The six topics covered in the series include: the history of HCommerce, email scams & 419 scams that involve money transfers, how the ease of the Internet helps HCommerce, people trying to help stop this scamming and social engineering, the reality of HCommerce and how much is lost by it, information on botnets, protecting your computer and your computer habits, moving forward after being a victim. Watch all six episodes here!

You can learn more about each one of these episodes, including additional mini-episodes that bridge out of these main episodes, at StopHCommerce.com

Check out John on the “Small Business, Big Ideas” segment below:

Don’t forget, Computrace and LoJack for Laptops also work on the Mac!

H*Commerce, Hacker Commerce, is the “business of making money through the illegal use of technology to compromise personal and business data.” The new series will air 6 episodes, one episode being added every two weeks. Each episode involves real people doing normal online activities who are then attacked by cybercriminals. Each episode focuses on real stories in a documentary-style.

Here is the first webisode, “Unexpected Beginnings”, telling the story of Janella Spears, who lost more than $440,000 as the result of an email scam. The video explores the effects this cybercrime had on Janella and her family as well as Janella’s education in how to clean her system, handle hackers and stop cybercrime scams.

McAfee also recently launched a Cybercrime Response Unit designed to help victims of cybercrime.

The interview references a Dell / Ponemon study in 2008 that indicated that 12,000 laptops per week were lost by business travelers each week in US airports.

Dr. Ponemon talks to the human element to information security – the reality that though technology is there to solve information security issues, there is a rogue element in the people who use the technology. Using the 80/20 rule, the 20% of information security that “people” are responsible for can cause 80% of the damage. Dr. Ponemon reminds organizations that they need to keep up their training and awareness campaigns in order to ensure that negligent employees know more about the consequences of their actions.

The video is very interesting, talking about mobile security, managing user-downloaded software, and creating practical solutions for people to keep using their mobile devices in a secure and useful way. The video also talks about the differences between large and small companies for information security, about keeping ahead of security issues, being mindful of risk and more.

And don’t forget to check out the Absolute and Ponemon Study on the Human Factor in Laptop Encryption.

Absolute Software created a new video about its corporate products and services. The video gives you an overview of mobile computing and security, and how Absolute Software fits into your IT planning. It gives you insight into the recovery team and how Computrace gives you control over your IT assets.

In the time it took to watch that video, 3 laptops were stolen. Do you know where all your laptops are?

Whether you’re just running a quick errand or are going to bed for the night, you should never leave your laptop in your car. This practice causes many major data breaches each year. If your corporate laptop does get stolen, you should never be afraid to report that. Letting your IT department know quickly can help recover your laptop, if Computrace was installed, and is important so that steps can be taken to prevent or recover from a data breach.

The second scenario: What happens when your laptop gets stolen from your dorm room?

As you can see in the video, one of the girls was lucky that her father installed LoJack for Laptops on her computer. Although the video was “to be continued”, Absolute Software is able to recover 3 out of 4 missing computers that have its software installed. You can see a recent video interview with Absolute’s CEO John Livingston about LoJack for Laptops here.

If you want to learn more about LoJack for Laptops, go here. And to see a demo of our corporate product line, Computrace, sign up here.

The WHH Ranch Company has been using shredded paper from a Texas-based bank for 20 years. Some of that paper came in the form of shredded checks.

When Michelle McBride ordered some food from WHH Ranch, she found it packed in shredded checks. The shredded paper was in wider strips (it was not cross-shredded) that could be easily pieced together. In fact, that’s what Michelle McBride did – she was able to easily re-assemble some checks and plainly read off account numbers and routing information for hospitals, medicare, schools, businesses and personal accounts.

After learning of the problem, WHH Ranch says they’ll ensure it doesn’t happen again.

So, two things to learn from this:

• If you are shredding sensitive information, use a good cross-shredder or confetti shredder. Particularly if you’re a business.
• If you are using shredded paper as packaging material, ensure it’s finely shredded material that contains only non-sensitive papers.

After the jump is a video of the CNN report about this incident (the video auto-plays):

Hat tip to consumerist, via ktka

Some of the tips in the above video include:

• Looking for https or shttp domain names
• Don’t fall for pop-up boxes
• Look over return and privacy policies
• Use a credit card to protect your interests (fraud departments can help you get money back)

Of course, if you remember the survey we posted last week, legitimate websites host 68% of the malware online, so trusting a website is not a guarantee of safety any longer.

Tags: online shopping, security, web security, shopping, secure shopping, consumer, awareness, web security