We have always heard of the word “hack”.He is good at medic alert and website design.  Its mostly used in related to computers and gets blamed for everything bad that happens in futuristic crime action movie. Most of these are not entirely true but network systems do get hacked. Most companies are confident of what their IT department is capable off.However that does not mean that an employee can not be tempted to do a little snooping of his own. Most of the time offenders are within the company itself. The accessibility of the internet also poses a problem. Anyone can be anything online. This is why fraud, phishing, and identity theft happen. The computer is an important part of our lives. Sending letters have been entirely changed through emails. Communications have been dominated by instant messaging and texts. Portable storage devices that were only known to IT professionals are now used by the general public. We already have an idea of what computer forensics is but what does happen in a typical investigation? He is also interested in home renovation.

The computer crime scene

First like any other investigation would start, the location is regarded as a crime scene. The computer analyst will take digital photographs and secure documentary evidence. This includes printouts, notes and disks in the scene. If you have hired a computer forensic expert you should leave everything to them. The computer system should left as it is whether it is turned on or off. If the computer is turned on the computer analyst will gather all the information that he can from the running applications. It will then be shutdown in a way that the data will not be lost. Doing a standard shutdown or pulling the plug is not an option. Both of these methods may cause the lost or damage of the data in the computer system. The computer forensic analyst then documents the configuration of the system. This will include the order of hard drives, modem, LAN, storage subsystems, cable connections, and wireless networking hardware. The analyst will take digital photographs and make a diagram. They will also take portable storage devices within the area that may contain substantial evidence.

After that the hard drive will be taken to the lab. It’s not suitable to examine data in the same hardware. Offenders who engage in cyber crimes are also aware that important data can be retrieved to convict them. Countermeasures, viruses and booby traps may be installed in the system to damage electronic evidence.

The specificity of a computer forensic analysis depends on the domain or field of the criminal investigation. Thus, between homicide and corporate date theft, the procedure will vary a lot. There are however some general common grounds that are encountered with both procedures. First of all, finding evidence that can be accepted in a court of law is not enough. Sometimes the nature of the evidence is versatile or perishable and the computer forensics investigator has to do everything to preserve it or at least to make good viable copies. Once a crime scene is thoroughly searched by forensic experts, a forensic analysis moves in the lab.

Computer forensic analysis can reveal a whole range of traces and evidences that cannot be identifiable on the spot and with regular means. Thus, germs, bacteria, fingerprints, facial portraits, mineral and textile analysis, DNA analysis as well as other elements collected on the the site of a crime get under micro-scrutiny to be proved or improved as relevant or irrelevant for criminal justice. Medical exams are also commonly necessary when there are victims involved in a certain crime; medical experts will perform such forensic analysis, giving the answer to the legal questions.

People often get a false impression that any forensic analysis inevitably refers to manslaughter or some very serious crime involving victims, but forensic investigations are conducted for a whole range of other reasons. Where there is a work accident, a fire, a case of identity or data theft, situations of financial fraud and so on, professional forensic analysis helps close files and clarifies lots of situations. The criminal justice picture we tend to attribute to a regular forensic analysis results from the impact that police TV series such as CSI have on popular culture.

Moreover, information on how a computer forensic investigation is conducted is plentiful in Discovery documentaries in the forensic crime investigations. This sensationalism of violence is an international trend, it affects people from all over the world and it has to be kept under control in order not to harm young minds. If you feel animated by justice spirits, try not to act on those, because it is forbidden by law to interfere in criminal or forensic investigations. Let’s leave the drama aside and allow the professionals to do their jobs. A forensic analysis is not amateur detective work but something a lot more complex from the scientific point of view.

The world of justice seems to be shaped by forensics investigation procedures, and the imagination of many people has been fired by TV crime series such as CSI: New York for instance. A computer forensics investigator can cover an impressive number of tasks: from from toxicology and DNA fingerprinting to autopsy, anthropology and computer facial reconstructions. Science has thus become the best method to fight crimes and prove a suspect’s guilt or innocence in the court of law. And the responsibility of the forensics investigation is the responsibility of the people who conduct it.

There are methods, features, science experiments and interviews that increase the variety of a computer forensic investigation types even further. On crime scene procedures are very complex and they in fact make the grounds on which the investigation is then developed or conducted. Although people get the impression that a forensics investigation revolves around the laboratory all the time, this is not necessarily true particularly since experts cannot neglect what the crime scene has to provide in terms of information. When the crime scene is not analyzed properly, the court evidence can be compromised, therefore all forensic skills work in the direction of identifying evidence no matter how small.

The nature of the crime and the authorities who conduct the forensics investigations are the ones to decide for the course of action. The steps of a data analysis for instance will be different than those of a robbery. Thus, special equipment is required for data retrieval as it is the case in computer forensics. Once all the details have been identified, there follows the collection of data, the examination, the analysis and the reporting. The procedures and measures vary for each of the steps involved although they eventually converge into one single viable point: finding the criminal.

Depending on what kind of forensics investigation is necessary, different experts will be involved. In fact, all the results of such criminal analysis are a sum of several people’s contribution, because several forensic departments go through the evidence or investigate different aspects of the criminal act. There are cases when the lack of evidence doesn’t allow the legal system to follow its normal course. There are hundreds maybe thousands of such cases piling up worldwide because the police did not have enough evidence to support prosecution.

The computer is an important part of our lives. Sending letters have been entirely changed through emails. Communications have been dominated by instant messaging and texts. Portable storage devices that were only known to IT professionals are now used by the general public. We already have an idea of what computer forensics is but what does happen in a typical investigation?

The computer crime scene

First like any other investigation would start, the location is regarded as a crime scene. The computer analyst will take digital photographs and secure documentary evidence. This includes printouts, notes and disks in the scene. If you have hired a computer forensic expert you should leave everything to them. The computer system should left as it is whether it is turned on or off.

If the computer is turned on the computer analyst will gather all the information that he can from the running applications. It will then be shutdown in a way that the data will not be lost. Doing a standard shutdown or pulling the plug is not an option. Both of these methods may cause the lost or damage of the data in the computer system.

The computer forensic analyst then documents the configuration of the system. This will include the order of hard drives, modem, LAN, storage subsystems, cable connections, and wireless networking hardware. The analyst will take digital photographs and make a diagram. They will also take portable storage devices within the area that may contain substantial evidence.

After that the hard drive will be taken to the lab. It’s not suitable to examine data in the same hardware. Offenders who engage in cyber crimes are also aware that important data can be retrieved to convict them. Countermeasures , viruses and booby traps may be installed in the system to damage electronic evidence.

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