Abstract
Digital technologies are becoming more engrained in our daily life and society (e.g., smart city and smart nation), and these technologies can be both the target of and tool used to facilitate a broad range of malicious cyber activities. This reinforces the importance of disciplines such as digital forensics. Digital forensics is a relatively new, multidisciplinary field with roots in traditional forensic sciences, as well as combining elements of technology, legal, social science, political science, criminal justice, and various other disciplines. Compared to the more established fields of computer science, information security, and cybersecurity, digital forensics is somewhat understudied. Though interest in the field is growing and the industry is in need of trained professionals, there are a multitude of challenges to overcome as it relates to education. There is a glaring lack of standardization and structure both in existing educational programs and for those developing new digital forensics programs. Existing programs are scattered among various colleges and departments, and there are significant gaps in the materials covered and relevant emerging technologies. Despite these challenges, the digital forensics field and its variety of subfields such as Internet of Things, mobile, cloud, network, and vehicle forensics have been steadily gaining academic interest and attention. Finding solutions and developing robust higher educational programs is a necessary step to improve the quality of digital forensics education and produce highly trained professionals with the skills required to detect, investigate and prosecute malicious cyber activities in civil litigations (e.g., corporate espionage), criminal investigations and national security investigations.
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Stigall, M., Choo, KK.R. (2022). Digital Forensics Education: Challenges and Future Opportunities. In: Choo, KK.R., Morris, T., Peterson, G., Imsand, E. (eds) National Cyber Summit (NCS) Research Track 2021. NCS 2021. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 310. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84614-5_4
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