Planning Report for the Computer Forensics Lab - Essay Example

On the other hand, the second administrative employee would assist the first administrative employee and would also serve as a ready hand replacement when the first administrative employee is absent. In addition to the above, these administrative employees would also be responsible for the safety and privacy of the computer data being investigated (Anderson et al., 2003). The technicians hired to do computer forensics work would be trained and qualified computer personnel geared to deal with forensics work.

However, not all technicians hired to deal with computer forensics work would have the same amount of experience. Two of the technicians would possess at least five years or more of computer forensics experience while another technician would possess at least three years of computer forensics experience. The last two technicians would be recently qualified and lightly trained computer forensics experts that would train under the more senior technicians. This distribution of employee structure on the technical side would ensure that senior technicians are available to deal with the more complex work while new technicians are being trained to deal with future work.

In case that the senior technicians leave at a later stage, there would always be backup in the form of more junior technicians. 2. Lab budget planning (what kind of facilities you want to acquire?) The lab’s budget would be split into two major heads namely being set up expenses and running expenses. The set up expenses would cover one time installation costs such as buying hardware, acquiring a place for the lab, electrical fittings etc. On the other hand, running expenses would comprise of regular expenses that could be expected to occur at the month’s end such as paying the utility bills, paying employee salaries, buying new hardware and software etc.

As far as the set up costs are concerned, the major part of the expense would be the acquisition of fitting hardware for forensic purposes. In order to mitigate the expenses, a mix of new hardware and customizations would be introduced. The senior technicians would assemble certain pieces of hardware such as read write blockers in order to lower the amount of overall expense (Prosise & Mandia, 2003). Work stations would be acquired from branded companies such as Dell or HP. However, one work station for heavy duty purposes would be assembled in house from market acquired hardware in order to lower costs (Dominguez, 2007).

The other major setting up expense would be acquiring a place to set up the lab as well as acquiring the furniture and electrical fittings such as cables and extension cords etc. The typical running expenses of a forensics lab would include the salaries of employees, any new hardware or software purchases, utility bills and the rent of the acquired lab. When the lab is being set up, the running expense would be covered by having at least six months worth of running expenses in hand in order to deal with slow business at start up. 3. Certificate / training plan Previously there was little trend for proper certification and training for computer forensics work.

However, the need for training and qualification in the computer forensics field has gone up significantly. At this point in time there are a number of