Digital Forensics

This course introduces the basic concepts and technologies of digital forensics. Students will learn the fundamental techniques and tools utilized for collecting, processing, and preserving digital evidence on computers, mobile devices, networks, and cloud computing environments. Students will also engage in oral and written communication to report digital forensic findings and prepare court presentation materials.

At the end of this course students will be able to:

1. Recognize the duties of a digital forensic investigator and the requirements of a lab environment.
2. Utilize data collection tools and methods necessary for recovering and identifying different digital forensic artifacts left by attacks.
3. Utilize appropriate methods to preserve the integrity of digital evidence and acquire a forensically sound image.
4. Analyze different types of digital evidence to extract the related information important to a case under investigation.
5. Prepare evidence, findings and results of analysis in a digital forensic report.

Course Material

The final in this class was very unique in that it was a simulated evidence report to be used in court, with crimes being listed in the assignment to be used in the final paper. This was the biggest test of our understanding of how these sorts of crimes ought to be handled in a court of law, and I am happy to say that I achieved a 100 on this final.

This discussion board was all about what types of metadata we can collect from certain files and how that metadata can be used in an investigation. The use of metadata can not be understated in digital forensics, so learning about this was very valuable.