Cloud Security: Things you need to know
More and more organizations are embracing cloud for their own advantages such as cost effectiveness, easy setup, easy accessibility, scalability, unlimited storage, backup and recovery, agility, flexibility and business continuity. Cloud computing certainly offers these benefits to small and large organizations, but it also has its downsides in respect to security. Also, with modern business workers accessing the enterprise networks from multi-platform devices and various geographical locations, cloud security becomes paramount for any business. Cloud hosted applications open up the door for hackers, and the traditional monitoring solutions do not work anymore. With increased cloud adoption, many forces are driving the need for immediate cloud security solutions to be in place. Forces driving cloud security Protect against known and unknown threats – Sophisticated cyber threats and data hacking attempts are increasing day by day. Now, organizations are looking towards complete protection against persistent threats and attacks. Businesses want to secure web and email with increasing malware threat and data breaches to reduce downtime. They are looking for real-time protection and prevention system against advanced malware. Quickly respond to incidents – Threat intelligence and automated threat response needs to be in place to analyze the threat events and quickly respond during attacks. Privacy and data control – Organizations want to have policies in place to protect sensitive data, determine database assets and risks, and keep information safe and compliant with governance and regulations. With the increase in number of mobile workforces accessing the private network, identity and access management have become crucial. Employees go for cloud applications to remain highly productive, but as discussed above, this becomes a gateway to data breaches. Hence, organizations essentially need a robust data loss prevention system to safeguard sensitive data from breaches. Safeguard against network attacks: Mobile workforce across the globe demand security solution for protecting various devices such as laptops, smartphones, PDAs from attacks and malwares. Also, the complex IT infrastructure requires robust solution to secure network from outside attacks. Protecting applications and data in virtualized environment – Organizations have started adopting flexible, on-demand infrastructure to provide virtualized environment, which raises the need for protecting applications and data stored in private, public or hybrid environments. Hence, manageability and security becomes an utmost requirement in virtualized environment. Aspects of Security Organizations, before moving business-critical data to the cloud, need to make sure that various aspects of security are in place. Here are several security solutions that enable organizations to take control of their cloud security. Web Security – Web security helps organizations to provide complete protection against web threats with antimalware and advanced threat protection. IDS/IPS – Intrusion detection and prevention system enables a comprehensive layer of security and provides efficient monitoring and prevention of vulnerability exploits over network or system. SIEM – Security Information and Event Management is crucial for businesses across the globe and organizations need threat intelligence and analytics in place to analyze the activities before, during and after a log event. Network Security – Network Security enables organizations to continuously monitor assets and network traffic to eradicate attacks and stop them from being spread across the network anytime and wherever they appear. DLP – Data Loss Prevention protects sensitive data in organizations from unauthorized access and from moving it outside the corporate network. Encryption – Encryption enables organizations to fully protect sensitive data, whether in transit or storage and ensure security and compliance. The data or text is transformed using encryption algorithms thereby protecting it from data breach incidents. Virtualization Security – Virtualization security enables protection of data and applications stored in public, private or hybrid environments from threats. Database Security – Database security enables organizations to determine database assets and risks, and protect sensitive data in compliance with governance and regulations. IAM/IDAAS – Identity as a Service (IDaaS), offers identity and access management functions such as user provisioning, authentication, authorization and single sign-on to have secure and controlled access to applications and data on cloud based on defined IT policies. BCDR – BCDR ensures business continuity over the cloud, be it public, private or hybrid, by enabling all the disaster recovery options and data protection they need. In response to the market need for cloud security solution, many vendors are investing in providing security services for cloud. Some of the top vendors providing next generation cloud security solutions include Trend Micro, Cisco, Veracode, Netskope, CipherCloud, Zscaler, Palo Alto Networks, Hytrust, and Akamai. These vendors are helping organizations to adopt one or the other aspects of security as discussed above. Advaiya has an extensive knowledge of building the right cloud strategy and implementing cloud solutions to meet unique needs of customers. We provide guidance to smartly choose the cloud vendor and their services and help in cloud migration phases and activities, keeping the long term goals and objectives in mind. We are also working with various cloud security vendors to help them position and market their offerings based on dynamic market trends.
Wearable technology – Information that moves with you
Technology has taken over the whole human race and as time progresses we would be so dependent on it that the world without it would be unimaginable. The technology has evolved over the years from a basic computer which would require a whole room to fit in to a wearable armband. The armband when coupled via bluetooth to your mobile phone would record and report the slightest of movement in your position. It helps people with specific medical requirements to monitor blood pressure, heartrate and other variables required by the doctor for constant monitoring. This would have been just a ‘James bond gadget’ if science would not have gone high and above to find new ways to improvise and make things happen for the common man. There are hundreds of such devices available in market similar to the armbands, such as smartwatches to keep you connected at all times when you can’t reach your phone, smart glasses to give you information about the people and environment around you. It has now gone down to the jewelry for men and women to make it stylish and tech savvy. Rings have been developed fully fitted out to be connected to your phones via Bluetooth, to give you your daily movement details with the rise and fall in heart rate, the distance covered and various other information you desire. The most frequent question asked by enthusiasts and people who have a thing for gadgets is – what is its significance or why do I spend reasonable amount of money on it? These wearable devices are a blessing when used in the sense they are designed for. Let’s say – when an armband designed to take readings of your posture, blood pressure, movements, etc., is used for senior citizens, could give amazing results and save lives. Athletes use wearables as a training assistant to keep them on track and make readings of their progress while on the run. Wearables have evolved from fitness bands, watches to smart wearable sports costumes that provide all the required information an athlete and sportsman requires with zero time waiting on tests in the lab and elsewhere. It gives an edge over others in the field where it all matters. Although wearables are a hot research topic now-a-days, there is more research to be done and many devices to advance and mature in their respective domains.
Skype for Business 2015 – A New User Experience
Skype for desktop is becoming more familiar among users with its intuitive and simplified user experience. Number of users who are adopting Skype as an instant messaging and VOIP tool are increasing rapidly. With the recently announced Microsoft Skype for Business 2015, Microsoft has leveraged the same intuitive and easy to use user interface in the enterprise class tool for unified communication. Skype for business offers numerous features that can improve user experience over Lync Server 2013. Microsoft has changed the complete user interface in the Skype for Business client compared to the previous version of Lync client. It has leveraged the functionality of Lync with the Skype user interface. The client of Skype for Business provides similar look and feel like the consumer version of Skype. It has similar contact list, buttons, icons, presence indicators and quick action tasks. Unlike Lync client, Skype for Business allows users to get connected with other Skype users across the globe with their corporate IM. Now, the users don’t need to use different IM tools for in-house employees and for outsiders, including clients, partners and others. There may be so many instances where a sales representative is trying to call a customer, but not able to communicate properly due to the reasons such as – bad audio, week bandwidth, noise or any. Now with Skype for Business 2015, end-users will be able to rate their calling experience and these responses will be going to the administrator for further analysis. Microsoft has also improved mobile device support for Skype for Business. Now mobile users can experience single sign-on across Microsoft Office and can also get the conversation history accessible on mobile devices. Skype for Business client now provides call monitor feature for enterprise users, which offers a compact window that allows end user to keep active call visible while working on other required tasks. ‘Call monitor’ gives quick access buttons to mute and end the active call. The compact call monitor window can work with both audio and video calls. Emoticons similar to the consumer version of Skype are included in the Skype for Business client. Now, the end-users can also enable and disable emoticons in the IM conversations, without any server side configuration changes. With these enhanced features of Skype for Business, Microsoft has bundled rich user experience of Skype with enterprise class features of Lync client. It has become easy to search and connect with colleagues, partners, customers and others, even if they are not using Skype for Business. In this transition from Lync to Skype for Business, you’ll find all of the features you have already been using but in a new interface with simpler controls, along with some great fresh additions. Image Credits: Microsoft
Net Neutrality – Is throttled net a net loss
The net neutrality debate has been raging in India with all the newspapers, news channels, radio and the internet talking about it. The internet has been an integral part of our life, be it students, teachers, researchers or organizations. It has been a source of knowledge, entertainment and business, and plays a crucial role in keeping us connected with our family and friends who might be miles apart but are always available on a click. With the evolution of internet, the medium of communication has also changed, from texting each other to video calling through various apps like WhatsApp, Skype, etc. But on the other side, all these enhancements have not been so favorable for the telecom operators as phone calling and messages are now available with just a subscription to the internet pack. Net Neutrality became abuzz when Airtel announced in December 2014 to charge additional price for making voice calls using Apps like WhatsApp and Skype. Well, net neutrality is the Internet as we see it presently, connection from any device to any website through internet via any internet service provider. The term net neutrality means that all the internet users are to be treated equally on the internet, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or mode of communication. When we talk of Internet, there are three concerned entities, the end user, the internet service provider (like Bsnl, Airtel, etc.) and the content providers (Google, Amazon, etc.). TRAI is looking forward to make internet cheap for everyone as many people still can’t afford the internet by providing few free services for the end-user and specific charges for some specific websites. But many of the netizens are against it as they will be bound to a specific telecom operator based on which web service it provide for free and which it would charge. This principle is known as zero-rating and it kills the competition as it would become very hectic for startup companies to make a mark in the market of existing dominating companies. With the growing row over net neutrality, India is not welcoming internet.org – an initiative by mark Zuckerberg, to provide free internet to people who can’t afford internet facility as it violates one of the principles of net neutrality which states that the cost of access should be same for all the sites giving equal opportunity to every company to find a place in one of the most competent markets. Net neutrality has today become a worldwide hot topic of discussion. Many countries have already adopted net neutrality, such as Chile, who became the first country to enact a net neutrality law in 2010. In 2012, Chilean telecommunications regulator Subtel banned mobile operators from zero rating. Brazil passed a law in 2014 aiming to prevent operators from charging higher rates for accessing content that uses greater bandwidth, like video streaming or voice communication services. Recently, the USA laid down new rules on net neutrality, wherein internet service providers like AT & T, Verizon and Comcast are not allowed to block lawful content, slow down applications and services or accept fees for favored treatment. However, after all is said and done, Internet is built on simple and open standards and is founded on the notion of unfettered transmission of, essentially, equivalent packets. This has meant that internet has been open to innovative transformations, and we have seen major shifts happening every few years: rise of web, social, peer-to-peer communication, rich media, and now streaming. The evolution would definitely be distorted if institutions with ownership of or power on internet’s building blocks actively control – by blocking, having different service levels or charging differentially based on the nature or content of the packets. It would certainly impede innovation and inculcate inefficiencies. For example, the very notion of ‘Over-The-Top’ ignores the fact that technology innovation has led to a more efficient mechanism to achieve same goals (voice communication, or messaging, for instance), and which has a potential to be the primary—and not something “on top”. Of course, that would mean that the established business models would become obsolete—but that is the process of progress, involving necessarily a “creative destruction.” Our article was originally published in VARINDIA. Source: http://www.varindia.com/defending-internet-freedom/
The Marriage between Travel and Technology in 2015
The signs of travel and technology coming together are already in the offing. We have seen profound changes in transport, hospitality and travel-related services with the rapid digital transformation. Think about it: Customers can now choose the medium of transport and type of lodging with the click of a button. The likes of Airbnb and Skyscanner offer travellers options based solely on their preferences. Technological innovation is fast breaking the cultural and linguistic barriers that come with travel to remote locations. Word Lens, a popular smart phone app, provides seamless translation of written words. When you see a signage or a menu through Glass in any language, the app renders the words in real-time, in English translation, through the Glass lens. Based on these trends of using technology while traveling, the industry can make some predictions for 2015. This growing shift towards technology will make travel reach never seen before levels of “Personalisation” in the near future. According to a new study by IBM Institute of Business Value, “There will soon evolve Everyone-to-Everyone (E2E) model. These E2E environments are defined by the direct interaction of consumers with one another, any one of whom might simultaneously act as a consumer or provider of services. “In the near future, a traveller might drive his own car to the airport where an incoming traveller will pay him a fee to use it—all while the car’s owner visits another city and stays in a third traveller’s condo.” This simplistic example of the E2E has wide implications on the business models of both rental car companies and hoteliers. The changes will require the consumer and organizations to engage with one another in design, marketing, creation and distribution. All this churning presents an opportunity for new businesses to blossom especially in the social media platform, mobile revolution, Internet of Things (IoT) and data analytics. Startups like Tripoto are providing an attractive platform for consumer collaboration and value sharing. Tripoto is fast growing into the largest travel community in the globe. Tripoto is the place where travellers can connect, share their experiences and learn from each other’s stories. Tech forums can also enable a more enhanced experience. Arpit, an avid traveller pointed out the use of smart phone while on the road, “Travel for me is about engaging with people, and giving back to the host country. I helped with construction of a school in Nakuru district of Kenya. Having a smart phone made it easier to find volunteer work and record my experiences.” There is a new ecosystem emerging and the companies that embrace the change by becoming more flexible, partner stakeholders, and drive efforts to digital mobilisation are likely to become future leaders. Has the use of technology effected your travel experience? Leave us a comment below.
Adding custom tab to Facebook Business Page
Facebook is the world’s most popular and growing social network for both businesses and individuals. Facebook business pages can be of a great help to achieve your business goal. These business pages allow you to promote your products and services, offer discounts, showcase videos, etc. You can build a closer relationship with your audience, reach and engage the people who matter the most to your business, and turn the likes and comments into leads. There is more to Facebook business pages than the standard tabs that come out of the box – Photos, FB wall, Info, etc. You can add custom tabs to your Facebook Business page in order to organize your information in a more systematic way, and attract more visitors and retain them. Being able to create custom tabs on Facebook can be a huge plus. You can use these custom tabs to: Organize your content like you do on your website. Promote the links of specific tabs rather than complete page. Use several apps, as required and suitable, for promoting your business. There are several third party apps available, which allow you to display the static HTML within the iframe they provide. For example – woobox, StaticHTML, etc. However, adding dynamic content to a Facebook custom tab, that blends dynamic HTML into it (social streams, slider and effective user experience controls), requires a bit of programming skills. Note: We assume that you have html pages deployed on your Microsoft Azure website or any other live website which we will use to blend with the custom tab being created in the steps below. In my case, I am using the following published URL –https://fbcanvassite.azurewebsites.net So here we go! First of all you need a Facebook developer account to login to Facebook developer site. Navigate to https://developers.facebook.com/apps Click Add a New App button given on the right side. Select Facebook Canvas. Type the name of your app as done in the image below. In my case its – InformationApp. Click Create New Facebook App ID On the next screen, under Category, select Apps for Pages and click Create App ID. After clicking Create App ID, the app page will load showing the details of the steps to be performed for creating the app. The Setup the Facebook SDK for JavaScript section of this page, gives the JS Code to be added to your page, this code includes the unique ID of the app you created. Embed this code in your page which you want to blend with the custom tab that you are creating. Now, publish the project to the Azure Website (if you have an existing website created on your azure account). In case you do not have, you can create a new Azure Website using Manage Azure). Under Where is your app hosted? section, there is field labeled Secure Host URL. Enter the URL (prefixed with https) of the Azure website where you have deployed your page. I am using one of my pre-created website which I had added to the Microsoft Ignite Facebook page. It is https://msignite.azurewebsites.net/. Click Next and then Next again. Click “Open Your App in Facebook“. This opens your App in your Facebook account. Go to https://developers.facebook.com/apps, and in the top menu, click Apps –> Select InformationApp (YOUR APP NAME) to update some settings on the app. Click Settings in the left navigation pane. Following information will be displayed: Add following information under Basic tab. App Domains: msignite.azurewebsites.net (Replace with – your website domain where your page is hosted) Contact Email: Your email address (in my case – swati.trivedi@advaiya.com). This should be the email Id using which your Facebook account created. Scroll down, and click Add Platform. Under Select Platform, select Page Tab. This will add the section as shown below: Fill this section with the information as follows: Page Tab Name: Information (Replace with the name that you want to give) Page Tab URL: http://msignite.azurewebsites.net/ . (Replace with your page) Secure Page Tab URL: https://msignite.azurewebsites.net/ . (Replace with your page) Click ‘Save Changes’. Next step is to add this tab to your page (assuming you already have created the Facebook business page). Navigate to following link: https://www.facebook.com/dialog/pagetab?app_id=[YOUR_APP_ID]&display=popup&next=[YOUR_WEBSITE_URL] Here replace [YOUR_APP_ID] by the app id you got when you created the app. For example mine is 1500569086875916 and [YOUR_WEBSITE_URL] by the url of your website which you will blend in to the page. In my case, it is: http://msignite.azurewebsites.net/ On the Add Page Tab, page select the page where you want to add this tab. All the pages on which you have Admin rights, will be listed here in the drop down. In my case, I selected Microsoft Ignite and clicked on Add Page Tab button on the bottom-right corner. This completes the process to add the custom tab, now go to your facebook page, you will see the new tab with all default tabs. If you don’t see all tabs on the page then click on the ‘More‘ drop down which will show all tabs including your custom tab. Here is the newly created information tab available on your Facebook page. You can see that your customized tab is now added to the default tabs of your page and it has been blended with the site which you had published on Microsoft Azure. (In my case – http://msignite.azurewebsites.net. If you want, you can adjust the order of these tabs by click on More -> Manage tabs. Would like to hear from you about how do you use Facebook custom tabs for your business? If you plan to use custom tabs after reading this article, let me know how helpful this article was?
How to amplify your social media content strategy?
Content strategy is about planning, creation, delivery and governance of content. Social media is similar to traditional mouth-publicity. It increases the reliability and credibility of a brand. It is not just a medium to publish your content, but, it is also a way to attract the potential buyers. The ‘Likes’ of Facebook posts can be treated as sales leads. But, how do you know that your content is reaching the potential customers? It is when you start generating leads through social campaigns, and they get converted into potential sales, then, you can be sure that you have applied an effective strategy to your social media plan. An effective social media content strategy is the one, which ensures that the customers get the required information and the right time. Therefore, it is important to deliver relevant, fresh, and consistent content across various channels, to target consumers. Businesses create content such as blogs, articles, whitepapers, case studies, videos, infographics, and invest in SEO, PPC, email marketing and advertising, to drive traffic and generate leads. An effective social media content strategy has some key considerations like: Whom are we making the content available to or who is our audience? What do they want to know/learn? What structure do they want their data in? What platform do they want their data on? What should be the data publishing frequency? What value does your content add to the already existing data? Moreover, to publish this content, there should be a process to follow which promises a good return out of it. Creating a series of effective content such as blogs, articles, eBooks, whitepapers and infographics Publishing the content on various social media channels Ensuring the popularity with the audience by the likes, retweets, shares it gets Tracking the followers or visitors and leads that have been charmed by your content Creating effective content and publishing it correctly (right content on the right platform at the right time and to the right audience) is just one part of the process. Measuring the impact of this is the critical part in content amplification process. Analytics enables marketers to gain insights of any social media content strategy. Thus, it allows businesses to redefine their strategy. Therefore, it is imperative to have an objective, a process and the right analytic tools which can interpret the effect of your social media plan and do the necessary course correction to strengthen your social media content strategy and make the social campaigns more powerful. The article was originally published in The Financial Express. Source: http://www.financialexpress.com/article/companies/how-to-amplify-your-content-strategy-in-the-social-media-world
How can SMEs gain from Social Media – Part II
In the previous blog of this series, we looked at how customers are increasingly changing the way (searching online) they look for information about a product, service, or business – both in locality or in distant geography. Small and mid-sized businesses are realizing the importance of having an online presence for their brand to reach, attract, convert, and retain more customers. We also saw some easy and effective first steps to quickly build your presence on social media. In this part let us look at a couple of ways in which you can use social media to effectively build a better brand, and connect with your real customers. Connect with customers and reach out to global audience with social media Use social media tools to connect with your existing and prospective customers. You can showcase your offerings, interact with customers, build communities to network with customers, and keep the conversations alive by following up on those conversations. Social media platforms (that have large user base) such as Google+, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter allow you to position your products and services to different audience in different ways based upon the specific audience’s needs. Branding and marketing You can use social media to build your brand by delivering consistent message and content across all the social media channels. Publish how-to videos, pictures, etc, about your products and services on your website and link your website to your social media channels. These efforts then clubbed with SEO tactics and improve your web presence and generate more traffic to your website. You can develop content such as manuals, whitepapers, videos, blogs, etc. that relates to customer’s needs/problems, explaining concepts, innovation in your domain, etc. For example, if you manufacture women accessories that complement their ethnic attire, you can provide videos for how to wear different types of ethnic attire like, how to wear a saree; or content for what to wear on what occasion, etc. If you provide accessories for a specific brand of mobiles or tablets, then you can provide videos related to using different features of this brand’s mobile phone or tablets. Analytics and Listening Use social analytics tools that can analyze the interactions that customers have about your brand on the social channels. These tools analyze whether people are talking positive or negative about your business or products and services i.e. sentiment analysis. By keeping your senses open to such social/sentiment information can give you relevant insights to improve your products, better segment and target customers, and uncover new business opportunities. Tools are also available that can help you to proctor what do people mention about your brand or products and services, and take necessary steps to better manage your brand’s reputation. Increase sales with quick offers You can quickly rollout new limited-period or seasonal / daily / hourly offers quickly to attract customers and generate more sales. You can also tie-up with companies like Groupon to provide best-buy deals on your products and services. Improving employee productivity Today’s new-generation workforce is technology savvy and always stays connected to their preferred social channels. Thus, if you provide them access to the social tools (for work) which they are familiar and prefer working with, it can help improve collaboration among employees, make them more productive, and help them better connect with customers.
Wearable Tech Roundup: What’s on Offer
The natural progression to smartphones is to embed computers onto our bodies through wearable tech. Let’s look at the key tech available