[[Forensic] Marshall professor writes digital forensics book - The Basics of Digital Forensics

The professor of computer and information technology has written a book about this topic to be used as a text book for a foundation on the digital forensics field. Sammons is also the director and Digital Forensics Chair of the Appalachian Institute of Digital Evidence and works with the Cabell County prosecutor’s office in local cases involving digital forensics.

Digital forensics involves evidence found in new technology. Sammons said the book gives a broad overview of the subject, while illustrating it’s different than what you see on television.

“Well hopefully what it’s going to do is pop that bubble a little bit, as far as in the real world those crimes aren’t solved in an hour with no paperwork, that’s one thing that not only in the book, but the classes I teach I try to present them with the reality behind it because it’s the paper work,” Sammons said.

The Basics of Digital Forensics: The Primer for Getting Started in Digital Forensics

The book, “The Basics of Digital Forensics: The Primer for Getting Started in Digital Forensics,” comes out in February and is published by Syngress. Sammons said Syngress first came to him and asked if he was interested in contributing to a chapter of a larger book.

But that project fell through, and he was then asked to write an introduction book on digital forensics. Sammons said the book will cover technical concepts, labs and tools, collecting evidence, Windows artifacts, anti-forensics, the Internet and e-mail, network forensics, mobile devices and future trends and issues.

“It goes over the basic fundamental things starting out with some basics of technology in general like how computers work, different kinds of storage and those kinds of things and it progresses into more advanced topics like windows artifacts and where evidence can be found in a windows system and it ends up with future trends being solid state hard drives and cloud computing,” Sammons said.

Sammons says newer technologies like solid state drives and cloud storage present new and unique problems for those studying this field.

Sammons says it’s great to be thought of highly enough to be someone that knows enough about the field to write about it.

“In the academic world, publishing is a big deal so anytime I can have my work published like that it’s very important and it’s a good exercise for me being able to write down all my thoughts and collect everything and the actual process of writing itself is very valuable to me as far as being able to master the material, I’ll present it in a way that’s nonthreatening,” Sammons said.

Sammons says he definitely wants to keep writing.

“This is one of my passions if you will and I think it’s fascinating to me and my background in law enforcement, I think it only helps that and it’s very very interesting and I have no absolutely no plans to leave it,” Sammons said.

While Sammons wrote the book, Jennifer Rehme, who is a graduate student in forensics, helped with research, and Jonathan Sisson, who is an undergraduate senior in digital forensics, did the graphics for the book.





The Basics of Digital Forensics provides a foundation for people new to the digital forensics field. This book teaches you how to conduct examinations by discussing what digital forensics is, the methodologies used, key technical concepts and the tools needed to perform examinations. Details on digital forensics for computers, networks, cell phones, GPS, the cloud, and Internet are discussed. Also learn how to collect evidence, document the scene, and how deleted data is recovered.

Learn all about what Digital Forensics entails
Build a toolkit and prepare an investigative plan
Understand the common artifacts to look for during an exam