The Cost of Leaving Security Behind

One of the reasons that the Apple operating system was perceived to be so safe throughout the late nineties and early 2000s is that the user base was relatively low. The use was also limited to professional settings, so there wasn’t likely to be much more than a work email address from a Mac user. Of course, times have changed and now Mac finds itself just as vulnerable as every other operating system.

Small businesses tend to perceive themselves as the ‘Macs’ of the security world. They are successful, but on a niche level and therefore not really worth the effort of hacking. Nothing could be further from the truth.

How Attacks on SMBs Work

Cyber-attacks are typically conducted on a short or long term scale. The hacker looks for what he or she can get in the moment, then prods for potential openings. This isn’t a great strategy against large companies that may have employed an IT department to secure the network and its secrets. Smaller companies, however, tend to localize their network security in the form of antivirus software. As a result, long term attacks have great success against smaller businesses without the resources to defend for long periods of time.

What ‘Compromised’ Really Means

When Dennis Nedry hacked into the Jurassic Park security system, he replaced the administrative desktop with some graffiti and prevented access to the network through a password screen. This was the definition of ‘compromised’ that Hollywood set in June of 1993. Until the Sony breach, and then the Target and Home Depot breaches, it was our only way of understanding how hacking works. It’s subversive, that’s true, but the goal of hacking is largely information access. Hackers want data they can sell, like customer information or trade secrets.

In this sense, a network compromise represents a serious financial loss to your business. During a hacking, you either lose trust with your customers or data about the products you are building that give you a competitive edge. If that doesn’t wake you up to the reality of cyber attacks, consider that an infected compute can damage more than your own network.

Bot Nets and How They Affect You

A new challenger to the social network scene, ‘Ello,’ found itself to the be the target of a DDoS attack in late September of 2014. The network was gaining more users when the attack hit, bringing the site and its services down for 35 minutes while the team investigated the source of the problem. Bot nets are like armies, sometimes referred to as ‘zombie computers,’ and they are used to carry out an attack elsewhere on the Web. So a hacker may steal resources you use in your business to conduct an attack on another business. The result is losses on both ends, and hackers have a multitude of ways to inject these viruses into your system.

To put things into perspective, Amazon (which is a large company) loses $66,000 every minute it is not in operation. What’s your company’s number?

How to Fix the Problem

The first step is to backup your files religiously. It’s not enough to designate Tuesday as backup day, you need to automate a schedule that accesses your most important files from each terminal and backs those up to a central server that is off site. This is commonly referred to as ‘the cloud,’ and it’s a useful method to keep your files safe from attack.

The next step is to designate secure password use, meaning passwords for each terminal that are better than ‘password123.’ In this regard, it is a good idea to set employees up with a password management program to help them track the passwords they use. Also encourage employees to vary the passwords they use for each service, even if they protest.

Securing each terminal really comes down to training. Make sure that employees understand where to download securely, monitor their usage and follow up with real infractions that encourage better use. Restrictions are the best approach, because it’s easiest to restrict low level employees and grant privilieges as you go up the chain. Internet security software can help you manage firewalls, terminal access, and automated scanning to try and make this task possible.

Security is everyone’s concern, and everyone should understand how to do their part.

5 Apps To Help You Save Money on Business Travel

Posted on January 14, 2015 .

It is said that a penny saved is a penny earned. And who would understand this old adage better than a businessman who’s just floated his very first startup. The early days of business call for the prudent use of money and cost cutting on every front. This includes costs related to business travel.

Technology like smartphones and tabs enable people, who are constantly on the go, stay abreast of the latest goings-on in the corporate world, operate remotely, be in control of their day-to-day business operations, and track their everyday financial transactions.

There are several apps, which when installed on their devices, can help busy entrepreneurs make better decisions, even as they makes their way across the world to conduct business.

It is easy to make careless, money-wasting decisions when trying to juggle your time and attention between catching flights, coordinating with office staff, navigating through an unknown cite, and interacting with clients. However, thanks to the development of several money-saving apps, help is at hand.

Here are 5 cool apps that help the globetrotting entrepreneur save up.

1. Hipmunk

Platform: Android, iOS 7.0 and above
Developer: Hipmunk
Charges: Free

Need to meet clients in another town and don’t have much time to book your flight tickets and make hotel reservations? Hipmunk can help you here, thanks to its unmatched sorting ability. Use the app to search for flights by class of service, or for hotels in specific neighborhoods.

View the color-coded results by airline options, duration and prices of flights, or choose ‘Agony’ to view results where the combination of price, length of the flight and number of stops is calculated and presented.

A ‘heat map’ will show you the spots that are close to meeting locations, restaurants, shopping, and even bars, casinos and nightlife.

Hipmunk also syncs with your calendar to make it easier for you to make travel plans that fit your busy schedule.

2. TripIt

Platform: Android 2.3 and above, iOS 6.0 and above
Developer: TripIt Inc.
Charges: Free

Keep your travel plans uncomplicated by letting the TripIt app store your complete itinerary together in one place for easy accessibility. Leave it to this app if you need information related to flight schedules, hotel bookings, and meetings. What’s more? It also lets you organize your calendar in an easy manner. Talk about ease of retrieving crucial information!

All you need to do is forward all your confirmation emails to TripIt and let it do the rest of the scheduling, freeing you up to address more pressing concerns related to your business.

3. MyCityWay

Platform: Android 2.2 and above, iOS 4.3 and above
Developer: MyCityWay
Charges: Free

This clever app gives you the lowdown on more than 30 important categories that a business traveler ought to stay abreast of when in a new city for a short visit. In other words, MyCityWay gives you the complete and the most up-to-date information about the city you’re visiting. It functions as a digital guide for the goings-on in 110 cities across the world.

Whether you’re looking for local news and events, weather, dining options, public transit updates, live traffic feeds, pharmacies, movie timings, and even parking and directions to the nearest gas station, you can find it all on this app.

4. Refresh

Platform: iOS 7.0 and above
Developer: Refresh, Inc.
Charges: Free

A smart businessman will always want to do his homework before meeting a prospective client. This may include collating information related to the latter that really matters and helps you reduce (if not eliminate) the unnecessary and uncomfortable small-talk.

Refresh works by scouting the Internet and various social networking websites, and extracts information from there to provide you with details about those you plan to meet during your trip. This could be data related to their interests, life’s milestones, and other important moments that may have occurred in their life prior to the meeting. This should help you break the ice easily and make the meeting more significant.

This app can sync with Evernote, so all the notes you make about the meeting or the client can easily be saved in one place or transferred to your computer.

5. Viber

Platform: Andriod 2.3 and above, iOS 7.0 and above, Windows 8 and above, Blackberry
Developer: Viber Media, Inc.
Charges: Free

Viber is one app with all the answers to your communication worries when away on business. If you’re always concerned about your data limit, take heart because Viber doesn’t charge you a cent to make calls or send text messages over your phone’s Internet connection. But of course, the person you’re trying to contact should be a Viber user as well.

The best thing about using this app is the ease of use and the convenience it provides thanks to its high-quality user interface and the ability to sync directly with your phone’s contact list. It makes use of your existing contact number to enable other people to find you, without giving your location away.

Conclusion

While there is no such thing as the perfect app, there are always efficient (and more efficient) apps. You should be able to decide what suits your needs best after using a few of them a couple of times. Download, use and compare them for yourself, and stick with the one that makes your life simpler and helps you save money

5 Reasons Outsourcing IT Can Be Good Business

Posted on January 15, 2015 .

Outsourcing is often seen as a taboo topic by aspiring entrepreneurs. On one hand outsourcing is great for reducing overhead, something any smart business leader wants. On the other, it’s consistently cited as one of the most disliked aspects of modern free enterprise. In matters of moving manufacturing from a company’s homeland to another nation for the sole-purpose of shaving some numbers off the end-of-year balance sheet, the subject remains hotly controversial. But for small businesses looking to save big on startup costs and management, outsourcing the IT wing of their enterprise is not only a smart way to rub-out unnecessary expenses, it’s not as wicked a move as they may think.

Here’s five reasons why outsourcing IT is good for entrepreneurs big and small:

1. Faster: Off-site IT management services chock-full of experience and dedicated infrastructure are going to operate much faster than the typically dinky, greenhorn, and grassroots efforts of self-operating equivalents seen in small businesses. Hitting the ground running is crucial to startup success, and technical snags are one of the leading causes of small enterprise stalls. Investing instead in a remote IT service helps maintain momentum, quickening growth and avoiding sluggish responses to problems.
2. Cheaper: This element of outsourcing is typically at the forefront of most thoughts on the benefits of the practice. In matters of outsourcing IT specifically, the cost-savings are obvious. No investing in your own tech department, nor employing your own IT workers. The very fact you don’t need the space for servers and work stations may even be enough to reduce your enterprise to a completely virtual existence, forgoing brick-and-mortar costs altogether.
3. Predictable: The rate of your future growth as a business is, at best, barely predictable and rarely predicted rightly. The demands in which such ups and downs can have on your departments can be daunting, and IT is no exception. Handing off the majority if not all of your IT responsibilities to specialists can allow you to focus on the rapid changes without worrying about altering your infrastructure in the process.
4. Not All-or-Nothing: Small businesses with much of their existence steeped in the digital world don’t have to hand over the tech duties with ties to executive decision-making over to a third-party. Many off-site IT management services allow companies to pick-and-choose which elements they’d like outsourced. It’s no sweat to opt for managed file transfer software, for example, but maintain a direct connection to web development.
5. Not as ‘Bad': Outsourcing has a notorious reputation for being destructive to a company’s homeland economy. But in matters of outsourced information technology services, it’s often the case for companies to find cost-effective solutions on native soil. Outsourcing doesn’t always involve taking a job from country A and moving it to country B. Sometimes it’s simply hiring another company, perhaps in another state or county, to handle a workload better alleviated from your small business.

Small businesses and start-ups face tremendous hurdles in the race to success. The energy required to make it there – capital – isn’t limitless. The potential for injury – business snags – will inevitably occur. Conserving the former and reducing risk for the latter is critical, and one of the smarter ways to do this is to outsource IT duties. It allows business leaders to increase productivity, save money, and focus exclusively on the tasks at hand unique to their market or industry. Additionally, outsourcing doesn’t have to be as controversial a technique as one might think.