Digital Forensics Minor

The Digital Forensics Minor is a faculty-directed minor (see the URI Catalog "Minor Fields Of Study" ) directed by Dr. Fay-Wolfe of URI's Computer Science Department. A minor is a credential (showing on your degree and transcripts) that a student earns along with a major. The Digital Forensics Minor can be done with any major.

For the Digital Forensics Minor, the student must:

See Dr. Fay-Wolfe to discuss the program as soon as possible.
Typically we get students involved early (sophomore year) in digital forensics work in our Digital Forensics Center projects.
Get approval from Professor Fay-Wolfe before the start of the student’s second-to-last semester. Note that approval is not guaranteed.
Get approval from the Dean of the student’s college before the start of the student’s last semester.
Earn at least half of the minor credits at URI
No course required by the student's major may be counted towards a minor. For instance, since CSC485 is required by the minor (see below), it cannot be counted as a Computer Science major course. Note that this requirement is only for major courses, it does not apply to General Education requirements.
Achieve a GPA of at least 2.0 in the minor courses

Courses. Below is an outline of the 18 credits for a standard Digital Forensics Minor. Note that due to this being a faculty-directed minor, Dr. Fay-Wolfe has some flexibility in approving deviations from the outlined requirements. Furthermore, Dr. Fay-Wolfe has the ability to deny a student’s application for the minor.

(10 credits) Approved courses related to law, criminalistics, criminal behavior, and statistics.
- At least one approved course in criminalistics or law
- At least one approved course in statistics
- At least one approved course in crime or law related psych/soc
(4 credits) CSC 485 Computer Forensics ( recent course web site )
(4 credits) CSC 486 Network Forensics ( recent course web site )

The sequence of digital forensics courses that must be taken by all minors is:

Summer Semester	Fall Semester	Spring Semester
CSC412 or Equivalent*	CSC485	CSC486

*This Summer session of CSC412 is required since it covers forensics tools needed in CSC485. An alternative to CSC412 is to take a CSC491 Independent Study credits in the Summer to get the necessary background for CSC485.

All digital forensics courses are offered online so that students do not have to be in RI to take them
The first digital forensics course, CSC412 or CSC491, does not assume any substantial background. The course is used to give students the necessary technical background for the digital forensics courses.
There is no computer programming in any of the digital forensics courses.

Although not counted for the minor credits (and thus may be counted toward major credits), in order for Dr. Fay-Wolfe to approve the minor, students will also need to take:

CSC412 Operating Systems and Networks or CSC 491 Independent Study (pre-req to CSC485)
CSC499 Internship done in digital forensics (one semester or summer). Internships are an essential part of this program; they are explained here. This can be taken any time after having taken CSC485.