Inside the computer forensics laboratory at Howard Community College, a jumble of wires, disassembled hard drives and banks of computers line the walls. This is where students such as Jenna Green hone their skills.

The 27-year-old Columbia resident has a knack for technology and also wants a career in law enforcement. Through a program at HCC, Green is working toward employing both her talents and her goals.

After earning an associate's degree in criminal justice, specializing in computer forensics from HCC, Green transferred to Stevenson University, where she continues to work toward her goal of becoming a criminal investigator in the U.S. Navy.

Through her studies at HCC, Green learned how to take apart a computer, analyze its hard drive, re-create deleted files, take information off of cell phones and digital cameras and fight computer hacking, all while thoroughly documenting the process so that potential evidence would be admissible in a court of law.

"Anything that's basically electronic we learned to work with," she said.

Howard Community College's Computer Forensics degree option was formed by professors Patrick O'Guinn and Vinitha Nithianandam in 2004 as part of the college's effort to create programs that kept up-to-date with a rapidly changing technological environment. At the time, their program was unique to the state, they said.

"There were no textbooks to use. All the textbooks we used we had to create ourselves," O'Guinn said.

The professors devised a program that prepared graduates to perform police work and tackle crimes from child pornography to identity theft, hacking and online fraud, O'Guinn said.

The Howard County Police Department considered the program so important that, starting in July of 2008, all recruits at the department's police academy are required to take 15 hours of computer forensics through the college's program, said Lt. Robert Wagner, who directs the police academy.

Computer technology is now so pervasive in society that even a beat officer working patrol needs to know the basics of retrieving information from cell phones and other digital equipment, and how to take that information while preserving its integrity and following police protocol, Wagner said.

"If you look at today's world -- the way we look at the Internet, if you look at Facebook -- we have to become more knowledgeable of what we can do with that," he said of information circulating the Web, including popular social networking sites.

So far, Howard County is unique in requiring its police academy recruits to take forensics classes, Wagner added.

"We're actually the only police academy in Maryland that has it," he said.

The next phase for the program is to include training that would be useful for corporate clients by implementing an "E-Discovery" program, O'Guinn said. The E-Discovery -- or electronic discovery -- program would train recruits to find original e-mails, and electronic contracts that were exchanged between parties. The origin, date and authenticity of such documents is often disputed in court, he added.

Currently most of the students who specialize in computer forensics at HCC go into law enforcement either with local police departments, the FBI, the CIA or Homeland Security, O'Guinn said. The instructors encourage students to get a four-year degree because most agencies require one, O'Guinn added.

That is what Green is doing by continuing her computer forensics studies at Stevenson University, in Owings Mills.

She plans to go on to work for Naval Criminal Investigative Services, she said, adding that she believes her forensics studies will give her a leg up.

"It will be an asset to me going in there, especially since I don't have any previous law enforcement experience," she said.

So far, she said she has found her studies valuable.

"We're so technology based now," she said. "People think that they're protected and you're really not. It's pretty cool to see how easy it is to find information."

---

user comments (0)