The advance of computer technology has facilitated the cybercrimes and increased the demand of computer forensics (CF) specialists to investigate these high-tech crimes. CF practitioners are often technology savvy but are less knowledgeable in criminal psychology. Psychological analysis of cyber criminals is a skill that can make cybercrime investigation faster and more efficient.
Cybercrime psychology is a new field in psychology and is a subject that has been overlooked by the academia. The authors believe it is a topic worthy being discussed at college, especially to students pursuing careers in Information Security, Computer Forensics, and Criminal Psychology.
In this presentation, the authors depict the need of having a college level course for cybercrime psychology, how they develop a course to teach it, how to teach the CF practitioners to analyze cyber criminals' psychological status, how such training can help investigating the cybercrimes more effectively, and how this course can be possibly integrated with a certificate program in Computer Forensics. Details include:
• definition of cybercrime psychology
• reasons and motivation of course development
• barriers and issues
• course objectives and delivery formats
• target students and prerequisites
• assignments and learning activities
In the presentation, the authors are able to propose a course development framework for cybercrime psychology, which is useful to the post-secondary community. Schools wish to offer similar training can take advantage of this framework.
