POST CATEGORY : Information Technology

The Key to Cybersecurity Awareness? Tell Your Employees to Slow Down

Do you have a cybersecurity awareness training program in your office? If so, what’s the central theme?

How about…slow down.

There are of course many tenets of a successful cybersecurity awareness program, but none more central to stopping human error and negligence.

According to the Ponemon Institute’s 2017 State of SMB Cybersecurity report, negligent employees were the number one cause of SMB data breaches.

Let’s look at why cybersecurity awareness is lacking and what companies can do to address the issue.

Don’t be Patient Zero

It’s not that employees are always aloof about security protocol—they just underestimate the importance of their personal involvement.…

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High-Tech Ways to Combat Construction Site Theft

Each year, thefts of equipment on construction sites and farms cost U.S. businesses and individuals between $300 million and $1 billion, according to a report by The National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB). Thefts vastly outnumber fires, vandalism, collisions and a variety of other accidents and incidents that threaten security on construction sites across the nation.

Surveillance camera in a construction site.

From valuable copper wire to expensive pieces of equipment, construction sites are packed with items that attract thieves. But traditional forms of security, such as having guards on-site, are costly and often ineffective at stopping thieves equipped with modern technologies.

Luckily, construction companies have a wide range of options when it comes to utilizing cutting-edge security to keep their investments safe.…

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4 Tips on Making Your E-Commerce Venture a Success

Selling products online is a great way to expand the reach your company has. The easiest and most effective way to showcase the products you have to offer is by having an e-commerce website created. This type of website will allow users to browse your products, add them to a cart, and pay for them with ease.

Online florist

Achieving success with an e-commerce website will require a lot of hard work and time. Below are some of the things to focus on when trying to make your e-commerce venture a success.

1. Being the First to Market is Not Always Beneficial

The first step in achieving e-commerce success is ensuring your site if ready to go before launching.…

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3 Effective SEO Strategies for Professional Industries

Professional industries have to approach search engine optimization differently than other businesses. Creative industries and ecommerce businesses have the benefit of versatile freedom when it comes to marketing their products and services, while professional industries are expected to stay within the lines of, well, professionalism.

SEO for professional industries

Of course, the basics of SEO are the same regardless of your industry. However, the marketing that accompanies those SEO strategies varies. Whether you’re a lawyer, cosmetic surgeon, or management consultant, you’re tasked with finding the best ways make your business searchable and generate revenue. Here are three effective SEO strategies for professional industries like your:

Create Linkable Content

Inbound traffic is powerful in the world of search engine optimization.…

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Why You Need to Develop User Friendly SCADA Systems

The entire Supervisory Control and Data Acquisitions Industry was first developed out of the need for a user-friendly interface to remotely control devices in an industrial environment. This sounds like a mouthful, and it is. However, one of the original keys to SCADA is the words user-friendly.

SCADA system

As interfaces became more advanced, at times the emphasis in systems control was placed on the sensors and the devices being controlled, but not on the user and the ease with which they could interact with the data being collected.

The initial reasons for developing user-friendly SCADA still apply.

Everyone Can Play

A user-friendly system means that anyone on your management team can control systems.…

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Boost Your E-Commerce Game With These 6 Strategies

Does your sales strategy have a well-articulated e-commerce component?

Perhaps you don’t have a choice. If your company doesn’t have a physical office or product from which to hawk goods or services, e-commerce is necessarily the be-all-end-all of its sales strategy. This is a much more common arrangement than many realize.

Ecommerce strategy

For now, most consumer-facing businesses maintain some sort of physical presence out in the world, whether that means a dedicated storefront, a mobile stall, a truck or van, or some combination of these and other vectors.

But these physical points-of-sale increasingly aren’t enough to keep discerning customers happy. Even the most staid businesses now recognize the importance of a hybrid approach: a sales strategy that blends the humanity and tangibility of in-person transactions with the scale and reach of e-commerce.…

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The Financial Industry is Rapidly Changing

Since the advent of online banking, the financial industry has undergone several important changes. Meanwhile, terms such as fintech (i.e. financial technology) has become part of the everyday journalistic jargon, pointing to rapid innovation and change.

Fintech

Besides the development of new apps and decentralized technologies, new participants have entered the industry to the benefit of the public. Here we take a look at some of the most profound and important changes taking place within the financial sector.

Blockchain equals the decentralization of banking

Banking as a profession has been around since the dawn of time, having played an integral role in human history.…

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3 Steps to Choosing the Best Website Hosting Plan for Your Small Business

As a small business owner, you have to make many decisions when it comes to how to set up and run your business. You have to decide where you’ll be located, what you’ll sell, how much you’ll charge, and what type of customer you want to serve. Well, one of these decisions also involves choosing the best website hosting plan for your company’s online presence.

Web hosting servers

If you’re not sure what that would be, not to worry. There are three fairly simple steps you can take right now that can help make this decision-making process easier.

Step 1. Determine Your Website’s Hosting Needs

It’s pretty much impossible to pick the best website hosting plan for your small business if you have no idea what your hosting needs are.…

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4 Ways to Optimize Your Business Landing Pages

Business landing pages need to pop. Consumers and clients are very picky, and who can blame them when there are so many options at their disposal? Statistics show that 81% of shoppers do research online before making a purchase, 22% of businesses are happy with their conversion rates, and 72% of consumers who did a local search visited a store that was within 5 miles of their location.

These are impressive statistics, and one that really sticks out is that 78% of businesses aren’t happy with conversion rates.

Landing page optimization

It’s time to break away from this trend and make small changes to your landing page that can have a major impact on your sales.…

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Things Every Business Owner Should Know About Hackers: A Crash Course in Keeping Your Company’s Data Safe

Hacker-proof

If you ask a group of people what they think of when you say the word “hacker,” you’ll probably get a lot of different answers. Over the years, our understanding of hackers and hacking has shifted. During the computer boom of the 80s, hackers were high-tech spies. Today, we imagine hackers as everything from burglars to vandals to inventors. But what do you as a business owner need to know about hacking to keep your company’s sensitive information safe?

Well, for starters:

  • The who, what, and why of hacking
  • Best practices for keeping your business’s data secure
  • How “good hackers” can help protect your from cybersecurity threats

 

Portrait of a Hacker

What is hacking?

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