The significance of privacy laws, board-level audits, cyber-physical systems, and ransomware attacks drives the priorities of security and risk experts. 

How do business owners ensure the security of their customer details? How do companies protect their data and network resources from threats and attacks?

Security and risk management has continued to remain a significant issue for organizations. Thanks to newly rising security and network strategies like SASE that are helping organizations enhance their network security. Click here for more information on SASE.

Consistent wide reports of security breaches result in new laws to secure companies and their consumers, making security a critical factor in their decision-making. As a result, Gartner analysts predict a probable widely decentralized network environment with regulated systems and more severe security implications.

A Brief Look At Cybersecurity

The world is surrounded by technology, much more than ever before. Technology has immense benefits, including access to immediate global information and the modern comfort of smart home automation technology and concepts like the Internet of Things (IoT). 

With the enormous benefits of technology and the internet, it can be hard to think why you are going about your good activity online; some bad guys are lurking around to take advantage of your activities and either attack you or steal from you. Hence, the need for a cybersecurity strategy.  

Cybersecurity involves securing internet-connected services and devices from being over-ran by spammers, hackers, and other cyber criminals. Companies have various methods, strategies, and practices to protect their company data and online activities. Some threats and attacks they protect against include ransomware attacks, data breaches, financial loss, phishing attacks, and identity theft.

A continuous rise and sophistication of cyber crimes have repeatedly exposed the flaws in the technology and services we rely on for a successful business. 

The Scale Of The Cyber Security Threat

Forbes predicted the emergence of new and diverse terrifying challenges, everything from supply chain disruption to higher risks in smart devices to a downturn in cyber security talent. 

Another report provided by Cybercrime Magazine shows that it would lose $10.5 trillion annually to a security crisis by 2025. A figure that is predicted to rise by about 15 percent from year to year over the next four years!

The Challenges Portend By Cyber Security Systems

Cyber security includes processes, strategies, and technologies to protect computer networks, systems, and data from breaches and any form of attack. 

Mobile Security

Mobile device usage is massive today, unlike years back. Thereby putting mobile security at a point of potential vulnerability. Mobile security protects organizational data and personal information on mobile devices such as cell phones, tablets, and laptops from numerous threats such as viruses, malware attacks, device theft or loss, unauthorized access, etc. In addition, mobile security helps to bolster security through education and authentication.

Application Security

Application security includes the implementation of resource defenses against different forms of threats and attacks. This subdomain demands that IT security experts create security codes and execute robust data input validation, application architectures, and other procedures to reduce the possibility of unauthorized use of resources or a modification of applications and their resources.

Data Security and Identity Management 

This aspect covers processes, frameworks, and activities allowing access to authorized requests. An approach that incorporates executing an efficient information storage mechanism offers data security whether residing or transitioning on a computer system or server. This utilizes authentication protocols such as two-factor or multi-factor. For vendors, you can consider taking help from a vendor risk management company.

Network Security 

Network security involves software and hardware mechanisms that secure infrastructure and network resources from disruptions and abuses. Adequate network security provides the required coverage for enterprise network resources against different forms of threats on the network.

Cloud Security

Cloud security concerns developing safe cloud applications and architectures for organizations that depend on cloud service providers such as Rackspace, Amazon Web Services, Azure, and Google.

As digital transformation has impacted businesses and government processes over the past few years as remote and hybrid systems become more prominent, there is an extensive number of cyber forecasts, online trends, and security predictions. 

4 Realistic Cybersecurity Predictions For 2023

1. All through 2023, government regulations demanding enterprise owners to present consumer privacy rights will cover over 70 percent of the global GDP and five billion citizens.

According to Gartner analysts, the past year has seen about 3 billion global citizens receive access to consumer privacy rights in more than 50 countries. That figure is expected to build up in 2023. Therefore, it is recommended that organizations track user rights to privacy metrics requests, including cost per request and time to fulfill, justify accelerated automation, and uncover potential disorganization.

2. About 50 percent of enterprises will incorporate the Zero Trust security model as a starting point for security. However, a considerable percentage will not realize its immense potential.

The term Zero Trust is no longer unfamiliar to many security vendors. As a strategy, it is identity-based, replacing inherent risky trust to ensure all user identity is duly verified. Zero Trust is poised both as an organizational vision and a security policy and requires clear communication and cultural shift to help businesses achieve their projected security goal.

3. About 65 percent of organizations will adopt a strategy for cloud services, web, and private application access unification of a single vendor’s security service edge (SSE).

With growing statistics in the remote and hybrid workforce and data availability, security vendors are offering an integrated SSE solution to deliver SaaS application security and privatized access. As a result, they have consistent and streamlined web access to users. Gartner says a single-vendor solution provides the highest security effectiveness and efficiency level with the integrated SSE solution.

4. About 50 percent of companies will leverage cybersecurity risk as a significant factor in conducting business engagements and third-party transactions.

With the growing attacks caused by third-party transactions, business managers will be doing more to secure endpoints by monitoring third parties. According to Gartner, there is currently a low rate of 23 percent monitoring third-party activities in real-time for cybersecurity exposure. It is predicted that companies will sit up to the need to communicate the possible vulnerabilities caused by engaging with third-party transactions.

Creating your eCommerce store might seem like an overwhelming task if you’re a small business owner and want to sell products online. But it doesn’t have to be: plenty of platforms will make setting up an eCommerce site easy. The best part is that these platforms are cost-effective and easy to use. Here’s a look at how you can build an eCommerce store without any programming knowledge required.

Choosing The Right Platform

When choosing a platform, it’s essential to consider how much the platform will grow with your business. For example, if you’re planning on building your brand from scratch, Shopify might not be for you. The cost of the platform and what you get for it are also important considerations.

When considering a platform like Shopify or BigCommerce, look at its features, functionality, and community opinion from developers who support it. Community size is also an important consideration—you want to make sure there are enough people in your community who know what they’re doing so that when an issue arises, there are enough people around to help out. You want to select a platform with all the functionality required for your new business and the technical experts behind it to support you as your company grows.

Why WordPress Is Beneficial For Growing SMBs

With WordPress, you can build your eCommerce store from the ground up with just a few clicks of the mouse. And since it’s an open-source platform, there are hundreds of free and premium themes that let you personalize your site with ease.

But what makes WordPress so powerful? It comes down to three main benefits:

• Ease of use – With WordPress, anyone can learn how to build an online store in less than an hour. You don’t need any coding knowledge or technical experience to get started. You can even benefit from managed WordPress hosting, where WordPress experts can customize your site.
• Power – Because it’s lightweight and customizable, WordPress is highly scalable—you can create any website using this CMS tool—and it powers millions upon millions of sites worldwide. That means if you’re looking for support when building your site (or even after launching), plenty of experts will know how things work within this platform.
• Security – If you want to keep your site safe from hackers, WordPress is one of the most secure CMS tools available today. Its built-in security features make it much harder for cybercriminals to break into your account or steal any data.

Themes, Plugins, And Extensions

WordPress themes and plugins are the heart of any WordPress site. Themes make your site look like anything you want, and plugins help you do things with the content that makes up your store. They’re both free to use, but there’s also a premium market for each.

Once you’ve got a theme and some great plugins on your site, you’ll need to get them hooked up to an eCommerce platform to work together seamlessly. There are many different platforms, but WooCommerce is one of the most popular payment tools available for WordPress-built eCommerce sites. Further, WordPress is a secure platform because it’s constantly updated with new patches and fixes. So you don’t need to worry about hackers targeting your website, and you can rest assured that your payment processing tools will remain secure.

Managed Hosting Takes Care Of Optimizing And Updating Your WordPress Site

You don’t have to worry about security, backups, updates, or speed with managed WordPress hosting. The host takes care of all that for you, and you get 24/7 access to expert WordPress developers who are there to help you build a stunning and fully functional website.

• Security: With managed hosting, your site will be updated constantly with patches to keep it secure from hackers and other threats. You’ll also get alerts when something needs attention so you can take care of it immediately.
• Backups: If your site gets hacked or crashes unexpectedly due to a software update gone wrong (or any other issue), then having backups means losing very little time getting back up and running again—often within minutes.
• Speed: When you host with Nexcess, your site is hosted on a powerful server that is optimized for speed. Nexcess servers are also located in data centers worldwide, so no matter where your visitors are located or what time of day they’re browsing your site, they’ll receive fast load times.

WordPress is the best way to go if you’re looking to build an eCommerce site. You don’t need much technical knowledge, and plenty of tools and extensions will make it even easier. It’s essential to choose a platform and find managed hosting for your WordPress site to stay up-to-date with security updates and optimization. Start your eCommerce journey today with WordPress.

We are in a new era of customer expectations. The world has become more digital and connected, and people interact with brands differently than ever before. To meet these expectations, brands must abandon traditional approaches and embrace Experience Composition.

Brand-Customer Relationships Today

The relationship between customer and brand has changed. In the past, consumers were likely to be passive bystanders in their relationship with a brand. As a result, today’s customers are much more active and expect brands to be responsive and personal. They also want a human element in their interaction with companies—something inherently tricky when dealing with technology.

The need for a digital experience platform is more significant than ever because of these expectations: The ability of brands to meet these customer needs will determine how successful they are at building relationships (and sales) in 2022 and beyond.

Customer Expectations From Brands

The customer is more aware of the brand they buy from. They know what they want and will not hesitate to voice their opinions on social media if they are disappointed, especially regarding ethical issues. As a result, brands need to be accountable for their actions and be more transparent about them.

Customers expect brands to be more ethical and responsible with their actions and sustainability strategies. This also means that customers expect brands to invest in ensuring that workers are treated fairly and paid appropriately (not just minimum wage).

According to Uniform, “To become mainstream, composable architectures must empower business teams to work independently and maintain control over digital experiences while retaining (or even improving) the technical and cost benefits for developers.”

The Future Of Customer Expectations

As customers become more connected, they are also more demanding. They have access to more information than ever before and can easily switch their allegiance to a competitor. So, companies must constantly innovate to meet customer expectations while also ensuring customer loyalty and retention.

Digital experience composition (DEC) helps you achieve this by providing the tools you need for innovation, as well as helping you understand your audience’s needs so that you can create meaningful connections with them.

Experience Composition Is The New Way To Drive Experiences

The next evolution in customer experience is about Experience Composition, and it’s the new way to drive experiences.

It all starts with a single idea: your business has a greater purpose than just selling products or services. And then you start to ask yourself, “How can I make that purpose come alive?”

The answer lies in the power of your brand. If you want to create an experience that connects with people on an emotional level, stop treating digital as an afterthought and start thinking about how it can help tell your story better than ever before.

Many factors are driving the need for experience composition. You have already seen some examples of companies implementing this strategy and seeing positive results. What about you? How can your company benefit from Experience Composition?

In this article, you are going to be aware of what a CDP, CRM and DMP are and help you determine which one best suits your business needs. You’ll also be explained how each works, what type of data they collect about customers and why marketers need to understand how these systems work.

What Do CDPs, CRMs And DMPs Do?

CDPs, or Customer Data Platforms, are used to collect and manage data about your customers. This data can come from anywhere: email campaigns, websites, social media pages, physical stores and more. CRMs use this data to manage relationships with customers across the entire lifecycle of their relationship with you. Finally, DMPs (Data Management Platforms) help advertisers target ads based on information they have about their users — like location and demographic info — so they can serve them relevant content wherever they are online.

Benefits Of These Three

• CDP (contract data processing) is a process that involves selling the data collected from customers, but it doesn’t mean you have to know everything about them.
• CRM (customer relationship management) is a technology that integrates with different systems in order to make sure your customer experience is seamless.
• DMP (data management platform) helps with advertising and marketing by finding out who your target audience is and how to reach them in the most effective way possible.

What Are The Differences Between Them?

CDPs are usually used by marketing and advertising agencies, while brands use CRMs. DMPs are used by publishers.

The main difference between CDP and DMP is that DMPs are used to build personas and audiences, while CRMs are used to manage contact lists.

Cost And Budget

CDPs tend to be free or low cost, while CRMs can be either paid or free. DMPs are usually paid, but it’s important to note that they only come in two forms: self-hosted and cloud-based. 

Self-hosted means you have the software on your own servers and pay for hosting costs. Cloud-based means that you don’t need to buy any hardware because the provider handles everything—you just pay monthly fees based on how many users you have accessing your data.

Which One Is Right For You?

When it comes to marketing automation, there are three main options: CDP, CRM and DMP.

Knowing which service is right for you will help you determine what kind of data you need to collect and store in your database. Once that’s done, it’s time to decide how much money you wish to spend on your marketing automation system. According to a software solution provider Adobe Real-Time CDP, “The main difference between a DMP, CDP, and CRM is the primary purpose for which customer data is stored and organized.” 

After all that’s done, the hard work begins—you’ll need a team who knows what they’re doing (or at least knows how to learn). These people can help build out your strategy from the ground up and get everything working together like clockwork by using the right tools for each stage of the process.

The most important thing to remember when considering which marketing automation platform is right for your business is that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. While there are some similarities between CDPs, CRMs and DMPs, each type of software offers different benefits and should be used in different ways depending on your needs and preferences. So before making any big decisions about marketing automation software, make sure you do some research so that you can determine which option will work best for you!

You’ve all lost a file or photo at one point or another. It’s not a matter of if, but when. But you can avoid some major headaches if you take the right steps to protect yourself from losing your data—especially if you’re using cloud services like Google Drive or Dropbox to keep track of files. Here are some ways below for data loss prevention as Software experts like Connectwise say,”Prevention is the best cure for data loss”.

Keep Your Files In More Than One Place

One of the easiest ways to avoid losing your data is by using more than one cloud service, storage location and device. This means that you should use services like Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon Cloud Drive and Microsoft OneDrive in addition to keeping your files on multiple computers and mobile devices.

In addition to this strategy working as an effective backup plan in case one backup fails or gets lost, it also offers a level of redundancy so that if one of your backups becomes corrupted or inaccessible due to user error or technical difficulties (such as a natural disaster), there are still others available for use.

Use International Data Centers

To protect your data, you might consider using cloud providers that have data centers in multiple countries. This is a good idea if your company wants to ensure that its cloud resources are available around the clock. If there is an outage and your provider’s main facility loses power or becomes otherwise unavailable, all of their customers’ data will not be affected because it is mirrored in multiple locations. Additionally, if one area experiences political unrest or natural disasters like floods or earthquakes (such as you saw recently in Japan), then at least some of their customers’ data should remain accessible from another location.

Make Sure Your Devices Are Encrypted

Encryption is a great way to protect your data. It can help prevent unauthorized access, but it can also protect against theft and deletion. Encrypted devices are harder to hack into than unencrypted ones, so you’re more likely to keep your data safe from people who want it badly enough.

But if you’re going to encrypt your devices, then you’ll need encryption software that can handle all of the data on those devices too, not just the files themselves or their contents (like text documents). Otherwise, it might be impossible for users like yourself who need access both within their own organizations as well as externally across their entire communities.

Backup Files Offline

If you’re not up to speed on how cloud storage works, here’s the short version: Cloud services are generally used for storing and accessing files from anywhere in the world. Everything is pushed online, so you can get at your stuff from any device with an internet connection. It’s nice because it gets rid of the need to carry around hard drives or other physical storage devices but it also means that your data is vulnerable if something goes wrong with your internet connection during an important moment.

The last thing you want to do is lose your data. If you can, always keep backups in more than one place and encrypt them. If at all possible, store files offline on a device that isn’t connected to the internet, so if something happens with your cloud storage provider or provider goes out of business there will still be access to your files.

Videos have become an essential part of content marketing. With the proliferation of video cameras and smartphones, almost everyone can create and share videos on social media. The web is overflowing with videos on various platforms. 

YouTube, for instance, has more than 1 billion users. And Facebook is experimenting with auto-playing videos in news feeds.

Marketers are adopting video because it’s effective at engaging audiences. Video content can increase audience engagement with your brand, leading to increased sales. 

Video can also provide an SEO advantage. Let’s explore how.

Creating Videos For Search Engine Optimization And Winning Customers

Having a good strategy while creating videos goes beyond just making videos. These days, anyone can record videos for anything. Due to the proliferation of good cameras with microphones built-in, almost everyone has access to creating videos.

But not everyone can create videos that rank in searches. 

With the following information, you could easily reach higher ranks in the searches without breaking a sweat, knowing what makes your video dearer to the search algorithm or audience:

Keywords

In order to improve your SEO, use keywords in the title, description, tags, and URL of your video. But ensure that you don’t go overboard with them since that can put off the viewers.

While trying 3-5 keywords per video is best, don’t spread your focus too thin. If you include ten keywords per video, chances are you won’t optimize your video for those keywords properly.

Title

The title of your video should be easy to remember and contain relevant keywords. And while you don’t need to emphasize the keywords in your title too heavily, keeping it to 4 or 5 keywords generally makes sense.

For example, if your video’s focus is “How to start a blog,” your title could be something like “How to start a blog in 4 easy steps.”

Description

The description of your video should describe what the video is about. If you want to maximize your SEO, you should include your keywords in your description.

For example, if your video’s main goal is “to learn how to start a blog,” keep its description short and sharp.

Tags

Tags give you another opportunity to include your target keywords.

However, don’t go crazy with tags. If you have 20 tags, your video won’t be optimized properly.

Length

The length of your videos needs to reflect the type of content you’re trying to convey. The ideal length for a video is 1 minute and 45 seconds, which is enough time for an average viewer to delve into and understand the message you’re trying to convey.

And if you’re trying to convey more information, make a video online free of cost of around 2 minutes that would be more suitable.

URL

The URL of your video should reflect the title of your video. It doesn’t necessarily need to be the exact title of the video, but it should be close to it and contain your keywords.

For example, if your video’s URL is “how-to-start-a-blog”, then you’re off to a good start.

The structure of your URL should also contain a few relevant keywords. For example, if your video covers a topic like “how to start a YouTube blog,” you could structure your URL as “how-to-start-youtube-blog”.

Thumbnail

Your thumbnail should be clear, attractive, and relevant to your video. Ideally, your thumbnail should be colorful and interesting to entice people to watch your video.

Adding your targeted keywords in a thumbnail describing the video will help more people find it.

Titles

Your titles should be short but informative. They shouldn’t contain any links but may include your targeted keywords.

For example, if your video is about “How to start a blog,” then your first post could be “How to start a blog in 4 easy steps.”

Embedding

You should also embed your video on your website in addition to optimizing the title, description, keywords, and tags.

Videos are easy to embed and only take a few seconds to do. Embedding your videos on your website and on other platforms (such as YouTube and Facebook) will improve your SEO as well as help you reach more potential customers.

Edit Your Videos For SEO

There are many ways to edit videos for SEO. Here are three methods:

1. Use video editing software
2. Use video editing tools online
3. Use a video editor on a computer or mobile device with internet access

Make Use of Video Editing Software

Some popular video editing software programs are the ones included with the operating system itself. 

These programs are versatile and can be used to edit videos for SEO and other purposes, such as creating videos for marketing or storytelling purposes. 

Many of these programs have tutorials that can help users learn how to make videos that are SEO-friendly.

Use Online Video Editing Tools

You can create slideshow videos online for free using a plethora of online video editing applications. Many online video editing tools offer features that can be used to optimize videos for SEO purposes.

Some of these services offer free trial periods, so it is worth trying out a few to see which one works best for you.

Make Use of A Video Editor on A Computer or Mobile Device that Has Internet Access

In case you do not have access to any of the video editing software or online tools mentioned above, you can try using a video editor on your mobile device with internet access. These editors are part of the camera or gallery of the mobile.

Explore your mobile phone for an editor if you don’t have access to any other editor. These editors are versatile and can be used to create videos for SEO purposes as well as for other purposes, such as creating videos for marketing or storytelling purposes.

Conclusion

There are many ways to edit videos for SEO purposes. You can follow the guide and get the best results with video content marketing. Just make sure that you find a video editor that is suitable for your needs and offers the features you need so you can use it to optimize videos for SEO.