Term Paper Assignment: Investigating Data Theft

Suppose a large aerospace engineering firm has immediately hired you as a consultant to investigate a potential violation of corporate policy and data theft. You have been informed that an employee may have been using corporate email to send confidential corporate information to one or more personal email accounts, which may or may not belong to him. You have been told that this action has been happening each business day for the last 13 days and the employee is unaware of any suspicion.

Write an eight to ten page paper in which you:

1. Explain, in detail, the initial actions you would take based on the provided information including formal plans to preserve the crime scene(s) and eventual transportation of evidence to a lab.

2. Analyze the physical and logical places where you would look for potential evidence on the suspect's computer(s) and / or network servers.

3. Describe, in detail, how you proceed with the email investigation, including the review of email headers and tracing.

4. Describe the processes that would be utilized in order to recover data that may have been deleted from the suspect's computer(s).

5. Identify the tools you would use to perform your investigation from beginning to end based on the information you have on the incident.

Provide a brief overview of each tool, to include:

• A description of the tool.
• How you would use the tool in the investigation.
• How the tool helps the investigation and the evidence you expect it to provide.
• Why you believe the evidence the tool provides is critical to the investigation.

6. Use at least five quality resources in this assignment. Note: Wikipedia and similar Websites do not qualify as quality resources.

Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements:

• Be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides; citations and references must follow APA or school-specific format. Check with your professor for any additional instructions.

• Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student's name, the professor's name, the course title, and the date. The cover page and the reference page are not included in the required assignment page length.

The specific course learning outcomes associated with this assignment are:

• Identify the role of computer forensics in responding to crimes and solving business challenges.
• Outline system forensics issues, laws, and skills.
• Examine and explain the evidence life cycle.
• Identify the procurement of evidence in physical and virtualized environments.
• Analyze the impact of sequestration on the evidence-gathering process.
• Develop plans that collect evidence in network and email environments.
• Examine automated digital forensic analysis.
• Use technology and information resources to research issues in computer forensics.
• Write clearly and concisely about computer forensics topics using proper writing mechanics and technical style conventions.