Hackers, identity theft and computer viruses have become everyday scourges on modern society.

	John Jay Associate Provost and Professor of Forensic Sciences Lawrence Kobolinsky.

Three years ago, researchers at John Jay College of Criminal Justice began confronting these and other threats of the computer age. What was needed, they decided, was a small army of trained cyber-investigators who could go forth and lead law enforcement agencies and beleaguered companies in the struggle against cybercrime. To accomplish this they crafted a program – the academic, not the computer kind – that will lead to a new graduate degree, Master of Science in Forensic Computing.

The University Board of Trustees on October 27 gave the final necessary approval to establish the program, which will accept its first students next fall.

The program, which will train students for such positions as information security specialist, cybercrime first responder, and forensic computer examiner, will be the first postgraduate degree program of its kind in the nation. It expects to admit 25 students each September for the first few years. Full-time students should complete the 39-credit course in two years; part-timers should finish in four years.
“This has been a long-term planning project,” said Dr. James P. Levine, Dean of Graduate Studies and Research at the college. “We have built on John Jay’s already quite successful computer and information sciences program.”

Evidence of the rapid expansion of computer crime appears every day. The U.S. Department of Justice now has a website, www.cybercrime.gov, devoted to the problem. Recent headlines in the site’s news section included: Disgruntled Philadelphia Phillies Fan Charged with Hacking into Computers and and Twelve “Operation Bandwidth” Software Pirates Enter Guilty Plea.

Vulnerability extends to the law enforcement community itself. “Law enforcement and other public agencies that maintain sensitive data face similar threats of penetration and thus need highly-trained, in-house computing personnel who can meet the challenge of these threats,” Levine’s proposal revealed.

Before the idea for a Master’s program in forensic computing emerged, John Jay College had already created the Stephen Smith Cybercrime Center, a partnering of industry and academia to try to develop strategies to insulate corporations from cyber-attack.

The initial committee set up to study the proposed Master’s program included more than a dozen John Jay staffers drawn from many disciplines. At about the same time, the U.S. Secret Service formed a cybercrime task force and invited the College to participate in its regular meetings.

Two fundamental decisions emerged as the concept of the program was refined. “One, we decided that for this to be a useful degree, it had to be a hybrid program, involving the most rigorous technical side of computers as well as what’s called the contextual side, involving techniques of law enforcement and the laws of evidence. This was to assure that our M.S. graduates will know all the ins and outs of hardware, software, networks and the like, and be able to function effectively and comfortably in the law enforcement and corporate communities.”

The second fundamental decision was that the Forensic Computing program shouldn’t be easy. “Not for dabblers,” Levine stressed. Applicants will be required to have taken a year of undergraduate calculus and a semester of introductory probability and statistics. Other prerequisites cover advanced data structures, computer algorithms, computer languages and operating systems.

Because computer crime evolves so rapidly, the program will concentrate on the deep principles underlying computing. “We want to train our students on the fundamental logic of computers, rather than the current platforms, software and search engines that are in vogue,” Levine said.

It is already clear Levine will have no trouble finding students. “I don’t know where people get wind of this, because we haven’t advertised it,” he said. “But we get calls all the time: When are you starting? When are you starting?”