Justice Information Sharing

This course provides students with the fundamental knowledge and skills necessary to perform a limited digital forensic examination, validate hardware and software tools, and effectively use digital forensic suites and specialized tools. The course begins with a detailed study of the digital forensic examination process, including documentation, case management, evidence handling, validation, and virtualization. Students learn to use today's leading commercial and open source digital forensic suites: Magnet Axiom, X-ways Forensic, and Autopsy. Instruction on each suite will include an interface overview, configuration, hashing, file signature analysis, keyword searching, data carving, bookmarking, and report creation.

*Digital forensic process. Evidence review; requests for examination; case management.
*Validation. Creation of validation images; validation testing.
*Effective tool usage. Tool interface; hashing; file signature analysis; data carving; searching; metadata; bookmarking.
*Reporting. General report structure; report templates; using tool-generated reports.

This intermediate spreadsheeting course uses Microsoft Excel to assess and organize data in an electronic format. The class is designed for learners who have experience using Excel and who want to increase their spreadsheeting knowledge and skills. Topics include text functions, absolute referencing, date and time functions, flash fill, handling formula errors, VLOOKUP, dynamic arrays, and data validation. The course combines live demonstrations, instructor-led exercises, and independent student exercises.

This course provides an overview of the actions investigators can take at the outset of a financial crime investigation. Students learn to ask critical questions, gather documentation, and analyze information for leads. Topics include obtaining and working with financial records, red flags in financial cases, money laundering, investigative strategies for different types of financial crimes, and commingled funds.

This course provides the fundamental knowledge and skills required to acquire forensic backup images of commonly encountered forms of digital evidence (Microsoft Windows based computers and external storage devices) in a forensically sound manner. Presentations and hands-on practical exercises cover topics on storage media and how data is stored, the forensic acquisition process, tool validation, hardware and software write blockers, forensic backup image formats, and multiple forensic acquisition methods. Students will use third party tools, both free and commercial, that are currently used by practitioners in the field.