Forensic course development

Abstract

In recent years, digital technology has experienced dramatic growth. Many of these advances have also provided malicious users with the ability to conceal their activities and destroy evidence of their actions. This has raised the need of developing specialists in computer digital forensics-the preservation, identification, extraction and documentation of evidence stored in the form of digitally encoded information (data). In this paper, we present the procedures and rationale used in the development of forensic courses at both the undergraduate and the graduate levels. We also demonstrate our decision making process of selecting topics included in each course.

Digital Investigation as a distinct discipline: A pedagogic perspective

“…The reader should be aware that Digital Investigation has a different perspective than that offered by computer security -specifically in the way the two disciplines consider malicious attacks. Troell et al (2003) argue that security activities focus on defence before an attack, while forensics focuses on activities after the attack. Computer security is a defence against unauthorised and malicious intrusion, whereas Digital Investigation provides techniques for the identification of incidents, gathering of evidence, analysis of evidence and potentially, the recovery of data and information.…”

Gamified digital forensics course modules for undergraduates

“…RIT is one of the pioneer institutions in teaching digital forensics, offering system and network forensics courses to sophomore and senior students since 2003 [4][5][6][7]. In 2012, with RIT's internal support, RIT faculty started to explore GBL approach in forensics education and presented a paper entitled "Gamebased Forensics Course For First Year Students" at the ACM Information Technology Education Conference [8].…”

Game-based forensics course for first year students

“…According to Bureau of Labor Statistics [2], Private Detectives and Investigators' job outlook for 2010-2020 will grow 21% (the number of jobs in 2010 was 34,700) with the projected main growth in the area digital forensics. In response to the increasing need for advanced studies in the areas of computer and network security and forensics, several security and forensics programs have been developed in the past 10 years [23,24]. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page.…”