Challenges Of Computer Forensics And Network Forensics

(Free Pressrelease) Computer Forensics is that branch of forensic science that deals with evidences and clues that are admissible in a court of law and found in computers, networks and digital storage equipment. This is a relatively new branch of forensic science that aims to aid the legal experts and law keepers in gathering important clues from the digital world.

With the advent of the digital technology, criminals have also become computer savvy and use the Internet and the computer networks for carrying out their nefarious activities. Cyber laws have been framed to counter cyber-crimes and at the same time modifications have been incorporated in the traditional legal system to ensure that computers become enablers and not impediments in investigations.

The goal of computer forensics is to probe and find out obscure and hidden details from storage mediums, computer systems, large networks, emails, images or data packets being transported over a network. The scope of this branch of forensic science may vary from retrieval of information to reconstruction of a sequence of events. This new branch of forensic science includes some other sub branches within its ambit such as the network forensics, database forensics, mobile device forensics and firewall forensics.

There are many reasons behind employing computer forensics; some of them are mentioned below:

• Computer forensic techniques are often used in legal cases to analyse computer systems of the alleged offenders.
• To recover data in case data is erased by the criminal
• To analyse the faults of a computer system after there was a break-in for ascertaining the probable faults that enabled such a mishap
• To gather information against an employee that the organization wants to terminate
• To understand how a computer system works from the point of view of debugging, reverse engineering and optimization of performances

The Forensic Process Involves Five Basic Steps:

1. Preparation of investigation
2. Collection of data
3. Examination of evidence
4. Analysis
5. Reporting

It is worth remembering that forensic science is in itself a very intricate and exact science and computer forensic is yet another direction in super specialization. Computer forensics requires highly skilled and trained personnel to perform the most delicate of analysis and the toughest of examinations.

Digital evidences may be collected from many sources, including hard drives, cellular phones, USB devices, memory cards, CD ROMs and digital cameras. Some other sources of evidences include black boxes found in automobiles, digital thermometers, web pages and RFID tags.

Special care must be taken while handling computer evidences since digital evidence is very easy to change and once changed it is tough to revert it back to the original form. Therefore a common practice among computer forensic experts is to calculate a cryptographic hash of the evidence so that it is easy to ascertain that there has been no change in the evidence since the cryptographic hash was calculated. Other practices that are used for handling digital evidences include maintaining proper documentation, maintain chain of custody properly, use of tools that are reliable and that have been validated and imaging media on computer by employing a write-blocking tool to ensure that no data is tampered with.

To know more about Computer forensics, visit the given link.

Contact:

CASPER KAN CHANG
Decision Group Inc.
4/F No. 31, Alley 4, Lane 36, Sec.5, Ming-Shan East Road Taipei, Taiwan
Phone: +886227665753
Website: http://www.edecision4u.com