4 top tips for keeping your website safe

We can all agree that no one wants their website hacked. Obviously, when you create your website, you won’t be thinking to yourself, “What can I do to make my website even easier to hack?” However, these days, with our lack of precautionary steps when creating and maintaining our websites, we might as well be thinking that outrageous question to ourselves.

According to Symantec, in 2014, roughly three out of five websites that were hacked belong to small and medium sized businesses, and the average cost of data breaches to small businesses totaled US$36 000. Now, that’s not an amount that people should just overlook. Small businesses can’t afford to have employees dedicated to preventing cyberattacks, so they are often targeted by hackers. And to make things worse, a newer phenomenon called “ransomware”, malware that encrypts files on your computer, then demands a ransom to unlock them is growing in popularity in the hacking community. With this increasingly aggressive cyber environment, what can you do to protect your website?

What do the tech experts think?

Tech experts for years have been telling business owners to take precautions to prevent cyberattacks, but unfortunately, the response from business owners has not been strong. However, now is the time to take control of your website and protect yourself from losing your valuable personal and financial assets. Here are some top tips from industry leaders on how to prevent future hacks on your website.

1.      Train your employees to against cyberattacks

Sometimes, your employees just do not know that it is not good cyber hygiene to send sensitive customer data via e-mail. Clearly distinguish and teach your employees on what information should be sent via email and what should not. If they need to send that information via e-mail, then make sure that you have a strong data encryption service in your e-mail system.

According to Jayne Friedland Holland, Chief Security Officer and associate general counsel at technology firm NIC Inc., it is also a good idea to educate your employees about any laws that pertain to protecting customer data, as they have a legal obligation to protect sensitive customer personal information.

2. Never store customer data

News regarding customer data breaches to major corporations, such as Home Depot, Target, T-Mobile, and most recently, the Dow Jones, are common place. Unfortunately, all of these situations could have been prevented if these companies followed industry compliance and did not store customer related private information. According to Forbes, all e-retailers are held to PCI-DSS standards, but honestly, there is no reason why companies themselves should store customers’ account numbers, credit card numbers, or expiration dates for long periods of time.

In simpler terms, if you have nothing to steal, you won’t be robbed.

3. Create more complicated passwords for yourself and customers

This sounds like web security basics, but it needs to be said. Both employees and customers struggle to create complex passwords and consistently commit to changing them at least every 90 days. According to SecurityScorecard CEO, Aleksander Yampolskiy, “A big portion of the breaches out there is because of weak passwords.” Companies need to be cognizant and place an emphasis on the importance of avoid simple data breaches due to easy to guess passwords.

One best practice is installing a program on employees’ computers that force them to change their passwords every 90 days with character requirements. Another great method could be to send recurring reminder e-mails and/or website notifications to customers to request that they change their passwords based on character type and minimum requirements.

4. Make sure you have a website application firewall (WAF) to prevent web attacks

If you own an eCommerce site, you may be hosting your storefront with a major retailer (i.e: Etsy, Amazon, etc.) that already provides sufficient protection. However, if you are hosting your own website, you may be defenseless against a cyberattack. If you are relying on your content management system (CMS) or web hosting service for basic protection, it may not be enough. Even the biggest CMS services, such as WordPress, are susceptible to thousands of hackings every day. Depending on your site’s needs, you need to take action on protecting yourself against cyberattacks before it’s too late. This is where WAFs can help!

WAFs work to act as a filter between a user and a web server. Essentially, these services are your shield from the outside world. Just as you wouldn’t let any random stranger into the privacy of your home, you wouldn’t want suspicious intruders to gain access to your online information.

These days, most WAF services are cloud-based services. Brad Causey, CEO of the tech consulting firm, Zero Day Consulting, shares that any organisation with technology exposed to the Internet canbenefit from having a WAF. These services work by analyzing and filtering harmful web traffic that could potentially lead to malicious attacks or intrusions. This way, your website is kept safe from attacks such as malware and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), which can flood your website with bad traffic to, ultimately, shut it down. If your website isn’t functioning properly for long stretches of time, it can be bad for business and could potentially lose long term customers.

By using a WAF, you can stop hackers before they can access your website. There are even WAF systems that you can use for free up to a certain level of monthly data traffic. Search for a WAF that best fits your website’s needs and commit to moving all of your domains under WAF protection.

Source | http://memeburn.com/

Sitting at PC for hours can cause harmful blood clots

When Dinesh (he requested that we use only his first name), an Information Technology professional from Thane, complained of sudden breathlessness at work, his colleagues and family thought he had a case of viral flu. However, after he developed severe difficulty in breathing a few weeks ago, his family rushed him to Jupiter Hospital in Thane, where they were shocked to learn that he had developed what is now referred as ‘e-Thrombosis’. The condition, doctors said, is a variant of deep vein thrombosis (DVT), where there is clotting of blood in the legs, seen commonly in people taking long haul flights in cramped seats. Doctors believe that the lifestyle change over the last decade with the penetration of technology into office and homes has made several professionals whose work involves sitting in front of the computer for 12 to 14 hours the worst hit.

“I spend close to 12 hours on my seat as I am supporting the hardware at various locations. At times, I am in office for 14 hours also, without taking long breaks. If I take breaks regularly, I might have to spend an additional hour in office to finish my tasks for the day,” said Dinesh, 31.

Dinesh’s cardiologist, Dr Vijay Surase, said that he had no other risk factors apart from spending long hours of sitting. “People like Dinesh sit continuously on their seat and they fail to understand the damage it can have. There is formation of blood clots in the leg which can travel 

to the lungs and lead to pulmonary-embolism. In case where the clot which reaches the lung is massive, it can even be fatal,” said Dr 

Surase, who is also treating another professional in his 30s with e-Thrombosis.

It is not just information technology professionals who spend long hours before a computer who are at risk of getting e-Thrombosis. Take the case of Laxman Saraiya, 37, who was hospitalised for a week after he developed sudden breathlessness. Saraiya, who manages a video-game parlour in Thane, sits at his computer terminal for about 10 to 12 hours on a daily basis. “I cannot leave my parlour and walk around. I had repeated swelling in my legs which would subside with basic medicines from my local doctor. It was only when I felt breathless, we went to a hospital,” said Saraiya who spends Rs4,000 on a monthly basis on a drug which he takes daily to avoid any further clot formation.

DVT is commonly seen in bedridden individuals, patients hospitalised for months owing to the immobility. Recently doctors have started treating IT professionals- video gamers and computer operators with the condition. “Even people who stand for long hours can develop the condition,” said Dr VT Shah, cardiologist, Surana Hospital.

Source | Hindustan Times | 20 October 2015

Who says bookstores are a closed chapter?

At a time when online sales and digital books are taking a toll on brick and mortar bookshops causing many to shut shop, here come not one, but a chain of four brand new bookstores — Story — positioned as “a place where people will meet to tell stories, talk stories, read stories, write stories and buy stories.”

The 10,000-15,000 sq ft stores, three of which ope­ned in Kol­kata and one in Durgapur recently, belong to Kolkata-headquartered PGE Lifestyle Ventures, an arm of Primarc Group, which also owns the franchise rights of Crosswords bookstore in eastern India.

Fully mindful of the online onslaught, the group is working out newer and innovative ways to emerge as a brand to reckon with. “Story will be the kind of social meeting place that our cities do not have much of. Our objective is to bring new value with facilities and services that will make it a grand destination not only for the book lovers but even tourists,” said Sidharth Pansari, director, Primarc Projects.

On offer are more than 1,00,000 titles and an entire floor for children’s books. But there’s a lot more beyond. Like, for instance, the STORYteller’s club that will conduct regular workshops and Sunday STORYtelling sessions that not only focus on reading habits, cognition and instillation of creativity in kids, but also on their role in society and overall personality development. And finally, CafeSTORY will be about coffee over conversations where people can also read, paint, write, draw, type or even play the guitar.

The Story bookstores are located on Elgin Road in Kolkata, Avani Mall in Howrah, Diamond Plaza Mall in Nager Bazar and Junction Mall in Durgapur.

Primarc owns and operates some 45 stores across various formats in east India including Raymond, Color Plus, Park Avenue and Esquire. It has also floated a special purpose vehicle (SPV), Primarc Pecan Retail to foray into the e-commerce space.

Source | Financial Chronicle | 20 October 2015

Google Books is legal, rules US appeals court

Highlights

• Google is not violating copyright laws by digitizing books, according to a ruling by federal appeals court

• The panel did acknowledge that some book sales would be lost if someone were searching for a portion of text
• Google's profit motivation does not justify denial of something that overall enhances public knowledge

NEW YORK: Google is not violating copyright laws by digitizing millions of books so it can provide small portions of them to the public, a federal appeals court ruled in a decade-long dispute by authors worried that the project would spoil the market for their work.

The 2nd US circuit court of appeals in Manhattan agreed with a judge who concluded that the snippets Google showed customers from its database was a transformative use of the information and thus did not violate copyright laws.

Judge Denny Chin ruled in November 2013 that Google's digitization of over 20 million books, mostly out-of-print titles, did not violate copyrights because the Mountain View, California-based company only showed short sections of the books in its database. Chin had said it would be difficult for anyone to read any of the works in their entirety by repeatedly entering different search requests.

In an opinion written by Judge Pierre N Leval, the appeals court agreed, saying the snippet feature "substantially protects against its serving as an effectively competing substitute for plaintiffs' books."

It added: "Snippet view, at best and after a large commitment of manpower, produces discontinuous, tiny fragments, amounting in the aggregate to no more than 16% of a book. This does not threaten the rights holders with any significant harm to the value of their copyrights or diminish their harvest of copyright revenue."

The three-judge appeals panel did acknowledge, though, that some book sales would likely be lost if someone were merely searching for a portion of text to ascertain a fact.

The Authors Guild and various authors had challenged Google in 2005, contending that the digital book project violated their rights. Writers included Jim Bouton, author of the best-seller "Ball Four," Betty Miles, author of "The Trouble with Thirteen," and Joseph Goulden, author of "The Superlawyers: The Small and Powerful World of Great Washington Law Firms."

Google Inc has made digital copies of tens of millions of books from major research libraries and established a publicly available search function. It planned ultimately to scan over 100 million books, including material from the New York Public Library, Library of Congress and several major universities.

The appeals court said Google's profit motivation does not justify denial of something that overall enhances public knowledge.

"Many of the most universally accepted forms of fair use, such as news reporting and commentary, quotation in historical or analytic books, reviews of books, and performances, as well as parody, are all normally done commercially for profit," the court noted.

The appeals panel said it recognized that libraries that had negotiated with Google to receive digital copies from the company might use them in an infringing manner. It said that could expose the libraries and Google to liability but called it "sheer speculation" to raise the issue now.

Lawyers did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

Source | Economic Times | 20 October 2015

The business OF SKILLS

A STRATEGIC REALIGNMENT IS IN ORDER FOR STAKEHOLDERS IN THE `SKILLING INDUSTRY'

India more engineers than the USA and China combined. But there is a huge question mark when it comes to the quality of these candidates and their expertise in these domains. This has led to recruiters saying that almost 80 per cent of the graduates who pass through our deemed universities are unemployable. That's a staggering number and one that indicates discord between the industry and our education system.

Despite their shortcomings, Indians are among the most sought-after talent in the world for their work ethics. Arming more aspirants with the right skills to meet the global demand is the need of the hour.

Following a slew of initiatives taken by the government, the `skilling' industry offers ample opportunities for growth profitably. Many start-ups have recognised this and have been pushing the envelope to rewrite India's education story. Even the older giants in the industry have had to sit up and take notice of the rapid changes in policies and sops offered.

Continuously performing well and delivering results in terms of outputs and profits is what sets a business apart and catches the fancy of investors and potential business partners.Once you have quality under control, you have to invest in the business and focus on scaling it up. The government has recognised the challenges that the industry faces today and is doling out sops worth crores to help them succeed. MOOCs, online courses and educational apps are attracting customers in large flocks. Start-ups who are offering such services should aim to generate economies of scale.

Where many existing brick and mortar education skilling institutes fail is to truly impart the care and attention each candidate passing through their halls, deserves. Customisation down to individuals is possible via machine learning and must be leveraged to create true value for the students. India is going to be the youngest nation by 2020 and by 2025, a majority of the young population will enter the workforce. To empower them to contribute meaningfully, the industry will have to make certain changes to their approach as well.

The two main reasons why most students drop out are that they cannot afford higher education and most institutions lack adequate infrastructure. The industry has to help in arresting these drop-out rates and seal the flow of candidates by hiring from a social angle instead of a profit angle.

Source | Economic Times | 20 October 2015

Noted scientists, academicians agree to teach under GIAN

Scholars recruited through the GIAN initiative will be paid anything between $8,000 and $12,000 for a contact programme of up to 28 hours. Each of these lectures will also be available online.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pet education project to rope in eminent scholars from abroad to teach at Centrally-funded institutions has elicited a response from the likes of Sheldon Pollock, David Shulman and Judith Butler.

The HRD ministry is in the process of recruiting as many as 200 scientists and academicians under the Global Initiative of Academic Network or GIAN, a short-term teaching programme that will be launched by the PM next month.

Pollock, an internationally renowned Sanskrit scholar, Shulman, a noted indologist and Butler, a well-known American philosopher and gender theorist, are expected to take classes at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). The list of eminent academicians also includes Dr Leroy Hood, a pioneer of systems biology who will probably spend a week at IIT Bombay in December.

Tabish Khair, well-known author and professor at the University of Aarhus in Denmark, is expected to teach a course on postcolonial world literature at IIT Bhubaneswar this year.

Celebrated British historian Dr Peter Burke has been roped in to teach cultural history to students of JNU in January next year. American cell biologist Bhanu Pratap Jena, who discovered the porosome, will spend a week at JNU in July next year. And around the same time, Scottish molecular biologist Richard Henderson FRS will teach students at IISER, Thiruvananthapuram.

Scholars recruited through the GIAN initiative will be paid anything between $8,000 and $12,000 for a contact programme of up to 28 hours. Each of these lectures will also be available online. According to sources, the ministry has prepared a tentative schedule of 281 academicians who are expected to spend time — starting from three days to up to two weeks over the next one year — at different universities and institutions funded by the Centre.

These courses will not be limited to students of institutions hosting international scholars. “At least half the class should be made up of students from other universities and colleges, who will pay a fee to attend these lectures,” said an IIT professor associated with GIAN, who did not wish to be identified. Although the HRD Ministry had roped in Fields medallist Manjul Bhargava to be the face and facilitator of GIAN, it hasn’t listed any lecture by him in the tentative schedule. The initiative has been conceived with the intention of providing the best international experience to students by increasing the footfall of reputed faculty at Indian institutions. Through GIAN, the government also aims to create avenues for collaborative research with international faculty and motivate the latter to work on problems specific to India.

Source | Indian Express | 20 October 2015

SCERT hunts for tech-savvy teachers

While the state government is developing its own audio-visual content which will soon be uploaded on the SCERT website, the teachers are also expected to search for learning materials on other websites.

For those students who find lessons in algebra, atomic structures or grammar boring, there is some good news. Soon they will get respite from the ‘dry’ lectures and learn the concepts through animated films or audio visual materials, thanks to a statewide hunt for tech-savvy teachers launched by the Maharashtra State Council for Educational Research (SCERT).

In a bid to promote teaching using visual and interactive media and searching for teachers who are well versed with technology, SCERT has developed a new portal http://www.technoteachers.in\, where teachers who are well versed with computers, internet and using web-based technology are expected to register their names.

Within a span of one month, as many as 7,836 “tech-savvy” teachers across the state have already registered, with Ahmednagar having the maximum number of teachers at 888 while 301 teachers have registered from Pune.

“Currently, we are just registering the names of the teachers so that we know how many teachers are familiar with technology and can use the learning materials that we develop as well as know how to access technology. Simultaneously, we are in the process of developing short clips of at least five to ten minutes duration on various concepts and subjects of teaching. Once developed, these clips would be uploaded on the website and be free to download for these teachers. They are then expected to use these as teaching aids in the classrooms to promote better understanding of concepts for students in a manner that they enjoy,” said Govind Nandede, director, SCERT.

Once the process of registration is done, the teachers are then shortlisted for a short training of 1-2 days duration on various technical aspects. “We will assess their skills and also train them how to search for relevant teaching aids, usage of internet and smartphone technology for teaching materials, among other things” added Nandede.

While the state government is developing its own audio-visual content which will soon be uploaded on the SCERT website, the teachers are also expected to search for learning materials on other websites.

“For example, Khan Academy has already developed some clips in Hindi on various concepts which are free to download. We are already working on making clips in other languages, especially Marathi. Besides, there are many ways to make classroom teaching interesting. For example, if a history teacher is teaching about the Independence movement and finds a documentary on the Quit India movement, then they can download and show it in the classroom. Or a science teacher can download some animation to make it easier for students to learn how opposite poles attract each other and same poles of two magnets repel. The entire idea is to make classroom learning more interested and involved,” said Nandede.

Source | Indian Express | 19 October 2015