Cyber Crime Cybercrime has been a hot button topic in recent years. A crime involving digital services or computers, cybercrimes typically is when someone targets a computer for a crime, uses a computer as a tool for a crime, or has computer containing evidence of a crime. Since the rise of information technology, cybercrime has become taken center stage as a shift in criminal activity means more criminals doing business online and using computers or attacking computers as a result of it. Criminal investigators and law enforcement have thus begun efforts to control prevent and investigate cyber activities to avoid major problems for the Government, agencies, organizations, and individuals. As one article put it, it is a battleground. "The digital world has become a battleground for the forces of good and evil. There is an ever increasing awareness that the digital world provides an unlimited opportunity to further one's goals" (Gregory & Glance, 2013, p. 51).

A way law enforcement is tackling cybercrime is through the hiring and retention of highly skilled cybercrime experts via business enterprises and Government. This guarantees compliance and enforcement of international guidelines for acceptable standard usage of technological devices and computer in private and in work places. Although emphasis must be placed on prevention measures, control and investigation measures are vital as well in maintaining systems free of illegal breaches.

In case of any breaches, forensics experts must be called as they are the ones to conduct the necessary forensic examinations, analysis, reconstruction, and documentation of any crime scene, presenting evidence to the Court and other appropriate authorities that may lead to the arrest, prosecution, and conviction of the suspected criminal. Another aspect of cybercrime aside from breaches are digital assets. Certain private information like social security numbers and tax information can easily become stolen and lead to identity fraud. These kinds of digital assets must be safeguarded. Therefore, research needs to point towards new and innovative strategies to circumvent these crimes and protect those affected by it.

Cyber-Crime Control (CCC)

CCC deals with the development of sufficient policies to help control cybercrime activities. Any policies developed must spell out suitable punishment for convicted cyber criminals. Convictions are as a result of court verdicts and will act a deterrent measure for any person wanting to engage in criminal acts connected to technology.

Cyber Crime Prevention (CCP)

CCP involves emphasis on the training of administrators and users of cyber space, security awareness, best practices and so forth to avert and minimize the occurrence of cyber incidents. Underground hacking techniques while the cause of some cybercrimes can help security managers and administrators understand how criminals works, thereby helping prevent cybercrime. To think like a hacker is to use the techniques and tools hackers use thereby helping to expose the various ways of detecting and thwarting cybercrime activities through training and education. Recognition of users as the weakest link is paramount since that is where most of the damage is done. "A solution out of this dilemma is a cyber-security policy decidedly anti-vulnerability and at the same time based on strong considerations for privacy and data protection. Such a security would have to be informed by an ethics of the infosphere" (Dunn Cavelty, 2014, p. 701).

The types of tools that will aid in these efforts are open source and commercial tools that will include, however, not limited to:

1. Backtrack 5r3

2. email tracker pro

3. Nmap

4. Nessus

5. Retina

6. Metasploit pro and framework

Cyber Crime Investigation (CCI)

If and when a system becomes compromised, as it will inevitably happen, regardless of measures taken to prevent or control the situation, investigations will be implemented. Investigations assist in unraveling any clues behind the attack and could help trace the hacker through and IP address, server, or other means of digital footprints. While this is a hard task to complete, forensic investigation of computer system and network based attacks provide experience to help prevent future attacks. From identification of any clues, to collection of evidence, to preservation analysis, then documentation, and finally presentation of evidence, here is where things like victimology are observed.

Victimology

1. Victimology is the study of any victim of crime as well as the psychological effects they have or are imposed on them.

2. Victimology may not always mean an individual. It can be a bank, website, ministry, server, agency, or any other target (Doerner & Lab, 2014).

Links to the Victims include:

Work related

Hobby related

Work related

Geographical

Family related

Analysis of the victim helps reveal the reason...

Cyber trails are often an important way to obtain valuable information that can later undermine an offender and lead to their arrest and subsequent conviction.
Aims and Objective

With cybercrime on the rise, it is a growing concern for both organizations/businesses and Government. The aims are to discover ways to reduce cybercrime activities and existing laws and amendments that were made to appropriately punish cyber criminals along with other deterrent measures that have been or will be used to reduce cybercrime. Lastly the objective is to develop a strategy for effectively tracking cyber criminals through application of research driven cyber forensic techniques and how victims can report crimes and how the FBI website and the IC3 may play a role.

Research Questions

These questions are meant to provide a means of exploring the current information available and refine the search.

What are we trying to protect? What needs protection are several. They are availability network, assets, network infrastructure, confidential personal data, resources that can be categorized into three groups.

Information stored physically such as hard copies

Information store on transit (digitally) in the network or electronically

Information stored in the human brain.

Why are intrusions so often successful? As stated earlier, the users are the weakest link in the security chain. Users often fail to perform the actions necessary to avoid becoming a target for cyber criminals. Things like no firewall, password sharing, simple passwords, ignorance of organizational and/or logical boundaries in a network infrastructure along with numerous things can create weakness and increase risk for breach. Research and implementation of best practices will not 100% prevent cyberattacks, but will lessen the rate in which cybercrimes are performed.

What are the greatest challenges that we face today? Some of the challenges faced to day like constant innovation and new technology, and environment complexity create further exploits and threats because once one strategy is learned and implemented, the cybercriminal will have learned of a new way to make a successful breach, bringing things back to square one. Now with the use of mobile phones and the increase in mobile technology via mobile apps and smartphones, cyber threats have increased. There has to be a trade off somewhere so technology can still be innovative, but at the same time allow more time to develop better security. Rapid improvements have set trigger to rapid growth of cybercrimes as detailed in a 2014 article.

Rapid improvements in information technologies have triggered the concept of cyberspace which is considered as the fifth dimension of war. While transferring information quickly from physical area to electronic/digital area, cyberspace has caused to emerge a lot of threats and methods like cyber-attack, cyber-crime, cyber war which are spreading too rapidly (Gedikli, 2014, p. 1).

Why are most attacks gone undetected? The majority of companies and organizations are not aware if that have experienced a cyberattack. This is alarming news. It is one thing when someone knows they are being hacked. It is another when the cyberattack goes unnoticed leaving room for additional cyberattacks and problems like the comprising of security via leaked confidential information. One of the biggest reasons is lack of skilled personnel, trained specifically in incident response and cyber security. While there is available funding for schools to train IT professionals, there not enough IT students in school, leading to a severe deficit and enough blind spots for hackers to commit their cybercrimes. "Against ever evolving cyber-threats the need to graduate students skilled in the concepts and technologies of cyber-security is becoming a critical responsibility of academic institutions in order to help preserve the sovereignty of the U.S. and her allies" (Rowe, Lunt, & Ekstrom, 2011, p. 1).

Why are attackers not getting appropriate jail terms? This is a problem that is on the way to being resolved with stricter and more stringent laws and policies being added to ensure proper punishment is given to convicted cybercriminals. However, the process is a slow one, especially when it comes to global cybercrime. While American cybercrime laws enforce at times jail time and heavy financial penalties, global cybercrime laws are not as stringent as seen with Chinese hackers hacking into the United States. The United States government could not interfere as the attacks were performed while the hackers were abroad. What can be done however, to deal with global cyber and what has been done successfully is the use and implementation of financial and trade sanctions This is because they offer seemingly proportional response as well as a more palatable approach than either…