This seems to be a pretty cool area to me. I have been reading a little about it from some sites. Any members studying this/work in this area? It seems to me it will be a growing field because of the way the world is going (digital). Be interested to hear anything (thoughts, opinions) from those in the know.
Computer forensics
- Thread starter kt-own
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There's one person here who's in the job, and I'm sure he will be along in a minute. But basic advice is: do NOT, I repeat, NOT, do a specific "forensic" course if that's the job area you are interested in. The courses are poor, and teach you stuff no employer cares about. Get a standard Computer Science degree, get some experience, then try for the jobs. Your employer will teach you the forensic stuff, but they rely on you having the proper background.
Be aware that openings are few and far between. Be aware that public sector jobs in the field pay badly - but are good for the CV.
M
Be aware that openings are few and far between. Be aware that public sector jobs in the field pay badly - but are good for the CV.
M
Associate
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Maybe it's like fight club?
People working in forensics, don't talk about working in forensics.
Simon
(who definately doesn't work in forensics)
People working in forensics, don't talk about working in forensics.
Simon
(who definately doesn't work in forensics)
Caporegime
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Makes sense to do a more general computing course such as computer sciences, in case there simply aren't any jobs in computer forensics. I'd have thought analogies can be drawn with doctors - you start out as a casualty gimp / GP and specialise in specific areas of surgery later in your career.
Associate
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I have studied the EnCE, and I think EnCase is a very good product. I have also had a little look into Helix and some other opensource tools.
I work in Information Security, and Forensics is something I used to get involved in until about 6 months ago. Forensics is interesting, and I would say something worth doing a module / short course in to get an understanding of the concepts etc, and you can take it further from here. I did the Guidance courses because I used EnCase at work, and it helps a little if you have to be an Expert Witness, but I do find forensics a skill that you need to maintain to be good. I say this because its not my day job, so can sometimes take me some time to get my head around the tools and functions again. However understanding criminal law and custody / chain of evidence are good to have if you work in the InfoSec arena.
Finally this is probably pretty obvious, but it isnt like CSI
.
Based on the different cases you work on, you do see some terrible things, and you often have the pleasure of meeting these people. Its not something I think I could do every day, but having the skill and helping out occasionaly is fine for me.
I work in Information Security, and Forensics is something I used to get involved in until about 6 months ago. Forensics is interesting, and I would say something worth doing a module / short course in to get an understanding of the concepts etc, and you can take it further from here. I did the Guidance courses because I used EnCase at work, and it helps a little if you have to be an Expert Witness, but I do find forensics a skill that you need to maintain to be good. I say this because its not my day job, so can sometimes take me some time to get my head around the tools and functions again. However understanding criminal law and custody / chain of evidence are good to have if you work in the InfoSec arena.
Finally this is probably pretty obvious, but it isnt like CSI
.Based on the different cases you work on, you do see some terrible things, and you often have the pleasure of meeting these people. Its not something I think I could do every day, but having the skill and helping out occasionaly is fine for me.
I am planning on doing this at MSc level next year - just working to get the funds and hopefully if I can get some kind of reading list some reading and research done before I start.
Annoyingly I have to do some Java attachment thing before I can go onto the course which has added £500 to the overall cost of the masters - ho hum.
Rich
Annoyingly I have to do some Java attachment thing before I can go onto the course which has added £500 to the overall cost of the masters - ho hum.
Rich
Good advice, I went to do a course that covered things from PICs to Linux file systems, sys admin, lots of C programming, network programming, VHDL, and probably more things that were forgotten, now I work in DTV.
Do a more "generic" course that lets you try out lots of things, not just one that does purely one thing. Do one with a placement, and try to find a placement in the industry you want to get into. That's the sure way into the right industry.
If you are still looking for a course try CRTS at UWE. Good course.
I'm a bit surprised at that tbh. With all the courses for forensics springing up I thought they would be a good idea. Guess not. I'm actually also a little surprised that no one else is studying this/interested in it.
The courses are springing up on the back of the "CSI Effect". people see it on TV and think it looks interesting, and thus want a course in it. Ironically the universities offering the courses (mostly the ex-polys) are getting rid of courses that the forensic providers do want their staff to have (chemistry, biology) to replace them with courses the providers do not want.
It's very simple: the FSPs want to train their recruits, and not have the work done by someone else. They are going to give you the same training course no matter what your degree is in, so they'd rather you picked up the background stuff which you will not be trained in. It's easy to teach you forensic science if you can do science, but very hard to teach you science if you only have FS.
It doesn't help that the courses simply aren't any good: the only course worth anything at all (in normal FS that is, not CFS) is the Strathclyde MSc in Forensic Science - that is very well respected. The courses offered by most establishments tend to be broad and very shallow, teaching you loads of stuff you'll never use - believe it or not, part of my local uni's course if web-site design. Really. And crime-scene management. Great you think, except CSM is actually handled by the police! The FSP will concentrate its teaching on exactly what you need and no more.
And some of the courses are just plain wrong: a colleague and I, with forty years experience between us, went through a text-book produced for the course by a lecturer in the subject. The number of errors was staggering: we were going to send him a red-pencilled copy back (but didn't). But he wouldn't know any better: like almost all lecturers in the subject, he's never actually done the work for real.
M
I do it full-time and I don't have a degree of any sort (I'm studying for one part-time but that didn't really factor in getting the job). What has been said on here is true though - given the paucity of computer forensic jobs, you would be better off going on a vanilla computing degree. They'll probably cover most of the stuff you need to know (how data is organised on a hard drive, file systems etc). Most of the specialised forensic knowledge I have isn't the kind of stuff a Uni would teach anyway - it's very specific stuff about how one program or another stores information (Limewire or Google Hello being recent examples) which just crops up in the course of the job. Training in the forensic software we use (Encase being the main one) is a mixture of short courses and the rest on-the-job.
It's a good job and I do enjoy it - it keeps changing and it's usually worthwhile. I work for the police and the pay is good for the area, though that's not true for all areas of the country (though in some places the pay is significantly more).
It's a good job and I do enjoy it - it keeps changing and it's usually worthwhile. I work for the police and the pay is good for the area, though that's not true for all areas of the country (though in some places the pay is significantly more).
As a job i thought computer forensics would be insanely hard to get in to. Due to CSI and several universitys doing pointless forensic courses there will proberly be a large amount of people trying to get a computer forensics job, yet its not the sort of job that requires lots of people to accomplish, so the positions available will be very few and far between.
Soldato
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It looks like a bad area to get into, every other student in Liverpool is doing Forensic Science.
I wish them luck: excluding DNA analysis (which is effectively production-line work) all the FSPs together probably recruit no more than fifty people a year. Chuck in about the same number of SOCOs at most and that's a hundred a year. At best. Most years it's probably more like thirty.
M
By 'forensic science' do they mean traditional forensics (prints, dna etc) or computer forensics? The two disciplines are as different as a degree in chemistry and one in programming.
Obviously I've never done private sector, but the people I've met at conferences and things who are private tend to have it as another string to their bow rather than their main activity. There are a few specialist computer forensic private companies but I certainly wouldn't say it's easy to get into, though of course you could just set up your own
Obviously I've never done private sector, but the people I've met at conferences and things who are private tend to have it as another string to their bow rather than their main activity. There are a few specialist computer forensic private companies but I certainly wouldn't say it's easy to get into, though of course you could just set up your own
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Soldato
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Just "Forensic Science", so they probably suck at everything. It's the CSI effect.