{"id":3447,"date":"2015-11-29T09:07:11","date_gmt":"2015-11-29T08:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/undergraduate\/?p=3447"},"modified":"2020-10-26T16:34:39","modified_gmt":"2020-10-26T15:34:39","slug":"a-day-in-the-life-of-a-forensic-computing-student","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/2015\/11\/29\/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-forensic-computing-student\/","title":{"rendered":"A Day in the Life of a Forensic Computing Student"},"content":{"rendered":"

I didn\u2019t start my course as an expert, I worked hard. So remember that \u201cA journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Omolola\"<\/a>
\nYou may be wondering what an unusual course this is, well you\u2019re right. Forensic Computing and Security<\/a> is a branch of digital forensic science connected to evidence found in computers and digital storage media. Everyone that asks me what I study can\u2019t help but to open their mouth wide and say \u201cWow! You must be smart, does that mean you catch all the criminals?\u201d<\/p>\n

Why did I choose this course? Well I\u2019ll enlighten you a little bit. I think forensics and the whole concept of analysing facts and coming up with potential solutions to a problem, alongside a passion for I.T, led me to this course. One of my assignments really illustrated this. It was a CSI (crime scene investigation), and it really made me feel like I was living my dream (clich\u00e9 – yes I know). The case study was an employee who hacked into the company\u2019s system using a keystroke logger (surveillance software that records keystrokes) to steal IP addresses and confidential information like usernames and passwords. During a search in the employee\u2019s home, a USB was found containing various file types e.g.png files, jpeg files and html files. I used my Linux machine running \u2018KALI\u2019 to analyse each file\u2019s metadata. This looks for data after the footer of each file and uses something called an \u2018exiftool\u2019 – this gives information about the file, such as the file type. Any data after the footer is decoded and from this I found other employees\u2019 user names and passwords. (this is hidden data).<\/p>\n\"Streetwise-2\"<\/a>\n

Another part of my course is collecting evidence in a crime scene. We use the LV Street Wise – this is a place to educate school children on road safety, but also somewhere for university students to find evidence lying around. My job as a forensic computing analyst is to look through the evidence on the device that I find and draw conclusions from it.<\/p>\n

Social Life<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

Bournemouth is a beautiful place and is best known for its sandy beach. I would describe myself as a spontaneous person, which means I don\u2019t have a rigid timetable in the evenings. However, a typical night out would be at Cameo on a Wednesday, which is our student night. There are cocktail master classes, VIP booths and several rooms that play various music, urban being my favourite. There\u2019s also a vinyl room if you like to get messy and cheap drinks too. What more could you want?<\/p>\n

To be honest I had cold feet about coming to Bournemouth when reality kicked in, as I was dreading living alone and having to cook my own meals. But the support you get from your first year tutors is immense. Also, the fact that everyone is out of their comfort zone like you means you mingle so much more easily and freely with people and before you know it Bournemouth becomes home for you. I\u2019m pretty certain you readers have mixed emotions about moving away from home, but I\u2019ve been there and done that and would like to assure you that my blogs are here to give you a realistic and practical experience of my life as a student. Happy Reading! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

By\u00a0Omolola Fagbule<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I didn\u2019t start my course as an expert, I worked hard. So remember that \u201cA journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.\u201d You may be wondering what an unusual course this is, well you\u2019re right. Forensic Computing and Security is a branch of digital forensic science connected to evidence found in computers… Read more » about A Day in the Life of a Forensic Computing Student<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1453,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[336,1638],"tags":[877,862,130,48,544,543,69],"class_list":["post-3447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs-archive","category-undergraduate","tag-bournemouth","tag-a-day-in-the-life","tag-bournemouth-university","tag-bu","tag-forensic-computing","tag-omolola-fagbule","tag-students"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1453"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3447"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13804,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3447\/revisions\/13804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.bournemouth.ac.uk\/student-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}