Term Paper: Investigating Data Theft
By: Daniel Figueroa
Strayer University

CIS417
Prof. Curtis Bunch

Digital Forensics is an important aspect to computer systems security. I mean we are talking about Identifying, Collecting, Preserving, Analyzing, and Presenting evidence digitally. Therefore, preserving electronic evidence is important. Investigating Data Theft is a malice act towards a company/ organization (Kruse, 2001). Such theft is made by an employee that is either terminated or resigning. Motives for data theft include setting up a competing business, using the information at a new job, sense of ownership of what was created, and revenge against the employer, among other things. Common Theft include, customer information, financial records, software code, email lists, strategic plans, process documents, secret formulas, databases, research and development materials, and employee records. Now, with such theft around, we often wonder how is such theft achieved. Knowing how technology is always advancing each year, the millennium era grows with fascinating knowledge on the know how to working a computer, hard drives, etc. Tools like flash drive, which can hold thousands of documents that can be copied to the flash drive, and taken anywhere. Then you have Dropbox, remote desktop connections, personal email accounts, smart phones, CD’s/DVD’s, and FTP ( File Transfer Protocol ) (Kruse, 2001) There is always this saying, that personnel who steal data often leave a trail of digital evidence that proves invaluable when investigating data theft. We as the forensic specialists have the capabilities to uncover important evidence through, identifying recent attached devices, like USB thumb drives, locate recent files and documents that have been accessed. Isolate emails made from both personal and professional accounts, investigate recent browsing