ACC 427 is SNHU’s Investigating with Computers course. It centers on investigating fraud with computers: sources of digital evidence, data acquisition and validation, analytical tests such as duplicates, gaps, voids and joins, matching transaction data to location and telematics data, email and document review, privacy and legal limits on monitoring, reporting data-driven findings and basic digital forensics with imaging, hashing and timelines. Every module below opens a full sample paper or takes a free request for one; searches like "acc 427 module 3", "ACC427 sample paper" and "ACC 427 milestone example" land on this page.
What ACC 427 is really about
ACC 427 is SNHU's course on investigating with computers, and it teaches that the hardest part of data analysis is often the part before the analysis: knowing which system holds the evidence, getting a complete copy and proving it is complete. Strong work states each test's logic, shows how many records it flags and how many of those turn out to be real exceptions, and explains why a pattern is suspicious rather than simply unusual. It also respects the legal limits on what investigators may look at.
The samples on this shelf share one composite company, a family-owned waste hauler in central Pennsylvania that runs about 230 trucks and a landfill whose scale house takes cash from small contractors and residents. Its scale software, cameras, fuel cards and truck telematics give each module realistic data to acquire, test and explain. The company, its employees and its figures are illustrative.
What ACC 427’s modules ask for
Across eight modules, ACC 427 typically asks for a discussion of digital evidence in fraud investigations, an assignment on acquiring and validating data, an assignment applying analytical tests, a first project designing and running an analytics plan, an assignment on email and document review, a discussion of privacy and monitoring limits, a second project reporting a data-driven investigation and an assignment on digital forensic procedures.
Where students lose points in ACC 427
The most common ACC 427 deduction is analysis run on data whose completeness was never checked, so a missing month or a filtered export goes unnoticed. The second is a test presented without its false positives: every flag treated as fraud. Graders also mark down email reviews with no defensible search method and forensic steps performed on original devices. Validating every data set, reporting flags and confirmed exceptions separately, and preserving originals fix most of these.
The ACC 427 drawers
ACC 427 Module 1 Discussion example
An opening post on a composite Pennsylvania landfill whose cash receipts at the scale house fell while truck counts did not: the five systems that hold evidence, from scale software and its void log to cameras, bank deposits, truck telematics and email, why each must be secured before anyone is told, and how a computer-based investigation differs from a document review, with Nigrini, Debreceny and Gray and Bierstaker, Brody and Pacini. Full sample paper, read it free.
ACC 427 Module 2 Data Acquisition Assignment example
A data acquisition assignment for a composite Pennsylvania landfill's scale-house investigation: requesting tickets, the void log, user records and shift schedules from the software vendor, a data dictionary, the hash value recorded on delivery, and five completeness and integrity tests, from record counts and ticket sequence to date coverage and reconciliation of cash tickets to bank deposits, with the exceptions found and resolved before analysis, with Nigrini, Kogan and colleagues and Casey. Full sample paper, read it free.
ACC 427 Module 3 Data Analysis Assignment example
A data analysis assignment that runs five tests on 22 months of validated scale-house data at a composite Pennsylvania landfill: voids by user and payment type, time from sale to void, voids by hour of day, void reason codes and repeat customers on voided tickets, finding that one operator made 72 percent of cash voids while working 31 percent of cash shifts, mostly after 3 p.m. and 14 minutes after the sale, and setting out what the pattern does and does not prove, with Nigrini, Debreceny and Gray and Appelbaum, Kogan and Vasarhelyi. Full sample paper, read it free.
ACC 427 Module 4 Project One example
Project One designs and runs a fuel card analytics plan at a composite Pennsylvania waste hauler with 230 trucks: joining 61,800 fuel transactions with truck GPS records, a distance test that flags purchases more than 20 miles from the assigned truck, tank-capacity and off-hours tests, a review of 512 flags that clears 326 as GPS gaps, rental trucks or data errors, and 186 unexplained purchases on one fleet supervisor's card totaling $33,600, with Nigrini, Kogan and colleagues and Bierstaker, Brody and Pacini. Full sample paper, read it free.
ACC 427 Module 5 Email and Document Review Assignment example
An electronic review assignment for the fuel card investigation at a composite Pennsylvania waste hauler: preserving the fleet supervisor's company email and phone messages, culling 48,000 items by date and duplicates, building and testing a keyword list, using technology-assisted review to rank documents, screening for privilege, sampling to measure what the search missed and documenting the process so it can be defended, with Cormack and Grossman, Casey and the NIST forensic guide by Kent and colleagues. Full sample paper, read it free.
ACC 427 Module 6 Discussion example
A discussion post on the limits of looking: a composite Pennsylvania waste hauler's investigators may search the fleet supervisor's company email, phone and truck GPS, but what about his personal phone, his home security camera footage or a recording of his conversation, with the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Supreme Court's Quon decision on employer searches and Pennsylvania's all-party consent rule for recordings, and why written policy decides most of it, with the Act, the Court and Casey. Full sample paper, read it free.
ACC 427 Module 7 Project Two example
Project Two reports the scale-house investigation at a composite Pennsylvania landfill to its owner: the data sources and validation, the five analytic tests and their results, corroboration from 30 days of camera footage, login records and confirmations from repeat cash customers, an estimated loss range of $183,100 to $212,400, what the evidence establishes about the operator's user ID and what it does not, and recommended controls for the scale house, with Nigrini, the ACFE's report to the nations and Golden, Skalak and Clayton. Full sample paper, read it free.
ACC 427 Module 8 Digital Forensics Assignment example
A closing digital forensics assignment for the composite Pennsylvania landfill case: planning the collection of the scale-house workstation with a write blocker, imaging and hash verification, what the image can show about logins, application use and a deleted spreadsheet, building a timeline from system logs, scale records and video after correcting a camera clock running seven minutes fast, and the forensic principles that keep the work admissible, with the NIST forensic guide by Kent and colleagues, Casey and Garfinkel. Full sample paper, read it free.
Your classroom shows something else?
Southern New Hampshire University revises courses; module counts and deliverables shift between terms. Send what your classroom shows and the desk matches it exactly.
Using a ACC 427 sample the right way
Read an ACC 427 sample by following one record from the source system to the finding: where it was extracted, how completeness was proved, which test flagged it and what corroborated it. A clear path is what the course rewards. Borrow the methods and leave the data behind when you work your own case. For ACC 427, send the case or data description, the instructions and the rubric, and the first custom sample comes back free within 24-48h.
ACC 427 questions, answered
What software is used in ACC 427?
Sections use tools such as Excel, Access, IDEA, ACL or Tableau. The tests matter more than the tool; describe the logic so it could be repeated in any of them.
Do I need programming skills for ACC 427?
Not usually. Joins, filters, summaries and simple formulas cover most assignments, though some sections introduce SQL or scripting.
Is digital forensics covered in depth in ACC 427?
The course covers forensic principles such as imaging, hashing and chain of custody. Detailed technical examination is usually left to certified examiners.