Computer Forensics is a widely accepted tool in fighting crime in the United States and in Europe. It is a valuable commodity to law enforcement, especially when computers are taken from a crime scene. Not many people know this, but just because you delete something on your computer, it doesn’t mean that it is one forever and a good computer forensics scientist can find incriminating evidence on the hard drive of a computer.

Computer forensics is especially valuable in cases of illegal child videos and pictures, ID theft, scams, frauds, and hacking, as well as other computer crimes. A good IT person can get into your email accounts and your social media accounts and the police do use Facebook and other social media outlets to solve and prevent crimes. Too many times I have seen Facebook posts where someone has a picture or posts a video of crimes that they have committed or posting pictures of themselves holding guns, illegal drugs, things like that. Potential employers will also check out an applicant’s social media pages just to see what kind of person the applicant really is.

There are published court cases where computer forensics have come in handy for getting convictions in certain cases. Everything from illegal child videos and picture sharing to credit card theft. One public case, a man was arrested on a firearm charge. The man is also a convicted felon which makes it illegal for him to own any firearms at all. A computer forensics scientist was called to examine the accused person’s mobile device to see if there were any pictures on it of the man with firearms in his possession.

Computer Forensics is a valuable tool in law enforcement and a seemingly very interesting career field. You first need to have a love of technology and the way it works, before considering this for a career. Other requirements include at least a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or Information Technology. You will also need to hold a certificate that says you are a Certified Computer Forensic Examiner.

Check it out for yourself. Look up the career and see how much the job will row over a projected number of years and see what the average annual income is for the computer forensic career. Computers are the way of the world now and will only increase as technology evolves. Computer forensics will be needed more and more as a career, especially in law enforcement.