Development and Dissemination of a New Multidisciplinary Undergraduate Curriculum in Digital Forensics

The Information Trust Institute (ITI) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is developing an entirely new multidisciplinary undergraduate curriculum on the topic of digital forensics, and this paper presents the findings of the development process, including initial results and evaluation of a pilot offering of the coursework to students. The curriculum consists of a four-course sequence, including introductory and advanced lecture courses with parallel laboratory courses, followed by an advanced course. The content has been designed to reflect both the emerging national standards and the strong multidisciplinary character of the profession of digital forensics, and includes modules developed collaboratively by faculty experts in multiple fields of computer science, law, psychology, social sciences, and accountancy. A preliminary plan for the introductory course was presented to a workshop of digital forensics experts in May 2013 and received their strong approval. Pilot versions of the introductory and introductory lab courses were taught to a mixture of computer science and law students at the University of Illinois in the fall of 2013, and were very positively received by the students, who made it clear that they appreciated the multidisciplinary approach. The curriculum, which is designed to obviate the need for expensive labs or team-teaching by specialized faculty, will be made available to other colleges and universities in order to improve the content and quality of existing digital forensics programs, to inspire and greatly facilitate the creation of new programs, and, ultimately, to increase the number of educated practitioners. The developed resources can be used as the basis for future academic programs, distance learning, and multidisciplinary, multi-institutional programs that meet evolving digital forensics educational standards. Much of the material, including a virtual laboratory, will be provided on-line. Introductory course materials will be distributed to other institutions beginning in the summer of 2014; advanced course materials should be available for distribution in 2015. Related outreach activities have been undertaken and will be continued. Keywords: Digital forensics, Computer forensics, Curriculum development, Curriculum standards, Education standards, Training standards, Undergraduate education, Interdisciplinary studie

Digital forensics: an integrated approach for the investigation of cyber/computer related crimes

A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of PhilosophyDigital forensics has become a predominant field in recent times and courts have had to deal with an influx of related cases over the past decade. As computer/cyber related criminal attacks become more predominant in today’s technologically driven society the need for and use of, digital evidence in courts has increased. There is the urgent need to hold perpetrators of such crimes accountable and successfully prosecuting them. The process used to acquire this digital evidence (to be used in cases in courts) is digital forensics. The procedures currently used in the digital forensic process were developed focusing on particular areas of the digital evidence acquisition process. This has resulted in very little regard being made for the core components of the digital forensics field, for example the legal and ethical along with other integral aspects of investigations as a whole. These core facets are important for a number of reasons including the fact that other forensic sciences have included them, and to survive as a true forensics discipline digital forensics must ensure that they are accounted for. This is because, digital forensics like other forensics disciplines must ensure that the evidence (digital evidence) produced from the process is able to withstand the rigors of a courtroom. Digital forensics is a new and developing field still in its infancy when compared to traditional forensics fields such as botany or anthropology. Over the years development in the field has been tool centered, being driven by commercial developers of the tools used in the digital investigative process. This, along with having no set standards to guide digital forensics practitioners operating in the field has led to issues regarding the reliability, verifiability and consistency of digital evidence when presented in court cases. Additionally some developers have neglected the fact that the mere mention of the word forensics suggests courts of law, and thus legal practitioners will be intimately involved. Such omissions have resulted in the digital evidence being acquired for use in various investigations facing major challenges when presented in a number of cases. Mitigation of such issues is possible with the development of a standard set of methodologies flexible enough to accommodate the intricacies of all fields to be considered when dealing with digital evidence. This thesis addresses issues regarding digital forensics frameworks, methods, methodologies and standards for acquiring digital evidence using the grounded theory approach. Data was gathered using literature surveys, questionnaires and interviews electronically. Collecting data using electronic means proved useful when there is need to collect data from different jurisdictions worldwide. Initial surveys indicated that there were no existing standards in place and that the terms models/frameworks and methodologies were used interchangeably to refer to methodologies. A framework and methodology have been developed to address the identified issues and represent the major contribution of this research. The dissertation outlines solutions to the identified issues and presents the 2IR Framework of standards which governs the 2IR Methodology supported by a mobile application and a curriculum of studies. These designs were developed using an integrated approach incorporating all four core facets of the digital forensics field. This research lays the foundation for a single integrated approach to digital forensics and can be further developed to ensure the robustness of process and procedures used by digital forensics practitioners worldwide

A comparative study of teaching forensics at a university degree level

Computer forensics is a relatively young University discipline which has developed strongly in the United States and the United Kingdom but is still in its infancy in continental Europe. The national programmes and courses offered therefore differ in many ways. We report on two recently established degree programmes from two European countries: Great Britain and Germany. We present and compare the design of both programmes and conclude that they cover two complementary and orthogonal aspects of computer forensics education: (a) rigorous practical skills and (b) competence for fundamental research discoveries

Multinational perspectives on information technology from academia and industry

As the term \u27information technology\u27 has many meanings for various stakeholders and continues to evolve, this work presents a comprehensive approach for developing curriculum guidelines for rigorous, high quality, bachelor\u27s degree programs in information technology (IT) to prepare successful graduates for a future global technological society. The aim is to address three research questions in the context of IT concerning (1) the educational frameworks relevant for academics and students of IT, (2) the pathways into IT programs, and (3) graduates\u27 preparation for meeting future technologies. The analysis of current trends comes from survey data of IT faculty members and professional IT industry leaders. With these analyses, the IT Model Curricula of CC2005, IT2008, IT2017, extensive literature review, and the multinational insights of the authors into the status of IT, this paper presents a comprehensive overview and discussion of future directions of global IT education toward 2025

Security and computer forensics in web engineering education

The integration of security and forensics into Web Engineering curricula is imperative! Poor security in web-based applications is continuing to cost organizations millions and the losses are still increasing annually. Security is frequently taught as a stand-alone course, assuming that security can be 'bolted on' to a web application at some point. Security issues must be integrated into Web Engineering processes right from the beginning to create secure solutions and therefore security should be an integral part of a Web Engineering curriculum. One aspect of Computer forensics investigates failures in security. Hence, students should be aware of the issues in forensics and how to respond when security failures occur; collecting evidence is particularly difficult for Web-based applications

Industry and faculty surveys call for increased collaboration to prepare information technology graduates

Academic and industry collaborations can help improve computing curricula and student learning experiences. Such collaborations are formally encouraged by accreditation standards. Through the auspices of ACM and IEEE-CS, the IT2017 task group is updating curriculum guidelines for information technology undergraduate degree programs, similar to the regular updates for other computing disciplines. The task group surveyed curriculum preferences of both faculty and industry. The authors, with the group\u27s cooperation, compare US faculty and US industry preferences in mathematics, IT knowledge areas, and student workplace skill sets. Faculty and industry share common ground, which supports optimism about their productive collaboration, but are also distinct enough to justify the effort of actively coordinating with each other

Developing a Baccalaureate Digital Forensics Major

As colleges and universities consider instituting a bachelor’s degree in digital forensics or computer forensics, there are numerous questions to be addressed. While some of these normally occur in the development of any new major, there are aspects of digital forensics which do not often (if ever) occur in other majors. We discuss the issues that should be resolved in the development of a baccalaureate degree program in digital forensics. Keywords: Digital forensics major. Computer forensics major

Forensic flavour

Databases often receive an uninspired and uninterested response. The curriculum content of a database module generally involves the design of entity-relationship models, SQL programming, application development and advanced database applications such as data warehousing and data mining. These are often taught within the tired and relatively worn case studies of purchase order systems, retail or health care systems. However the current trend for crime scene investigation drama and the frequent stories in the news of personal tragedies involving incorrect data, missing data or data mix-up capture the attention of many. The truth is that crimes require data investigation and expert database witnesses to provide evidence and this requires database knowledge and skill. This project involved the introduction of a ‘forensic flavour’ to the teaching of databases as part of an undergraduate Computing Degree to students. The ‘forensic flavour’ involved introducing investigative and enquiry based learning techniques as well as selecting case studies based around real-life crimes and crime data. The learning objectives remained unchanged for the modules as did the curriculum content. The initial findings are that the students engaged on average 40% better and enjoyed the experience more