Social science and cybersecurity have a tight connection between the two. Many cybercrimes are caused by human error. According to the WEF risk report, progress has been made in helping spread awareness, but most companies still should not be confident in what preparation has been done. Although there are many careers in cybersecurity that relate to social science, the one I am focusing on today is Digital Forensics. When it comes to digital forensics there are a few key points that require social sciences to work. One is understanding human behavior. Social sciences like psychology and criminology are so often used to understand why people commit crimes. Cybercriminals are people just like normal criminals are, so they play by the same rules of psychology and criminology as the rest do. Cyberpsychology is the actual study of how people behave on the internet. Having the data is important, but without the context and understanding, there is a lot up for interpretation. This is furthered by the idea that cultures exist online as well. Depending on the country you come from, you may behave or treat the internet differently than someone from another country. There are also online communities that drastically change the way that someone in digital forensics might see you. One example of this is gaming culture. Depending on what games you might play might change the type of profile they build on you. Another could be dark web culture. If someone is a frequent visitor of the dark web, like they find torrent files on a computer of a suspected criminal, this could change the profile of the person they are looking for. The next way that social science is used with digital forensics is victimology. Just like with normal crime there are victims from cybercrime. Victimology helps us understand why these people were victims, and maybe why and how they were specifically targeted. The type of victim, being their age, race, gender etc… can be a good indicator on motive and what type of criminal is being tracked. If the victim only attacks a certain type of individual it could lead the investigation down a certain path to help find them. All of these social sciences build into social-cyber forensics. The main goal is not always to find the specific person but rather the type of person that is committing the crimes. This can be done through publicly available information like social media. There are also chat logs and screenshots that can be used. Rarely will only one device be used however, so cross referencing different devices can help build the case further. The last piece is techniques used by people in digital forensics. One technique might be the use of social media networking to detect types of cyber-crimes. These crimes would be photo-morphing, like using technology to make it look like they are the person on a pornographic site and use it to blackmail them. Another could be cyberbullying or shopping scams, such as fake sites and ads to try and get your credit card information or money. The final could be link baiting, such as using a fake link that looks real to send you to a mock website to try and persuade you into giving you their credentials. Whether it comes to understanding the type of person committing a cyber-crime, or finding and stopping people from committing crimes online, social sciences are extremely important to digital forensics, and especially to cybersecurity as a whole.
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2023/01/global-risks-report-2023-experts-davos2023/#cybersecurity