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.

This field also goes by the name computer forensic science. Albemarle, NC, is home to some of the best experts in this field. Computer forensic science is a branch within the field of digital forensic science. As a field of study, it pertains to all evidence gathered from computing devices and digital storage media. Experts in this field aim to collect, analyze, and report on digital data in a way that is legally admissible. They use data that is stored digitally to prevent and detect crime.

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 exceeds finding documents, files, and emails on computing devices. It involves the examination of metadata on documents to reveal more information about them, which could prove to be useful in solving a crime. For example, through the use of metadata, it is possible to identify the first date a document appeared or was created on computers. It is also possible to determine the last date the document was printed, edited, and saved beside identifying the user of who undertook all these operations.

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.

Investigation in this field employs several different techniques. These techniques include cross-drive analysis, stochastic forensics, steganography, live analysis, and deleted files. The correlation of information gathered from multiple hard drives is done under 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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