CJUS 363
Module 1_Emerging Careers in Digital Forensics
Charles Dickens
First off, I'd like to welcome each and everyone of you joining this class today. Welcome to the
introduction to computer and cyber forensics. I think this is a pretty exciting course. I've been
part of the computer profession for roughly 20 some odd years where I have been contributing
both as a developer, an automator for the Army, and in transitioning capabilities over into the
needs of the command and the commander, my boss, the people I worked for. Took that career
and moved over into working in the federal government as a military officer for roughly 13
years, running a gamut of assignments between the National Security Agency, the Army staff at
the Pentagon, the joint staff at the Pentagon, and a couple overseas assignments.
In each and every one of them I was responsible for implementing and putting in place
computer systems and computer capabilities to enhance the bosses’ understanding of the
situation. Whether we were at war or we were making decisions, it was all centered around
information and the ability to collect that, present it, and enable that commander to make the
best, most informed decision that was available at the time. So computer and cyber (cyber
being a new term) have been part of my blood for nearly 20 years and I've been operating in
that domain and, after I finished my military career, have really put a lot more emphasis into
the area of cyber.
Now cyber is sort of a new term, although movies put that out a long time ago. We started
getting ideas about this virtual, this undefined, this other aspect of computers that resided in
the term cyber. The reality is it's been here all along since we've had the computers, but it does
create a lot of challenges for us. It creates challenges for us in the perspective of understanding
or differentiating between what we know is physical capabilities to what is virtual capabilities,
what we know and can define very clearly and tangibly feel and see and touch. It is very difficult
to grasp our heads around when it comes to what's inside and how a computer operates.
This is an introduction course. This course is going to be giving you some insight to some of the
capabilities that exist and the needs across our nation and our world today in terms of how to
handle computers and cyber and its impact into our community, our daily living. Each and
everyone of you are working today with some type of smartphone and that smart phone does a
lot of things for you. It helps you understand when you’ve got to get the class. It helps you stay
connected with your friends through Facebook applications. It does a lot of things like that that
are all automated today that didn't exist in the past. Now, this is a great capability. It’s a great
benefit that we get from having these devices, but at the same time, they create risk. They
create vulnerabilities. If you can imagine all of your personal contacts, their phone numbers,
sometimes your personal information can reside inside of those smartphones. Or better yet
said, put out onto the internet where it is shareable. That puts this idea of cyber forensics into
play when we start talking about criminal activity.
There are a lot of evil people out there and those folks are looking for an opportunity to take
advantage of you at every chance they get. They look at ways of convincing you to take action
because, as an example, an email being sent to you saying that your personal account has been
compromised and log into this website to be able to update and recover your information. Your
finances are at risk. Your credit card or your debit card are at risk. This email looks legitimate, it
comes across completely benign, appropriately dressed, and there's nothing you can do to
immediately identify this is somebody trying to steal your personal information so they can use
your good credit for their advantage, so they can use you to get themselves their own credit
card and buy and purchase and steal.
That's a simple example of a type of cybercrime that is existing today and it spans a whole array
of different things, like folks that are trying to sell things illegitimately. So, pictures conveyed on
eBay that hey I’ve got this high speed camera I want to sell, and the bidding process goes on,
and then the sale, the transaction, the money get sent, whether by credit card or PayPal or one
of these different venues, and the item never really existed. This is a couple of the challenges
that exist in cyber and cybercrime.
I want to take a couple minutes and share with you a few of the career opportunities. This
session today is really just a brief introduction into the computer and cyber forensics career
field and we are going to spend the next eight weeks working through several elements of
what's involved in computer and cyber forensics. The ultimate goal of this is to give you some
exposure to what computer and cyber forensics is, what it's about, but the career
opportunities exist should you really like to do this type of work. Fundamentally, it’s built off of
sciences or computer sciences and it's coming with an understanding, we’ll spend a little time
on this through the course, but an understanding of how computers work and how they
communicate between each other. This helps you have an understanding of where things can
reside in the midst of an investigation, should you ever be involved in that. But the important
thing is looking at it from where the career can take you.
Currently, the career is designed around digital forensics, an analyst as an introductory position
or a computer forensics analyst. These jobs are built really across the federal government as
well as in industry. Now, there’s two different perspectives for that, just to be clear. The federal
government looks at it from truly a securing and protecting perspective, from a prosecuting
perspective. Those government agencies that are looking into cyber and computer forensics
have the need to be able to collect, process, and take that information, that intelligence, that
evidence and be able to bring it forth, either as a defense or a prosecution towards an
individual. They do that from the perspective of creating a safe place for the rest of us to
operate in accordance with what was intended for the United States Constitution.
The industry perspective though, it's a little bit different. They have intellectual capital that
they're trying to protect and by that I mean their business intelligence, the things they do well,
their secrets on how they produce cars, efficient engines. All these things have an impact on
that business’s bottom-line. How much money they are able to make and generate in a year is
by the safeguarding of those company secrets. So their interest is thought from the perspective
of how much money can they make or lose and they look at it more from an insured
perspective versus a protective perspective. The government is looking for protective. The
industry base is looking at it from their fiscal revenue generation and as well as their ability to
save that money by ensuring it otherwise. So protection versus insurance.
The career path is an opportunity then. Every business is going to need somebody that can help
get in and really reverse-engineer where an incident might occur within their corporation or
within the federal government agency. They need somebody to be able to basically get into the
computer, identify all the different threads and threats and the opportunities that somebody
has taken, where they can hide information, knowing that information can hide inside a digital
graphics, knowing that information can be stored and encrypted and not even be viewed from
what we would be normally looking for. Word documents or PowerPoint files, they could be
completely masked by an encryption scheme or retitled just simply as another very simple
means of trying to mask where a criminal activity is taking place.
The role of the digital forensics expert is increasing. It’s in great demand. We just had a new
cyber command established in the United States and its standing up and starting to move to a
point of being able to establish means of protecting its citizens across the nation, but through
the computer and the networks that everything is connected to. The career path is still being
defined. Some of those career paths are designed around seeking certifications for basically
conducting evaluations and assessments and they are designed to help people to be able to
stand up with credentials, sort of a badge, that says I'm able to do this legitimately, I have
experience in ethical hacking. And these things are all being tied into what the ultimate cyber
computer professional will be in the future.
I see in the next 10 years rich opportunities for those who decide to pursue digital forensics,
computer forensic, cyber forensics as a career path. If you enjoy sciences, if you enjoy logic and
logic problems, and puzzles, and analysis, it is a great place to be because it's very much every
single time a puzzle that must be figured out. I would encourage you, if you're interested at all
in the computer sciences field, consider computer or cyber forensics as an option to move
forward, get started, and build a career path, either for the government or industry. It will be a
lucrative career and it’d be a way that you can express your personal talents and your abilities
all for God's glory. So thank you and welcome and I look forward to having you and seeing you
in future classes.
