Curriculum for Digital Forensics Degree

There is a difference between what science is, its history and meaning, and what science does through experimental and applied practices. This interdisciplinary course invites students to examine how scientific knowledge is defined, constructed, and communicated. Students will critically analyze different examples of science in society to understand how science shapes and is shaped by culture, power, and people. By the end of the course, students will be equipped to evaluate the ways in which science reflects and transforms the world around us.

This course equips students with interdisciplinary tools and methods to analyze and respond to complex, real-world problems. Drawing on diverse frameworks and theories, students will explore how their own identities and experiences shape their understanding of contemporary issues. Emphasis is placed on synthesizing knowledge across fields to develop innovative, contextually relevant solutions. Students will communicate their insights effectively through a range of expressive modes tailored to varied audiences and purposes.

Students in this course will be presented concepts from white collar and cyber crime arena. The topics may include identify theft, fraud, cyber terrorism, hacking, cyber bullying, child pornography and sexual exploitation, testimony, civil and criminal litigation. Students will learn best practices with hands-on experience in identifying and preserving digital evidence.

In this course, students will learn basic computer organization and operating system functions. The course will cover Processes, Threads, CPU Scheduling, Process Synchronization, Memory Management, Virtual Memory, and Disk Management. Finally, the students will be introduced to System Security, Networking and Virtualization.

Students will be introduced to networking technology and the integral part it plays in business and society. Organizations expect the communication in information systems will be reliable, effective, and secure. Topics include networking frameworks, basic network protocols and topologies, communication methods, information security, security vulnerabilities, and network troubleshooting. Students will gain factual, conceptual, and applied knowledge regarding network communications, security, technology evolution, infrastructure components, and design issues.

This course will examine digital forensics as it relates to both civil and criminal investigations. The course content includes best practices in examining and reporting on digital evidence. Students will be exposed to current technologies and methods as well as leading edge techniques with practical based projects. Students will utilize various popular commercial and free/open-source tools to test and cross-validate results.

This course explores more advanced topics and methodologies for examining digital evidence. Topics taught in this class include File System Forensics, Computer Operating System Forensics and Mobile Device Forensics. Students are challenged to work individually and in groups to examine and prepare detailed reports showing the relevance of digital evidence to mock cases. This course presents a higher level of technical detail and will balance theory and hands-on aspects for conducting digital forensic examinations.

Students in this course will/earn how to properly identify, preserve, analyze, examine data and report on mobile device data. Students will also be taught how to effectivefy conduct investigations involving mobile devices. Content will include analog and digital telephone networks and technologies surrounding cellular technology. Concepts of off the chip extraction and analysis will be discussed. Content will include analog and digital telephone networks and technologies surrounding cellular technology.

This course provides an introduction to computer and data network security. Students will examine the rationale and necessity for securing computer systems and data networks, as well as methodologies for implementing security, security policies, best current practices, testing security, and incident response.

This course dives into more advanced topics related to operating system forensics such as encryption, sandboxes, telemetry data, different system processes, and cloud applications. The course will also cover many user and system artifacts on various operating systems, such as but not limited to Linux and Mac. Students will conduct complex examinations by correlating between artifacts found on different operating systems in order to reconstruct a timeline of events that happened.

Students will learn various techniques to study malware working with real commodity malware as well as specially crafted advanced malware. We study various techniques of malware propagation, methods of detection-evasion and how to respond to a malware outbreak. Students will learn how to acquire system memory and forensically analyze memory dumps. Finally, students will learn about best practices and techniques for responding to security incidents.

File systems are the underlining structures of hardware systems and are used as a method of storing and organizing computer files and their data. Students will gain a practical knowledge of the elements of digital forensics as it relates to parsing and understanding file system structure and use.

An organization's network is always at risk of being compromised. Students will learn how to find threats and eliminate them by mastering the practical and theoretical aspects of traffic analysis and network forensics as it applies to enterprise investigations. Students will collect and analyze of evidence from different network sources such as firewalls, routers, DNS & DHCP services, Host/Network IDS, and logs. Starting with basic network packet capture analysis, detection of abnormal activity, and covert communication channels to lateral movement, students will apply Threat Hunting to follow the footprints of a threat actor.

The digital forensic practicum provides students the opportunity to apply their academic learning, practical experience and acquired skills in an environment closely resembling a real world setting, working on cases that represent a comprehensive understanding of digital forensics.