Programme / Paper

Abstract

Computing, information technology and the convenience associated with holding data electronically have the effect of making businesses dependent on these systems. With dependency comes vulnerability, both to systems failure and to unauthorised access or attack. The ability to determine when and where cybercrimes have taken place and the resultant requirement to examine the cybertrail have raised the need to develop specialists in computer forensics – a set of practitioners who have the methods, skills and techniques to preserve, identify, extract, analyse and document the evidence stored in the form of digitally encoded information. In response Universities have begun to recognise this need, and various computer forensic programmes are now provided. In this paper, the authors will focus on the particular pedagogic challenges, issues and opportunities associated with the teaching of computer forensics. In considering the pedagogic challenges of teaching computer forensics the authors also discuss teaching computer ethics as part of the computer forensics syllabus .