Old-Bob
commented
9 years ago Academia has certainly been trying to prepare students for careers in forensics and I think they are doing an OK job. Not great.
I personally came up in digital forensics in an on-the-job training situation and have been doing it for over 15 years now, with a number training seminars, conferences, certifications and old fashioned self-learning having informed by skill set. I've taken many classes specifically for various tasks related to digital forensics and IR and have found most of them to be quite relevant and helpful. I've obtained relevant certifications along the way as well. I have also developed and delivered relevant instructional material to adult learners and have many friends and colleagues, inside and outside of academia, who still do.
Over the last several years I have personally seen an increase in the number of degrees associated with cyber forensics and security popping up at colleges and universities. At first I regarded this as a great sign of progress in the field, I thought it would shed a much needed light on the importance of this work and would start a much needed process of grooming the next generation of DFIR practitioners.
Since then, I have had the opportunity to read the resumes of and conduct interviews with dozens of candidates fresh from these programs. Graduates from certificate programs, graduates from community college programs, undergrad and even master’s degree programs. I have even worked with such folks whose education came solely from academia.
The problem I've seen is the lack of any significant difference in skills between someone with a community college degree in digital forensics and someone with a master’s degree in digital forensics. Both can come in and do a passable job as a junior examiner but the person with a master’s degree is expecting to be paid to level they are just not capable of yet. Frankly, there are certifications out there that I’d value higher than a degree.
There is certainly value in this education and the skills can and do help someone’s entry into the field. There are issues, however, with the perceptions generated by these institutions to their students. They leave feeling confident in being able to conduct a thorough response and examination only to find they have only the most basic set of skills. It is difficult to reconcile the amount of time, money, and effort these folks put into such an education only to find that they aren't qualified to do much more than picture cases and routine imaging tasks.
Can academia prepare students for a career in forensics? Are they trying? Are they failing? How can it be addressed? If they are succeeding, how?