinion.  The article talks about a lot of propaganda within online spaces, propaganda that’s used to make people feel specific ways about politics, celebrities, movies, and things of that nature.  The overall article aims to push awareness so that people are more careful about what they see through technology. As it’s easy to be influenced by something you keep seeing repeatedly that may not be your true thoughts, but you start to believe what’s being pushed upon you through the technology after seeing it so many times.

Journal entry 11

 The primary role of a cybersecurity analyst is to protect their organization from cyber threats. A cybersecurity analyst can be seen actively monitoring online activity for any security breaches and implementing specific policies to protect their programs.  With that being said, they relate to social behaviors because a lot of hackers tend to act based on their human emotions and their human nature. Since humans use the Internet, the cybersecurity analyst has to take that into account and base a lot of security breaches on human nature.  Therefore, those social themes of people are heavily involved within the role of a cybersecurity analyst

Journal entry 12

 Based on my readings of the article sample data breach notification, I have noticed a couple of different theories that relate to this letter. Two of the ones I’ve noticed that relate to economic theories are information asymmetry and market failure.  Market failure occurred because there was an unintended cost to the customers. Information asymmetry happened because they notified customers late. That leads me to the social sciences, such as sociology and criminology.  Sociology was shown because they attempted to restore the trust of their customers.  Criminology was shown because a breach within their company directly relates to criminology, as it is the study of crimes.

Journal entry 13

In summary, the article presents a study on data from hackers between 2014 and 2020 to make a model of a bug bounty program.  The purpose of a bug bounty program is to create a secure network of different hackers who could report errors within a company’s system.  Therefore, the hackers would use their knowledge to tell the company about their errors, and then the companies would pay the hackers for their understanding. Overall, the article suggests that the bug bounty policies are very costly for the cybersecurity world, which could benefit any company with cybersecurity knowledge. 

Journal entry 14

 The article was very informative about illegal online activities that many people engage in. I have fallen victim to some things I read about that I would no longer participate in. Out of the list, the five that I consider the most severe would first be Illegal searches on the Internet.  I say this because it’s self-explanatory, using the Internet to look up something such as child  Explicit images would never be acceptable at any time. The second is bullying and trolling, this one because it’s never alright to make someone feel bad about themselves at any moment, whether in real life or through technology. The third would be collecting information on children. The legal age of consent is 18, and even then, some people aren’t fully developed mentally. Praying on children is never acceptable in any form. Fourth on the list would be sharing addresses online. I picked this one because safety is essential and the world is hazardous, so putting someone’s address out there could put them in unimaginable harm. The last on my list would be  Faking your identity online. I decided to add this one because no reason would excuse the use of someone else’s information without their consent, and the use of you deceiving people that way would never be acceptable.

Journal entry 15

 The speaker from the video offered terrific insights on how cybersecurity directly relates to the social sciences. He started as an accountant, which offered him the knowledge of a critical thinker needed within the cybersecurity field.  He chose the role of digital forensics, which requires knowledge of human behavior and why they commit cyber crimes.  That statement alone requires the knowledge of sociology, criminology, and psychology, all of which are social sciences.  Multiple roles in cybersecurity require a lot of social science knowledge, and he demonstrates excellent understanding of that.  His journey into that role shows how he can adapt to new challenges, shows his interdisciplinary skills, and emphasizes the need for skills in technology and social science.