Question

You are a fraud examiner tasked with investigating an embezzlement scheme at a local manufacturer company. An employee from the accounting department was able to hack into the company's network from his home computer and access the passwords for other employees. He then used an employee's log in information and accessed the vendor master file where he created multiple fake vendors. Once the vendors were set up he began submitted invoices from his work computer and then subsequently authorized and processed payments to these vendors. Certain managers emailed him about some unusual costs but he was able to explain each concern without raising suspicions. He emailed several friends and used there home addresses for these vendors and promised to give them a percentage of the money. Prepare a 3-4 page paper addressing the following items: 1. What is computer forensic and how is this area helpful to fraud examiners? 2. How might you use computer forensics to investigate the above case? 3. What evidence would you gather with computer forensics tools. 4. What types of data analytics will be helpful to you? 5. What DA tests would you run and why? What evidence would you hope to collect? 6. What challenges are presented when using computer forensics?

Answer 1

Computer forensics is basically a branch or type of digital forensic science which is used in identifying and examining evidences found in computers and digital storage media.It is mostly involved in investigating cyber frauds or computer crimes.It involves processes like identifying, examining, analysis and reporting.It totally focuses on digital evidences acquired during the investigation.It has the ability to extract evidences even from the deleted computer files or from files stored in separate hardware or even from encrypted or protected files.

Computer forensics has gained utmost importance in today's world.It is highly effective and used in discovering frauds related to the cyber world.it gives the investigators an platform to collect the evidences digitally and hence has a very less chance of manipulation.Also the evidences collected by it are highly reliable and it can even detect fraud from the most protected and planned means of manipulation or misappropriation.It helps in collecting digital evidences in the most efficient manner and also helps in preserving such evidences in a most secured way till the time such evidences are required.