The University of Cape Town (UCT) is training its first 15 postgraduates in computer forensics as part of an effort to establish a "centre of excellence" to combat, investigate and prosecute computer crime.
UCT is from this year offering an honours degree and postgraduate diploma in computer forensics. Both courses consist of a practical and experiential year, says UCT information systems lecturer Adrie Stander, who teaches the programme.
Stander says the inaugural course started in February, with 15 IT professionals who all have more than 11 years of experience in the workplace. They will graduate in December. A second course will start in the new year and applications open in September.
"There's nothing like it available at the moment," says Stander. "We are using this initiative to establish a centre of excellence for computer forensics in response to the escalating level of digital crime worldwide, and the extremely limited availability of computer forensic skills in SA.
Stander says the paucity of skills is amplified by the police's most recent crime statistics report that says: "Commercial crime covers all kinds of fraud, forgery and uttering, misappropriations and embezzlement. Universally, the modern trend in commercial crime is for it to be handled 'internally' as far as possible (within the company or industry affected) and to only hand cases over to the police for prosecution, if these are reported to the police at all.
"Many companies, particularly those in the financial sector, which are entrusted with safeguarding the financial interests of their clients, do not want it to become publicly known if they have a number of rotten apples in their own baskets. They will consequently investigate cases internally and even deal with culprits in their own ways (for example, by way of dismissal, forcing them to pay back defrauded sums and transfers)," the police report adds.
Stander says "no other mention is made of any action or statistics in this regard and the limited skills available through the Scorpions is also likely to disappear". In a separate initiative, UCT and Stander last week launched SA's first anonymous cyber-crime survey to attempt to establish the parameters of the problem.
Course content
The course was developed after two years of research looking at 23 different courses offered around the globe.
Students are taught a strong set of advanced technical skills, combined with a background in project management, legal and corporate governance. Students are expected to be able to manage computer forensic investigations and also perform ethical hacking and penetration testing on completion of the course. The emphasis is, however, on the ability to act as consultants to organisations that are, or might be, experiencing computer-related crimes and, therefore, they must also develop a strong background in the procedural and policy issues surrounding computer crime.
"Research showed a serious need for practitioners with an understanding of more than just technical analysis of evidence," Stander adds. "The research also showed a serious lack of understanding of computer crime by the legal profession and a short course aimed at that profession is very likely to be developed in the future."
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