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Cybercrime

With the world’s reliance on technology and an ever-increasing number of people spending large amounts of time online, cybercrime is a growing concern. Experts in this field are in high demand, and a career in cybercrime can lead to jobs in law enforcement, business or technology that involve designing safeguards against cyber attacks.

In the most simple terms, cybercrime is any illegal activity that involves a computer or the Internet. However, there are a wide range of activities that fall under the category. At one end of the spectrum, there are transaction-based crimes such as fraud, trafficking in child pornography and intellectual property and identity theft. These are crimes that existed before the introduction of computers, but the Internet made them much easier to commit.

At the other end of the spectrum are more advanced crimes such as hacking and cyberterrorism. These are crimes that attempt to disrupt the actual functioning of the Internet and can be incredibly destructive.

Investigating cybercrimes requires all of the skills and characteristics that make up a successful criminal investigator, but there are additional challenges. These include the need to be intimately familiar with hardware components and the software that runs them, as well as to understand technical jargon and hacker culture. It is also important to have a good understanding of how data that is stored in binary and hexadecimal format is converted into readable information. The ability to understand the complex issues that affect cross-jurisdictional investigations is also necessary for success in a cybercrime investigation.