I have a variety of sources that I will be using for my research proposal. My proposal is about cyber-attacks on small businesses. The sources I will be using have a number of areas covered in cyber-security, including Network Penetration Testing, Vulnerability assessments, perspectives of small business owners on cyber-attacks, and ransomware.
Searching and Applying Subject Terms:
First, I conducted a basic search using the term “cyberattacks,” and I used the Computer Science Collection database. At first, the number of articles that appeared in the results was 453, so I narrowed the search by applying Full-Text documents and Peer-Reviewed journals. However, the search result was 193 articles. I narrowed the results better by implementing a range of publication dates from December 31, 2018, to December 31, 2021. This filter generated 88 academic journals.
I found an article that involves the detection of cyber-attacks within small to medium-sized businesses, and I used the subject term “security devices” (Lopez, M. A, Lombardo, Lopez, M., Alba, Velasco, Braojos, & Fuentes-Garcia, 2020). For the in-text citation, two authors who have the last name “Lopez,” so I made sure to give credit to both in the citation.
When I clicked on the “security devices” subject term, the search generated 305 academic journals. I narrowed the results by using Full-Text documents and Peer-Reviewed Journal articles. The results came out to be 48 academic journals.
After browsing through the search pages of articles, I came across a great article about detecting Network Intrusions with Agent Profiling (Bajtos, Gajdos, Kleinova, Lucivjanska, & Sokol, 2018). This article will be noted for my research proposal because I may need more information on infiltrating networks.
The searches I used successfully found an excellent article that can contribute to my proposal. If I need any more articles to provide me with more information on my research proposal, then I will use this method with different databases and subjects to find other interesting articles.

Citation Trace:
I will clarify that I used the Computer Science Collection database and used a basic search of the term “cyberattacks”. Again, this search generated 453 academic journals but applying the Full-Text document, Peer-Reviewed journals, and the publication data I used above narrowed the results to 88 journals. I browsed through the lists to find different articles and found interesting research about hacking becoming ethical in warfare (Whyte, 2020). The number of sources that were cited in this article was 166 articles. The number of sources that cited Christopher Whyte’s article was 9 academic journals. One of the journals was repeated in the Web of Science(1), and Google Scholar citation article links.
Backward Citation Trace:
When I performed a backward citation trace, I first clicked on the DOI link. Then I browsed through the article’s listed citations and found a referenced book about National security and information warfare (Libicki, 2007). The citation URL will take you to a website where you can download the pdf of the full version of the book. Even though the book is an extensive read, I could locate information about the concept of countries spying on one another through the internet, the use of denial of service, and how companies should respond to information overloads within their networks.
This search was useful for finding an article that can contribute to the aspects of denial of service, ransomware, and better knowledge of what countries do in cyber-warfare. However, I would say the downfall of this search was finding one article out of 166 relevant and useable citations. Some of the references the author provided were not properly formatted.
Forward Citation Trace:
I found an article using the forward citation trace method by clicking the “Google Scholar” link under the “Citing article via” section. Then I clicked on “Ensuring the Security of Critical Information Infrastructure in Russian and China,” linked title that referenced Christopher Whyte’s article. The web page is in Russian when you click on the link, so I translated the page to English and found the DOI link for the full article. The article is about how information structure is becoming a critical issue in the national cyber-security field (Gorian & Horian, 2021). The article was noteworthy because it explains why critical information systems are the most profiled cyber-attacked area. This concept can be incorporated and applied to why small business infrastructure is susceptible to infiltrations.
The use of forward citation trace method was useful because I had a few articles to choose from that were related to national information infrastructure and cyber-attacks. The only downfall I can see with this search is if the article is fairly new and it is not referenced by other articles. This idea would limit the number of choices someone can have in choosing an article.
References:
Bajtos, T., Gajdos, A., Kleinova, L., Lucivjanska, K., & Sokol, P. (2018). Network intrusion detection with threat agent profiling. Security and Communication Networks, 2018. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A596644831/CDB?u=klnb_fhsuniv&sid=bookmark-CDB&xid=58f5d80d
Gorian, E., & Horian, K. (2021). Ensuring the security of critical information infrastructure in Russia and China. In & N. G. Bogachenko (Ed.), International Scientific Conference – Amurcon 2020, vol 111. European Proceedings of Social and Behavioral Sciences (pp. 348-353). https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2021.06.03.47
Libicki, M. C. (2007). Conquest in cyberspace: National security and information warfare (1st ed.). Cambridge University Press. https://my.u1lib.org/book/551099/c0b7b4
Lopez, M. A., Lombardo, J. M., Lopez, M., Alba, C. M., Velasco, S., Braojos, M. A., & Fuentes-Garcia, M. (2020). Intelligent detection and recovery from cyberattacks for small and medium-sized enterprises. International Journal of Interactive Multimedia and Artificial Intelligence, 6(3), 55+. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A638116050/CDB?u=klnb_fhsuniv&sid=bookmark-CDB&xid=c395e4b3
Whyte, C. (2020). Cyber conflict or democracy “hacked”? How cyber operations enhance information warfare. Journal of Cybersecurity, 6(1), 1k+. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A687753842/CDB?u=klnb_fhsuniv&sid=bookmark-CDB&xid=87e9617b