Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Toward Alignment Between Communities Of Practice And Knowledge-Based Decision Support, Jason Nichols, David Biros, Mark Weiser

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The National Repository of Digital Forensics Information (NRDFI) is a knowledge repository for law enforcement digital forensics investigators (LEDFI). Over six years, the NRDFI has undertaken significant design revisions in order to more closely align the architecture of the system with theory addressing motivation to share knowledge and communication within ego-centric groups and communities of practice. These revisions have been met with minimal change in usage patterns by LEDFI community members, calling into question the applicability of relevant theory when the domain for knowledge sharing activities expands beyond the confines of an individual organization to a community of practice. When …

Judges’ Awareness, Understanding, And Application Of Digital Evidence, Gary C. Kessler

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

As digital evidence grows in both volume and importance in criminal and civil courts, judges need to fairly and justly evaluate the merits of the offered evidence. To do so, judges need a general understanding of the underlying technologies and applications from which digital evidence is derived. Due to the relative newness of the computer forensics field, there have been few studies on the use of digital forensic evidence and none about judges’ relationship with digital evidence. This paper describes a recent study, using grounded theory methods, into judges’ awareness, knowledge, and perceptions of digital evidence. This study is the …

A Grounded Theory Approach To Identifying And Measuring Forensic Data Acquisition Tasks, Gregory H. Carlton

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

As a relatively new field of study, little empirical research has been conducted pertaining to computer forensics. This lack of empirical research contributes to problems for practitioners and academics alike.

For the community of practitioners, problems arise from the dilemma of applying scientific methods to legal matters based on anecdotal training methods, and the academic community is hampered by a lack of theory in this evolving field. A research study utilizing a multi-method approach to identify and measure tasks practitioners perform during forensic data acquisitions and lay a foundation for academic theory development was conducted in 2006 in conjunction with …