Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eCampus News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

5 holiday tech scams to avoid

The holiday shopping season is a great time to get tech products at discounted prices, but it also creates a golden opportunity for the web’s scam artists. The FBI, McAfee, the Better Business Bureau and F-Secure are all warning about cybercriminals who will try to take you for a ride this holiday season, reports PCWorld. Here are their most pertinent warnings and tips for staying safe:

The Infamous Free iPad

Bogus free iPad offers started popping up immediately after Apple’s tablet went on sale, and they’ve since been banned from Facebook. Still, you might see similar offers around the Web, McAfee says, prompting you to buy other products as a condition of getting the free iPad. By now, you should realize it’s too good to be true.…Read More

Cyberthieves still rely on human foot soldiers

Sitting at a computer somewhere overseas in January 2009, computer hackers went phishing. Within minutes of casting their electronic bait they caught what they were looking for: A small Michigan company where an employee unwittingly clicked on an official-looking eMail that secretly gave cyberthieves the keys to the firm’s bank account, reports the Associated Press. Before company executives knew what was happening, Experi-Metal Inc., a suburban Detroit manufacturing company, was broke. Its $560,000 bank balance had been electronically scattered into bank accounts in Russia, Estonia, Scotland, Finland and around the U.S. In August, the Catholic Diocese in Des Moines, Iowa, lost about $680,000 over two days. Officials there aren’t sure how hackers got into their accounts, but “they took all they could” before the bank noticed what was going on, according to Jason Kurth, diocese vice chancellor. The diocese and the Detroit company were among dozens of individuals, businesses and municipalities around the country victimized by one of the largest cybertheft rings the FBI has uncovered…

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Cyber warfare gains interest at military academies

Air Force Academy's Cyber Warfare Club has 124 members.
Air Force Academy's Cyber Warfare Club has 124 members.

As cyber security grows in importance to national security, the nation’s three major military academies are teaching students how to be effective cyber warriors, both by defending and attacking computer systems.

The U.S. Naval Academy, which admits it has fallen behind the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., and the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., outlined a strategy Monday to catch up quickly to best train future officers to fight in cyberspace.

Andrew Phillips, the Naval Academy’s chief academic officer, said the computer science department is running its first-ever cyber security course for students who are not computer science majors.…Read More

U.S. House passes cyber-security scholarship bill

The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a cyber-security bill that calls for beefing up training, education, research, and coordination so the government can better prepare to deal with cyber attacks, CNET reports. The Cyber Security Research and Development Act of 2009, which passed by a vote of 422 to 5, authorizes the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to develop a cyber-security education program that can help consumers, businesses, schools, and government workers keep their computers secure. It also creates cyber-security scholarship programs for college students and research centers, and it asks NIST to boost the development of identity-management systems used to control access to buildings, computer networks, and data. Federal agencies spend $6 billion a year on cyber security to protect the government’s IT infrastructure and $356 million on research, according to the Office of Management and Budget. Despite that funding, a government review of its cyber-security efforts last year concluded that they are not adequate to prepare the country against cyber attacks…

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