Mississippi State University (MSU) has established an impressive reputation in the field of cyber safety measure as evidenced recently by MSU being named by the National protection Agency (NSA) as one of 23 Centers of Academic Excellence in Research in info Assurance Education in the country.

“This is a new certification that recognizes shield research capability,” said Dr. Ray Vaughn, head of the Center for Computer protection Research housed in the Computer Science station. “This designation puts us in a really good group of other universities that the national government has sanctioned as universities having a very strong program in data assurance research and education. We are very proud of that.”

MSU has plus started a training center to help law enforcement officers become skilled at digital forensics.

“Today, most criminals have computers and tend to leave evidence on those computers,” Vaughn said. “There are special techniques that law enforcement must use to extract evidence

from digital devices so the evidence is admissible in court. We train police on how to do what we signal ’search and seizure’ and how to present the evidence in a court of law. Police go to crime scenes and search for physical evidence. Just as critical today is to capture the computer system that is there and search for digital, as well as physical, evidence. But that takes a different skill set and we are trying to bring that
skill set to law enforcement.”

society often think about child pornography offenders regarding computer crimes. But it goes far beyond that into areas such as finding evidence of thefts, drug sales and even voter scam.

“Almost every criminal today relies on automation, even drug dealers,” Vaughn said. “They tend to leave evidence on their computer that may show up in spreadsheets, e-mails or other files they create and…

Orginal post by Top Tech News