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Monday, September 26, 2016

Understanding The Basics Of Computer Forensics

By Shirley Hayes


The rate at which the use of computers is being adopted worldwide is very high as corporate, government, and personal processes are increasingly being conducted through computing devices. The high rate of adoption has a bright side as well as a dark one. The dark side involves an increase in cybercrime. Cybercrimes are those crimes that are committed through the use of computers, that is, computers are used to facilitate the crimes. Another profession called computer forensics has come up in an attempt to combat the problem of cybercrime. This field although relatively new, is growing at a phenomenal rate globally.

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.

The modern lifestyles, makes the use of computer forensic science relevant in almost all professions. Only in a few field that CF is not applicable. The earliest users of CF are law enforcement agencies. These agencies are also some of the heaviest users. The agencies are responsible for most of the developments that occur in this field.

There are several different scenarios in which computers can be crime scenes. For instance, during a hacking or denial of service attack, the computer in question often becomes the crime scene. Computers can also be sources of useful evidence in the form of internet history, documents, and emails, which may be relevant in crimes such as drug trafficking, kidnapping, and 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.

CF has been employed by commercial organizations in the recent past for meet organizational goals. Commercial organizations use this field in various cases, including intellectual property theft, fraud investigations, forgeries, industrial espionage, and employment disputes. Some additional cases that are handled using CF are bankruptcy investigations, internet use in workplaces, inappropriate emails in workplaces, and regulatory compliance.

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.

CF examination is a single process that is comprised of six separate steps. These steps include readiness, presentation, review, collection, evaluation, and analysis. The list above is not in a chronological order. Although very crucial, the readiness step is often overlooked. Legal, administrative, and technical are the three broad categories of issues that prevail in this field.




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