Write a Report

Question Steven is a research scientist working for a pharmaceutical company called Bukit Enterprises. It manufactures human vaccines for polio treatment and could finally make a breakthrough in the project. Steven was involved in the research for 6 years. According to the company policy, research documents are to be stored in MS Word or Rich Text Format. Critical documents are stored as PDF to prevent tampering. Steven’s research files had 270 pages of sensitive formulae. Recently Steven had a fight with the management for sidelining him while promoting Ballmer as Senior Scientist. After all the effort and time that he put in, Steven was not rewarded. This made him furious, and so he decided to quit the company. He did not want to part with the formulae that he had come up with his 6 years of work. In a fit of rage he deleted all the critical and research documents so that no one could access them. Steven’s act came to light a week after he left. The enterprise central backup machine was under repair due to which his machine was not backed up during a regular backup cycle. His most recent work which contained the final formula was not backed up. If the data is not retrieved, the firm stands to lose few million in various contracts with the suppliers. The company’s IT department assigns you as head of team to recover and retrieve the entire content of files, log files as well as cache files. Meanwhile the company requested you to research, investigate and document in detail the tools which you applied and the steps you used to handle the situation during your project. Guidelines for the Report Prepare a report describing the analysis you would perform for the company. As you will not have access to computers containing the hard disk or forensics tools, your report must describe what you would do, not what you actually do. Your completed documentation should as a minimum contain the following sections: • Table of contents. • An introduction. • An appropriate, relevant explanation of specific forensic terms, techniques and procedures. • A description of the interactions of the components of a personal computer and computer networks and system software (including network software). • A critical evaluation of concepts behind Steven’s computer crime and malicious activity. • A recommendation for appropriate tools to detect and gather evidence about Steven’s actions and to prevent destruction of evidence. • A description of actions carried out by Steven and their purpose. • A description of how your team found evidence, together with an explanation of the meaning of the evidence and the chain of custody of evidence. • The actions your team carried out during the investigation, with a description of each actions purpose. • A conclusion, giving a review of the case, and the recommended next step(s). • References. In your document the report is to be written in a professional manner, paying due regard to the following aspects: • The report is to be written in the 3rd person. • The report should have a consistent layout and be divided into enumerated sections, sub-sections, sub-sub sections etc. Assignment Requirements 1. Your report must be typed using Microsoft Word with Times New Roman font size 12. 2. The report has to be well presented and should be typed. Submission of reports that are unprofessional in its outlook (dirty, disorganised, inconsistent look, varying coloured paper and size) will not fare well when marks are allocated. 3. Plagiarism is a serious offence and will automatically be awarded zero (0) mark. 4. All information, figures and diagrams obtained from external sources must be referenced using the Harvard referencing system accordingly.