The National Computer Forensics Institute (NCFI) is the nation’s premier federally funded training center dedicated to the instruction of state and local law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and judges in cybercrime investigations. Training nominees have a varied skill set, and may or may not have the appropriate background to enter the training, but no method is in place to establish what those gaps may be, nor what training is available to remedy those gaps. Additionally, at the end of the training, no quantitative assessment is currently in place to confirm the skills acquired and facilitate the continuing education of the trained personnel.
This project is creating a web-based testing system that nominated trainees will take in order to assess their current skill set. This pre-assessment will assist in guiding the trainees to appropriate class offerings, thus allowing the officers to expand their skills at the highest level of efficiency. Additionally, once a trainee successfully completes a course, a post assessment test will be offered to assess the skills acquired and the effectiveness of the training. This post-assessment data may be used to facilitate additional professional and academic training for participants. In parallel, the project is developing and implementing a cyber-range to train local, state and federal law enforcement cyber professionals in the investigation, mitigation, and critical infrastructure remediation theory of large scale malware attacks which affect corporate, municipal, state and federal networks. This hands-on training includes conducting research into malicious code and how the malicious code moves within a victim system during situational operations. The assessment system and cyber-range will be operated by NCFI and available to all training participants.
Research Team PI: Joseph Williams and Adam Goldstein (Champlain College)