Duties, Support Functions, and Competencies: Digital Forensics Investigators

Summary

If the digital forensics profession is to successfully meet both the current and emerging needs and duties inherent in our profession, we need to collaboratively develop, rigorously define, and collectively debate the tasks, practices, and competencies inherent in our investigative activities. The needs discussed in this chapter will serve to represent a consensus of the standards, emerging levels of professional practices, potential adversarial challenges, and development of acceptable levels of digital forensics investigation performance. As we work through this discussion, centering on the tasks, practices, and competencies, transparency of professional practice and better methodological rigor to our investigative work should also be included.