Digital Forensics Investigation
Week 6 Assignment - Digital Forensics Investigation
Imagine you are a digital forensics investigator hired by a corporation to secure and analyze a crime scene involving a misuse of company computer systems by an employee suspected of selling proprietary data to a foreign government over the course of several years. Items that must be secured and analyzed involve running computer systems, mobile devices, memory cards, tablets, and optical storage such as CDs and DVDs. In addition, there are a number of computer hard drives that have been discarded in a dumpster outside the building that may contain digital evidence.
Write a 2–3 page paper in which you:
1. Explain in detail the high-level methodology used in digital forensic investigations.
2. Explain the evidence collection process using this scenario and being mindful that there are live systems involved.
3. Discuss the importance of a secure chain of custody.
Digital Forensics
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Institution
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Digital Forensics
Digital forensics is vital to prosecuting digital offenders successfully. It is a forensic science component that is the basis for every digital forensic investigation (Abbas & Abdulmajeed, 2021). Cybercrime and digital forensics: An introduction. Routledge. The paper explains the high-level methodology digital forensic investigations follow, the evidence collection process based on the provided scenario, and the relevance of a secure chain of custody.
Digital forensics investigation is a complex process that involves several procedures or steps. The initial activity is creating awareness that an investigation is necessary. Events outside the firm, which will conduct the investigation, create awareness. For instance, the police receive crime reports. After generating the urge for an investigation, the following step is finding authorization from the systems administrator. After that, the investigators should comprehend the investigation’s nature and create objectives and scope. They should find possible digital proof sources like smartphones, cloud storage, computers, and network logs. Additionally, notifying a survey’s subject or other related parties about the beginning of an investigation is crucial. The evidence collection stage starts after the notification. Detectives acquire and protect digital proof to avoid loss, damage, or modifications (Subair et al., 2022). They use different strategies to obtain and secure information, such as documenting appropriate metadata and imaging storage media. After the collection phase, appropriate staff or authority transports the evidence to a significant location for further analysis. The gathered proof is mostly stored since the analysis does not happen suddenly. Investigators assess the obtained data based on the appropriate time to extract crucial information. After a successful examination, investigators develop a hypothesis regarding what happened. Afterward, they present the evidence to relevant entities (Subair et al., 2022). In the court system, defending the hypothesis is inevitable, especially if challenged.
The first step is assessing the crime scen...