Computer forensics plays a vital role in recovering and revealing the hidden clues. A very famous case is the BTK Killer where investigators had assisted the police to discover a serial killer, Dennis Rader, through a floppy disk that Dennis sent to the police. Investigators found within the documents implicated an author name "Dennis" at "Christ Lutheran Church". This evidence helped to lead to the serial killer's arrest. Sound like watching CSI? Yes, it is.
By now, you should realise how wide the scope of work can be. Let's us look at some of the common situations in which it is used:
1) Unauthorised disclosure of corporate data (by accident or design)
There's always a chance that employees will disclose corporate data without authorisation to third parties or competitors. The chance increases when employees are unhappy, dissatisfied, or being fired. As corporate information such as business plans, customers database and product roadmaps are private and confidential, a computer forensics is needed to assist in protecting and lock down the potential leak of sensitive data. If such incident happens, he will help to uncover the person responsible.
2) Criminal fraud
The above BTK Killer case best describes how computer forensics is used in assisting criminal fraud uncovering. As you Google, you will come across how computer forensics had helped in uncovering evidence in the prosecution in high-profile murder cases as information technology had become a necessity in everyone's daily life irrespective of what profession you are in, whether legal or illegal. Apart from that, a knowledgeable and skilful investigator plays a key role in Court when presenting digital evidence for legal proceedings as these are not something which many of us can understand.
Other common situations include employee internet abuse, damage assessment and analysis, industrial spying, and other more general criminal cases. All these are where wrong-doings and crimes are committed through computers and digital storage media. These are also where evidences are found by computer forensics investigators.
Source by Jack Jong
