Order Investigation Considerations Assignment

Posted: September 16th, 2022

Order Investigation Considerations Assignment
In Step 1, you developed forms and templates to collect the legal, criminal, and technical information that lays the groundwork for your investigation. In this step, you will consider the types of equipment and human resources needed to conduct the investigation and create a budget table that includes expenses for software licenses, computers, storage devices, number of digital forensics examiners, digital forensics examiners’ labor hours, examiner hourly pay rate, including time spent for each phase of the investigation process in gathering evidence analysis, reporting, presentation preparation and court appearance(s).
It is important to total overall costs of all equipment and expenses in your budget table. By making these preparations, you are establishing forensic readiness. Required resources can include people; tools and technologies such as RAID storage, deployment kits, or imaging programs; and budget and timeline information.
Develop a checklist. It will be included in the final Investigation Project Plan.
In the next step, you will begin to prepare a plan for managing a digital forensic investigation.
Step 3: Plan Your Investigation
In the prior step, you determined what resources would be necessary for your investigation. In this step, you will develop a plan for managing the investigation. The requirements for writing case reports reflect the step-by-step rigidity of the criminal investigation process itself. Being able to articulate time, task, money, and personnel requirements is essential.
Order Investigation Considerations Assignment
Project management is a skill set that is not often linked to digital forensics and criminal investigations. That is unfortunate because effective project management can have a dramatic impact on the success and accuracy of an investigation. Identifying the tasks that need to be performed, their sequence, and their duration are important considerations, especially in the face of “wild cards” such as delays in obtaining correct search warrants and subpoenas. It is also important to have a clear understanding of the goals for the investigation as you will likely be called upon to present conclusions and opinions of your findings.
Your project plan should include a properly sequenced narrative timeline and a separately labeled and sequenced Visual Graphic Timeline chart that reflects the time intervals between each phase of the evidence acquisition and investigation processes (e.g., 30 hours gathering evidence spread across five business days, 60 hours of analysis over 10 business days, 90 days for reporting and court preparation, etc.) including detailed time estimates, and contingency plans. Your plan will serve many purposes, including the assignment of a project budget. As you create your plan, be sure to include in your meeting agenda communications and reporting: who should be involved, how the activities should be carried out, how often, and under what circumstances (i.e., modality, frequency).
Once you have developed your project management plan, move on to the next step, where you will submit your final assignment.
Step 4: Prepare and Submit Completed Investigation Project Plan
For your final assignment, you will combine the results of the previous three steps into a single planning document—an Investigation Project Plan—with a title page, a table of contents, and a distinct section for each of the three steps. The plan should include:
Forms documenting key people, meeting agenda, key activities and reporting, key words, investigation timeline narrative, visual graphic timeline chart, authorization confirmation (e.g., ownership, jurisdiction), and related investigations. Designation of the legal forms required for criminal investigations should also be included. (Step 1)
Resource checklist for equipment, human resources and labor expenses (Step 2)
Management plan (Step 3)
Search and seizure form(s)
Chain of custody form
The organization and details of your plan is important. Be sure to refer to the Guidelines for Project 1 Investigation Project Plan to meet the minimum standards needed for this project.
All sources of information must be appropriately referenced. Submit your completed Investigation Project Plan to your supervisor (instructor) for evaluation upon completion.