University of Maryland University College Computer Forensic Examiners Discussion

1) The use of personal social media may have many ramifications on an individual’s work. With personal social media usage, employees must be cautious of posts relating to work as they may contain sensitive or proprietary company information. In addition, posts regarding an employee’s personal life or beliefs may reflect negatively not only on the employee themselves, but also extend to the employer. There have been many situations where offensive posts or posts containing sensitive company information resulted in employment termination.

Various different digital forensic tools exist and are available either free of cost or for a price; however, not all of these tools are considered validated. Using a tool which has not been validated may have several ramifications, especially within a digital forensic investigation. In relation to a criminal investigation, use of a tool which has yet to be validated produces unreliable results, placing the investigation process and results at risk (Dimpe & Kogeda, 2017). As a cascading effect, this tool choice may result in wasted manpower and have negative financial costs.

Certifications, in general, signify an individual’s knowledge and competency within a certain field or topic. With digital forensic certifications, the ACE certification demonstrates an individual’s knowledge and competency with using the Forensic Toolkit (FTK) while the CCE provides a vender neutral certification to individuals within the field (Dynek, 2018). While earning a certification is important, maintaining the certification is equally as important. For IT certification including those within digital forensics, an individual must complete continuing education credits or complete a re-certification process to maintain their certifications. This demonstrates that the individual has maintain the knowledge on the subject, as well as expanded their knowledge. In addition, maintaining the ACE and/or CCE certification assists in verification of a computer forensic examiner as an expert witness by demonstrating their knowledge in the field (Dynek, 2018).

Failure to follow an organization’s SOP can result in a suspension of employment or even complete termination. SOPs are created to help streamline a process and minimize inadvertent mistakes. Aside from employment status, failure to follow SOPs may result in mistakes, possibly costing a company hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Reference

Dimpe, P. M., & Kogeda, O. P. (2017). Impact of Using Unreliable Digital Forensic Tools. In Proceedings of the World Congress on Engineering and Computer Science (Vol. 1).

Dynek, J. (2018, October 3). When a Computer Forensic Examinier has to Testify in Court. Retrieved from https://www.cyberstudents.org/blog-post/when-a-computer-forensic-examiner-has-to-testify-in-court/

2) Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) are essentially documented rules and processes for how to conduct business within your organization. SOP’s are usually derived from a formalized and coordinated process. They reduce the amount of errors while also increasing productivity. SOP’s are a very important part of the quality assurance process as well, demonstrating compliance with regulations and operational practices, and help ensure everyone is doing the right tasks the properly prescribed way.

With regards to Forensic Examiners, not following standard operating procedures can be highly detrimental to the integrity of their work. SOP’s for digital forensic examination are designed to enable forensic collection and analysis which can be presented in a court of law. The standard operating procedures will outlay how the forensic examiner should be conducting his work so as to remain in line with compliance and industry standard best practices for digital forensic collection. They also allow for the forensic examiner to testify in court that he or she has followed all of their organization’s standard procedures for forensic work, which can then be reviewed by the court to demonstrate that they hold up to legal scrutiny. Lastly, the standard operating procedures help guide the forensic examiner through the entire process of collecting, analyzing and preparing their analysis/reporting for court.

References

Pearce, O. (2019, September 30). What are SOPs? and Why Does My Organization Need Them? Retrieved November 7, 2019, from https://blog.montrium.com/experts/what-are-sops-and-why-does-my-organization-need-them.

Scientific Working Group on Digital Evidence. (2012, September 13). SWGDE Model Standard Operation Procedures for Computer Forensics. Retrieved November 7, 2019, from https://www.swgde.org/documents/Current Documents/SWGDE QAM and SOP Manuals/SWGDE Model SOP for Computer Forensics.

Barbara, J. J. (2007, October 1). Documenting Computer Forensic Procedures. Retrieved November 7, 2019, from https://www.forensicmag.com/article/2007/10/documenting-computer-forensic-procedures.