{"id":336,"date":"2025-12-04T21:20:46","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T21:20:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/audrijackson\/?p=336"},"modified":"2025-12-04T21:20:46","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T21:20:46","slug":"social-sciences-for-a-digital-forensics-analyst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/audrijackson\/2025\/12\/04\/social-sciences-for-a-digital-forensics-analyst\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Sciences for a\u00a0Digital\u00a0Forensics\u00a0Analyst\u00a0\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A person in the&nbsp;role of a digital forensic analyst works to&nbsp;discover how a cybercrime was committed, what data was lost&nbsp;due to the&nbsp;cyber-attack,&nbsp;and&nbsp;to&nbsp;determine&nbsp;who the offender is.&nbsp;This can include investigating&nbsp;a&nbsp;company&#8217;s&nbsp;data breach&nbsp;where&nbsp;customer&nbsp;data was stolen.&nbsp;Analysts use cyber security techniques to retrieve data from devices. In this case, the analyst would work to recover any data that was stolen, destroyed, tampered with in some way.&nbsp;This information is later reviewed to get an understanding of how it relates to the crime and the offender.&nbsp;Another important aspect of this role is ensuring that the&nbsp;collected evidence is secured and available if needed for a court case.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To properly analyze the data and information&nbsp;collected,&nbsp;digital forensic&nbsp;analysts&nbsp;must be able to use&nbsp;ethical neutrality to understand how the&nbsp;offender was able to commit&nbsp;cybercrime.&nbsp;Attempting to answer several questions&nbsp;such as&nbsp;where did attack happen, who was&nbsp;affected, what kind of tactics were used to&nbsp;pull off this attack, what was taken, and what was the goal of the offender. Ethical Neutrality is used to understand an&nbsp;attacker&#8217;s&nbsp;motives and tactics.&nbsp;Ensuring that the analyst considers each perspective to&nbsp;understand the&nbsp;cyber-attack&nbsp;as a whole.&nbsp;Digital forensic analysts use determinism as well.&nbsp;This allows them to be able to build a profile&nbsp;of the&nbsp;cybercriminal. Determinism bases the attack on preceding&nbsp;events;&nbsp;the analyst will need to understand what happened that led to the&nbsp;cyber-attack. Using&nbsp;both ethical neutrality and&nbsp;determinism,&nbsp;an analyst&nbsp;can construct a full story of when,&nbsp;how,&nbsp;and why a&nbsp;cybercrime&nbsp;was committed.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For marginalized&nbsp;groups,&nbsp;the use of digital forensics and the role of an analyst in the field work to&nbsp;support&nbsp;them as they are often victims of&nbsp;cyber-attacks.&nbsp;Groups that are easy targets for cyber criminals&nbsp;will&nbsp;need digital evidence&nbsp;for their court case. A major challenge&nbsp;faced is&nbsp;trust&nbsp;in the evidence&nbsp;derived from the forensic investigation.&nbsp;The source and&nbsp;authenticity&nbsp;of digital evidence&nbsp;come&nbsp;into question within the courts.&nbsp;In law, evidence must apply to three rules; the rule of best evidence, authentication, and hearsay. However, it is difficult to apply those rules to digital&nbsp;artifacts.&nbsp;The aim of those rules is to verify that evidence used in court is original, has not been manipulated, and can be confirmed by cross-examination.&nbsp;It\u2019s&nbsp;important that a method is developed to create a basis of trust&nbsp;in regard to&nbsp;digital forensic data for court evidence to promote reliability.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As technology continues to\u00a0advance,\u00a0it becomes increasingly difficult to avoid in everyday life.\u00a0Cybercrimes\u00a0are on the rise and will continue to become more sophisticated.\u00a0A digital forensic analyst\u00a0is able to\u00a0use social sciences to build a profile of\u00a0cybercrime\u00a0tactics and\u00a0archive for later research\u00a0or evidence.\u00a0Being able to use digital forensic evidence in court can help mitigate\u00a0cybercrimes\u00a0and influence cybersecurity countermeasures that can be put in place.\u00a0Digital forensic analysts are important to society as they work to help build the\u00a0necessary\u00a0evidence base\u00a0for\u00a0cybercrime.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Institute, S. (2023, March 30).&nbsp;<em>Digital Forensics salary, skills, and career path<\/em>. SANS Institute.&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sans.org\/blog\/digital-forensics-salary-skills-and-career-path\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https:\/\/www.sans.org\/blog\/digital-forensics-salary-skills-and-career-path<\/a>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Duranti&nbsp;, L., &amp; Rogers, C. (2012). Trust in digital records: An increasingly cloudy legal area.&nbsp;<em>Computer Law &amp; Security Review<\/em>,&nbsp;<em>28<\/em>(5), 522\u2013531.&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/j.clsr.2012.07.009\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https:\/\/doi.org\/https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/j.clsr.2012.07.009<\/a>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Carroll, O. L., Brannon, S. K., &amp; Song, T. (2017, September 12).&nbsp;<em>Computer Forensics: Digital Forensic Analysis Methodology<\/em>. Crime Scene Investigator Network.&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.crime-scene-investigator.net\/computer-forensics-digital-forensic-analysis-methodology.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https:\/\/www.crime-scene-investigator.net\/computer-forensics-digital-forensic-analysis-methodology.html<\/a>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A person in the&nbsp;role of a digital forensic analyst works to&nbsp;discover how a cybercrime was committed, what data was lost&nbsp;due to the&nbsp;cyber-attack,&nbsp;and&nbsp;to&nbsp;determine&nbsp;who the offender is.&nbsp;This can include investigating&nbsp;a&nbsp;company&#8217;s&nbsp;data breach&nbsp;where&nbsp;customer&nbsp;data was stolen.&nbsp;Analysts use cyber security techniques to retrieve data from devices. In this case, the analyst would work to recover any data that was stolen, destroyed,&#8230; <\/p>\n<div class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/audrijackson\/2025\/12\/04\/social-sciences-for-a-digital-forensics-analyst\/\">Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":29426,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wds_primary_category":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/audrijackson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/audrijackson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/audrijackson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/audrijackson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29426"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/audrijackson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/audrijackson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":337,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/audrijackson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336\/revisions\/337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/audrijackson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/audrijackson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/audrijackson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}