Tag Archives: business

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Why you should be using encrypted email

Email leads users to share highly sensitive information in a seemingly private way when, in reality, it’s everything but private. Case in point: see the image below and note a typical unassuming email containing a person’s credit card information. This may seem like a stupid mistake, but you’d be surprised at how common these type of emails get sent on a daily basis (I’m looking at you, mom). The only factor taken into consideration by the sender in these cases is that they trust the person on the receiving end. The problem here is…

Medium.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

Is your email secure? Are you certain?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

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Forget New Year’s Resolutions and Conduct a ‘Past Year Review’ Instead

New Year’s resolutions. The truth is that I no longer approach them at all, even though I did for decades. Why the change? I have found “past year reviews” (PYR) more informed, valuable, and actionable than half-blindly looking forward with broad resolutions. I did my first PYR after a mentor’s young daughter died of cancer on December 31st, roughly eight years ago, and I’ve done it every year since. It takes 30-60 minutes and looks like this: …

Tim.Blog click the link to read the rest of the story.

What was the biggest lesson you learned in 2018?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

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Cybersecurity in 2018: the bad, the worse and the downright nasty

Just like in the previous years, 2018 had its fair share of data breaches. However, it’s rather impressive of how those breaches have evolved over those years. Because of the increased awareness, breaches seldomly go unnoticed anymore. And that’s a good thing.

Medium.com  click the link to read the rest of the story.

How was your business affected by these security breaches?  Do you know if your business was breached?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

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My Secret Playbook: 28 Hacks Guaranteed to Grow Your Traffic and Sales

From Facebook to Google, marketing is continually changing and getting harder. Even if you are willing to give these platforms money, it still doesn’t guarantee success.  You can experiment, run tests, but digital marketing isn’t as easy as it used to be. …

It’s become so much easier and cheaper to build companies that the majority of the money is spent on customer acquisition. … This is why marketing has become so competitive. But that shouldn’t stop you from succeeding, it just means you need to get creative in this ultra-competitive landscape.

So, to start you off… here are 28 digital marketing hacks that I still use and still work in today’s marketing landscape.

NeilPatel.com  click the link to read the rest of the story.

Have you tried any of his marketing hacks?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

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How Our Data Got Hacked, Scandalized, and Abused in 2018

This year tech giants, governments, and even the humble sandwich chain have proved that we can trust no one with our personal data. At best, these companies were woefully underprepared to keep our data safe. At worst, they allowed the data we gave them to help others influence our fragile democracy.

When it came to data scandals and breaches in 2018, the only good news was…

FastCompany.com  click the link to read the rest of the story.

What lessons did you learn about your security needs last year?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

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Excited about Google’s new map ads? You should be!

As an avid Google Maps user on both a personal and business level, I’ve often wished for a more interactive and all-inclusive experience. For instance, wouldn’t it be great to get suggestions for options like the closest coffee shop or lunch spot while I’m driving from Point A to Point B? Sure, I could pull over, open up Google and search for these things separately, but who wouldn’t welcome a truly responsive and local experience within Google Maps?

SearchEngineLand.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

Have you been waiting for this?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

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The Problem Is Not Your Website Or Your Product

A good business solves a problem.

Good business is solving a big problem or lots of small problems for entire strangers who you don’t know thus doing something valuable for the human race.

Solving only your problem will make you poor.

Medium.com  click the link to read the rest of the story.

What problem do you solve?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

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The People Who Pay For Your Free Apps

We’ve all started taking this free software for granted. Hell, I’ve watched people get indignant that an app maker would even dare ask a user to pay money. After all, all the other apps are free.
Except that they’re not. The programmers who made that software need to eat. Presumably, they eat, which means someone’s paying them. If it’s not you, then who?
If you aren’t paying to use the software you use, that means someone else is paying for you.

Medium.com  click the link to read the rest of the story.

How much do you think the average app earns from your using it? Would you rather pay?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

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Digital Transformation: What Not To Do

What’s standing in the way to digital transformation? The Insight survey identified the top five barriers to achieving success. They are legacy IT infrastructure (64%), data security (60%), technology silos (59%), budget (54%), and competing priorities (53%).

These identified obstacles may help some organizations create a better roadmap to success by helping them to anticipate the problems they may encounter along the way.

informationweek.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

Have you started a digital transformation of your business? Lessons Learned?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

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Cryptocurrency 101 – What it is and why you need to know more

Let’s start with a quick history lesson about bitcoin. Bitcoin was officially unveiled to the public in a white paper published October 31st, 2008. The white paper is actually extremely readable, very short (just 8 pages), and incredibly elegantly written. If you want to understand why bitcoin is so compelling straight from the horse’s mouth, you must read this paper. It will explain everything better than I or anyone else likely ever could.

I won’t delve too much into the technical details of how bitcoin works (which are better elucidated in the white paper), but will instead focus on a broader exploration of its history and implications.

Medium.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

Have you purchased cryptocurrency?  Anything we should know?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

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How to spot fake, scam or fraudulent websites

This guide will teach you how to recognize secure websites you can trust and how to spot fake ones run by fraudsters looking to scam you.

comparitech.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

What was the most valuable lesson here for you ?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

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Identity Theft 101 – What is Identity Theft?

What is identity theft? It is simply when someone uses your identity as their own. But there’s nothing simple at all about the damage left in their wake. There are close to 10 different types of identity theft, which we’ll detail below. …

I will dig into the identity theft basics, including how it happens, some of the most common types of identity theft, and what you can do to protect yourself.

Libertyid.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

Has your identity been stolen?  What happened as a result?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

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6 STEPS TO REPAIR CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS

First, it’s happened to all of us (and we’re here to help).

Second, it is impossible to understand all the contextual and environmental factors that led to the customer disengaging. It is easy for founders to believe they are the singular point of failure (which is exacerbated by processing the event of loss by themselves in an echo-chamber). The reality is that this is often not the case.  And third, some customer relationships cannot be repaired. Be OK with this.

Here are the six battle-tested steps I shared with the founder whose business had been impacted.

philhsc.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

Could any of these suggestions have helped you recover a former customer?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

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How to Spot and Avoid Fake Virus & Malware Warnings

As you use your computer and browse the Web, you may occasionally run into infection warnings that appear to be legitimate but aren’t. These anti-malware warning messages — appropriately called “scareware” — are designed to scare you into installing fake anti-malware programs that are actually malware in disguise.

So how can you tell between real and fake warning messages? It can be tough, but as long as you stay calm and take your time, there are a few signs you can look for that will help you distinguish between the two.

makeuseof.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

Have you been scammed?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

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Cybercrime and cyberwar: A spotter’s guide to the groups that are out to get you

The bulk of cybercrime is carried out by the equivalent of real-world opportunist thieves. These are the petty criminals of the online world, the crooks you’re most likely to come across, or at least feel the impact of, as an individual.

ZDnet.com  click the link to read the rest of the story.

Which type of hacker has caused you the most damage?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

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A Cybersecurity Moonshot – Inside Chronicle & Alphabet and Project Lantern

Fifteen years ago, cybersecurity could be boiled down to a simple strategy: Secure the perimeter. [Today]…

Many businesses use 10, 20 or 30 different security products to protect their systems. They all have advantages, and security practitioners will use different combinations to investigate a potential threat. If a team has access to 15 tools, for instance, one engineer might think to use three of them while another tries a completely different subset. There isn’t enough time to try them all, so experts pick products based on their experience and what they believe will be best suited to the task.

It’s a messy problem that doesn’t have a simple answer.

Engadget.com  click the link to read the rest of the story.

How many layers of cyber security does your business have?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

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Data Breaches Keep Happening. So Why Don’t You Do Something?

Experts caution that the stream of news about such breaches can set a new normal and instill a sense of fatalism — and complacency — in consumers.

Anthony Vance, an associate professor and director of the Center for Cybersecurity at the Fox School of Business at Temple University, said last year’s breach of information held by the credit reporting company Equifax, which affected 145 million Americans, was “a game-changer.”

The information gleaned could be used to fraudulently open new credit accounts, he said, adding, “That should give even the most jaded American consumer pause and prompt them to do something.”

But evidence suggests that high-profile breaches don’t typically change consumers’ behavior.

NYTimes.com  click the link to read the rest of the story.

What should we do?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

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How Do Customers View Businesses After a Data Breach?

Nothing can be quite as devastating to a business’s customer base than a data breach.

How do customers perceive businesses after a data breach? What was once a highly-trusted, well-regarded company could be quickly downgraded to an untrustworthy, irresponsible company after a data breach.

RevisionLegal.com  click the link to read the rest of the story.

If you have been breached, what did it cost your firm?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

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What will follow the Bitcoin Bubble?

The paradox about Bitcoin is that it may well turn out to be a genuinely revolutionary breakthrough and at the same time a colossal failure as a currency. As I write, Bitcoin has increased in value by nearly 100,000 percent over the past five years, making a fortune for its early investors but also branding it as a spectacularly unstable payment mechanism. The process for creating new Bitcoins has also turned out to be a staggering energy drain.

NYTimes.com  click the link to read the rest of the story.

Have you purchased Bitcoins?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

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The Essential 2018 Internet Trends Report

Legendary venture capitalist Mary Meeker  has just released the 2018 version of her famous Internet Trends report. It covers everything from mobile to commerce to the competition between tech giants. Check out the full report below, and we’ll add some highlights soon. Then come back for our slide-by-slide analysis of the 20 most important parts of the 294 page report.

TechCrunch.com  click the link to read the rest of the story.

What was most surprising to you in her report?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

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19 Daily Habits That Make You Less Productive (And What to Do)

What follows are 19 daily unproductive habits, and solutions to replace them with productive habits.

These are prioritized from the most distracting things that constantly put people in a reactive versus proactive state, to more granular things that can supersize and sustain productivity.

SearchEngineJournal.com  click the link to read the rest of the story.

What habit did you choose that made the biggest difference in your life?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

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Amazon Web Services Reinvented the Internet into a Cash Cow

In the summer of 2003, there was an off-site meeting at Jeff Bezos’s house. We were doing this exercise, looking at what we thought our core competencies were as a company. We started off with fairly obvious things, like we were good at having a lot of selection in retail, and we were good at fulfilling that selection.

But when we looked into it more deeply, we realized that in building Amazon’s consumer business as fast as we had in the first eight years, we’d gotten really good at operating infrastructure services, things like computing and storage and database. And because our retail business was a very low-margin business…

NYmag.com  click the link to read the rest of the story.

Will we all work for Amazon in the future?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

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Platforms Are Making You Vulnerable

It’s been over a week since Facebook announced that, thanks to a coding vulnerability, access tokens for at least 50 million* accounts were stolen. Access tokens are important. As Facebook explained in its blog detailing the hack, they are “the equivalent of digital keys that keep people logged in to Facebook so they don’t need to re-enter their password every time they use the app.”

The hack also impacted Facebook’s Single Sign-On, which lets people use one account to log into other sites, meaning the impact of the breach is perhaps wider than even Facebook initially reported. Still, at the moment, there’s no way to know how big of a problem it is, or will be. Nor do we know who did it. We’re in the dark for one simple reason: Facebook has said next to nothing about what it knows — or if it knows much at all.  Ad-driven platforms tend to succeed thanks to one thing: our vulnerability.

Medium.com  click the link to read the rest of the story.

Does your vulnerability, concern you?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

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The Ultimate Guide to Facebook Ad Campaign Objectives 2018/2019

Are your Facebook ads hitting your targets?  In this ultimate guide to Facebook ad campaign objectives, we analyse EVERY objective with examples, tips, tricks and a whole heap of avoidable mistakes…

einsteinmarketer.com  click the link to read the rest of the story.

Are you planning on a Facebook Campaign next year?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

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AWS new RoboMaker – you build intelligent robotics apps

Amazon Web Services is rolling out a new cloud service designed to help developers build, test and deploy intelligent robotics applications. The cloud juggernaut said the new AWS RoboMaker service works on top of the open-source robotics middleware Robot Operating System, and extends the framework with connectivity to AWS services for machine learning, monitoring, and analytics.

zdnet.com  click the link to read the rest of the story.

What will Amazon not control, in the near future?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

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Why AWS re:Invent is arguably more important than Amazon’s Black Friday

Yes, everyone shopped their wallets dry on Amazon during the big holiday sales push. But don’t forget that the AWS public cloud side of Amazon is likely to drive valuation and operating income going forward.

zdnet.com  click the link to read the rest of the story.

Are you using AWS, yet?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

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21 Video Marketing Tools Every Marketer Should Know in 2019

Studies have found that by 2019, video traffic will comprise 80% of all internet traffic with 1.9 billion viewers worldwide (excluding mobile users).

If you are looking to promote your brand through video marketing, check out these essential video marketing tools that can help you.

Medium.com  click the link to read the rest of the story.

Are you using video in your marketing?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

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Microsoft’s activation alert is scaring Windows 10 users

Microsoft is reportedly working on a fix for a bug in its activation server that has caused Windows 10 Pro machines to report that their license has not been activated.  …

Microsoft has reportedly confirmed there is an issue affecting its activation server and is working on a fix that will happen in “one or two business days”.

That should mean affected Windows 10 Pro licenses are still valid, despite what Microsoft is reporting.

zdnet.com  click the link to read the rest of the story.

We were hit with this, were you?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

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Why ransomware costs small businesses big money

About 22% of businesses with less than 1,000 employees that experienced a ransomware attack in the last year had to stop business operations immediately. About 15% lost revenue.

On average, small companies lost over $100,000 per ransomware incident due to downtime. For one in six organizations, these attacks caused 25 hours or more of downtime.

cnn.com  click the link to read the rest of the story.

How much would it cost your business to be down for several days?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!