What To Know Concerning Computer Forensics

By Shirley Hayes


The adoption of various kinds of computers in personal, corporate, and government processes is leading to a new form of crime referred to as cybercrime. Cybercrime is any kind of crime facilitated by computers. Cybercrime is growing at a very fast rate, something that is making it necessary to formulate strategies for combating this new threat. In a bid to combat cybercrime, a new field of study known as computer forensics (CF) has emerged worldwide.

Computer forensic science is the other name that is used to refer to this field. This science makes one of several other subfields that comprised in digital forensic science. In Albemarle, NC, there are several professionals whose area of expertise is CF. CF is a separate field of study that specializes in the analysis, reporting, and collection of data stored on digital media. The entire profession revolves around computers and digital storage media. Experts prevent and detect criminal activities by using data kept on digital media.

In the current way of life, the application of computer forensic science is almost in all professions. The professions in which this science does not apply are countable. Law enforcement agencies are the earliest bodies to have used CF in their operations. These agencies also remain to be the heaviest user of this science, contributing enormously to developments observed in the field.

Modern computers are increasingly becoming active crime scenes through the action of criminals and law enforcement officers. A computing device can become a crime scene when it was the target of a denial of service or hacking attack. Computers are also important sources of information in criminal investigations. It may hold information about internet history, emails, and documents, which can be useful in a crime such as a murder.

The scope of CF goes well beyond retrieving emails and files from computers. It involves analyzing metadata to collect more useful information from these documents. Information contained in metadata can be used to know the exact date a file first appeared on a computer. It is also possible to know the last date of access, printing, editing, and saving. The user who carried all the aforementioned activities can also be known through metadata.

More recently, the employment of CF by commercial organizations has been for organizational benefit. There are several different cases in which CF is employed by commercial organizations. These cases include forgeries, industrial espionage, employment disputes, fraud investigations, and intellectual property theft. Internet use in work-places, inappropriate emails in workplaces, regulatory compliance, and bankruptcy investigations are additional cases handled under this field.

The field employs different techniques during investigation. The main techniques are stochastic forensics, steganography, cross-drive analysis, deleted files, and live analysis. Information from multiple hard drives is usually correlated through cross-drive analysis.

The process of CF examination has been categorized into six main processes. These processes are readiness, evaluation, collection, analysis, presentation, and review. The readiness stage is a very crucial stage, but it is often overlooked by experts in this field. CF, like other fields, is also faced by several issues, which can be categorized as legal, administrative, and technical.




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