In an age where major fraud often involves the Internet, and breaking into databases is child's play for many hackers, being able to retrieve computer evidence to solve crimes is more crucial than ever. Law enforcement has responded with computer forensics a highly specialised and rapidly growing field, combining police work with serious information technology expertise. This means not just examining files, but even information that might have been deleted, and temporary files that users may not be aware of. Although computer forensics has been part of the NSW Police Service for 10 years, specialist areas such as the Computer Crime Investigation Unit and the Internet-based Pedophilia Investigations Unit have been added only in the past two to three years. It is a highly specialised area and the police service pays for investigators to attend university courses, giving them one day's paid leave per week to study.
Staff trained in computer forensics are a valuable asset.
And skills need to be continually updated, which means computer forensics is a very costly area of police work. A lot of training isn't available in Australia. I've sent NSW Police to Canada for specialist training, and we bring software developers from the US to do training courses here. Investigators trained in computer forensics are also very valuable to the private sector, with major accounting and consulting firms expanding their services in the area. So one of the biggest problems for the police is loss of staff.