Teaching a computer forensics course

Abstract

Recent research points to a severe shortage of cybersecurity professionals right now and in the near future. Universities are introducing cybersecurity programs to fill the gap between cybersecurity professionals' supply and demand. Although cybersecurity concepts/courses are being taught in many undergraduate programs for quite some time, but with the recent surge for cybersecurity professionals' demand, educators have realized the need to offer cybersecurity degree programs. Despite having a plethora of unstructured cybersecurity information available, faculty are struggling to find structured content for cybersecurity major courses. In this paper, we discuss our efforts of teaching a computer forensics course. We present our teaching modules and associated hands-on activities with the hope that our peers might find our course content or teaching methodology helpful in preparing similar courses.