Online reviews: a key element of marketing

by Contributor

By Megan Arevalo, Website Builder

There are many elements of online marketing, from social media to paid advertising, but one area that is often overlooked by business owners and marketers or simply left to develop by itself is online reviews.

Public feedback from customers on your own website or review sites is a powerful form of social proof. It tells potential customers that the business is active, has a certain degree of popularity, and if the reviews are mostly positive – that the business is what it says it is and does what it says it does.

In fact having no reviews at all can have more of a negative impact on attracting customers or clients than a few negatives among the positives. Continue reading →

Advertisements

Kuperman: home and IoT security will lead the way in the next generation of cybersecurity advances

by Ben Dickson

Unfortunately, it is fair to say that the vulnerabilities of Internet of Things (IoT) are preceding its innovations and utilities. From the hacking of the Ukraine power grid, to last year’s DDoS attack against the Dyn DNS provider, IoT devices are behind security incidents of all sizes.

The IoT industry is exposing how putting connectivity into anything and everything opens up a Pandora’s box of vulnerabilities, and give cybercriminals limitless ways to hurt their victims. One area of concern are smart homes, where a slew of not-so-secure devices are finding their way and exposing their owners to unprecedented threats.

In this month’s interview, Leon Kuperman, CTO of smart firewall manufacturer CUJO, discussed IoT security threats and new approaches to securing the homes of the future. Continue reading →

What is net neutrality?

by Ben Dickson

Should it make a difference for your Internet Service Provider whether you’re browsing your timeline on Facebook, reading your emails in Gmail, or reading the latest post on TechTalks? According to net neutrality, it shouldn’t.

Net neutrality is the principle that rules ISPs should treat all internet traffic equally and avoid playing favorites, throttling, blocking or providing paid prioritizations. What does that all mean? We’ll get there in a minute.

In the past years, as the internet has transformed from being a luxury to a vital commodity, net neutrality, which is also referred to as “open internet” and “internet freedom,” has become a thorny issue in the U.S. The debate has pitted several broadband and telecom giants such as AT&T and Comcast against huge content corporations such as Google and Facebook.

While the battle is currently being played out in the U.S., the outcome can set a precedent that will propagate to other countries and regions. Here’s what you need to know and why you should care. Continue reading →

The importance of ongoing tech education as a manager

by Contributor

By Southern Cross University

The rapid technological change that has occurred in the last decade has transformed every corner of our lives, from how we communicate with friends to the skills needed to navigate and prosper in the current labour market.

As Professor Ian Chubb, neuroscientist and former Chief Scientist of Australia, summed it up in 2013: “STEM is everywhere. Our nourishment, our safety, our homes and neighbours, our relationships with family and friends, our health, our jobs, our leisure are all profoundly shaped by technological innovation and the discoveries of science.”

The scale and pace of these changes poses challenges for those at all stages of the education and career ladder. For mid-career professionals moving into roles managing ambitious graduates with a higher technological literacy than their own, the challenges are perhaps greater than for any other cohort. In line with that, there is great opportunity for both tech education and management training. Continue reading →

How the semantic web revolution is starting from a blog post

by Contributor

By Andrea Volpini, WordLift

Search engines are evolving. They went from simple keyword matching to natural language processing. Those search engines got better at interpreting long tail queries. Yet they are still error-prone. Let’s put this into context: Google itself claimed that it started to use machine learning to cope with the 15 percent of searches done by users, on a daily basis, that have never been seen before. These are roughly 500 million new searches every day where Google doesn’t have a clue.

Semantic web is making those computational search engines taking a giant leap forward in three ways. Continue reading →

The cybersecurity risks of 3D printing

by Contributor

By Heather Redding

Today tech enthusiasts around the world appreciate the growing importance of 3D printing. This breakthrough technology has rapidly expanded beyond simple prototype creation and hobby design efforts to transform mainstream manufacturing processes. Currently, 3D printers assist with the production of numerous products, ranging from sophisticated medical devices to car parts and complex aviation components. Rapid advances in 3D manufacturing capabilities promise to augment cost-effective fabrication processes in a rapidly increasing number of industries in the near future.

Yet despite the fast pace of innovation, this nascent field has also begun to attract some potential cybersecurity threats. Understanding unique security challenges implicated by this technology will likely assist many progressive firms in optimizing their 3D printing processes. This brief article seeks to outline some possible 3D printing cybersecurity issues and suggest some potentially useful solutions. Continue reading →

The ransomware that never was

by Ben Dickson

Last Tuesday, a malware, initially suspected to be the Petya ransowmare, spread across thousands of computers, mostly in Ukraine. At first, the episode was thought to be the sequel to the WannaCry ransomware outbreak that infected hundreds of thousands of computers across the world in May.

But as the story unfolded and the details emerged, it became evident that this attack was something more, perhaps a cyberattack of political nature hidden behind the guise of a ransomware. The malware eventually acquired other names, including NotPetya, PetyaWrap and ExPetr.

Here’s what we know—so far—about the NotPetya “ransomware” attack that has been making the headlines of late. Continue reading →