With the inherent stresses that come with running a business, there is often little time to digest the complex intricacies of security software. According to recent studies many business owners eschew the notion that their digital assets may be vulnerable to attack. Although an attack or infection can be potentially catastrophic, many believe damage caused by viruses, hackers and worms only happen to others. They consider their data to be of little use or value outside of their organization. Even executives that acknowledge the existence of these hazards seldom have the time or the budget for security audits and/or an overhaul of their workflow procedures to comply with best security practices.
Below are a few simple tools, tips and guidelines that can help your business take a proactive approach to data security. By implementing the following, your business data will be less susceptible to financial damage caused by accidents and malicious attacks.
Regularly Update Your Software
Although valiant efforts are often made to write safe software, the fact is that no software is ever bug-free. Hackers exploit these bugs for a variety of reasons including fun and money. It is critically important that your software is updated on a regular basis. Most operating systems, firewall and antivirus can and should be configured to receive regular updates.
Install Firewalls
Firewalls separate one network from another and are frequently used to separate a company’s internal network from the Internet. Firewalls not only mask the identity of the individual computers behind them, they also examine and filter potentially damaging data entering or leaving the network. It is good practice to install both perimeter and client-side firewalls.
Install Anti-Virus Protection
Hundreds if not thousands new malware programs are released each month. These include viruses, worms, Trojan horses and host of other programs. Symptoms of infection range from the annoying to catastrophic. Because viruses can slip through firewalls posing as a legitimate email or program, installation of client-side anti-virus software is important. Install only the latest version of your chose antivirus program and make sure to regularly update and scan your system.
Protect the content of your sensitive files and email.
Email doesn’t have to be a public announcement, yet private messages often turn out to be. Email and files containing sensitive business information such as strategic plans, contracts, financial information, designs and more all too often spread beyond the individuals they were intended for. According to a recent report by the Computer Security Institute loss of proprietary data was the third leading cause of financial damage to organizations last year.
To mitigate this problem consider using rights management software to protect your sensitive business data. Content rights management software not only encrypts files, but also serves to enforce access and limit usage privileges such as forwarding, editing and printing. These protections are persistent and remain with your files no matter where they travel. Any business that frequently exchange medical, financial, legal or design data should make regular use of encryption and digital rights management technologies
Establish a periodic data backup strategy
Periodic backups are required to ensure business continuity in case of an accident such as a hard-drive failure or attack. In a networked environment full and incremental data back-ups can be programmed to take place at regular intervals. Small offices environments should backup their sensitive data external hard-drive or DVD-R at least once a week. It is good policy for companies to back-up email as well. Back-up data should be stored off-site in a secure location. Be sure to test your backup processes to ensure that indeed your data can be restored lieu of an operational failure.
Use strong passwords
Passwords are used to authenticate the identity of an individual user. Unless otherwise protected, once a password is broken your sensitive data is exposed. With free software that is readily available on the web, most passwords can be broken in a number of minutes. These programs often use known words and phrases to break passwords frequently beginning with “password” and “admin”. For good password security use a combination of upper-case and lower-case letters, numbers and symbols (i.e. eR8>!tJd ). Make sure that your employees memorize their passwords and that these are not written down anywhere on premises.
Hire a security consultant
While tips in this article will help your company to be more secure; every business is different and requires its own security strategy. Consider hiring an independent security consultant to asses your individual security situation. They will be able to help you create a comprehensive security policy that will meet your business needs.
Educate your employees
No security plan is effective unless followed by your employees. Measures can be taken to severely limit their privileges such as browsing the internet, reading email, or preventing the reading of files from USB drive or cd. However, draconian security measures can interrupt workflow and damage productivity. A better policy is to limit some user privileges while educating your employees about your company’s security policies.
Zachary Price is a co-founder of Essential Security Software, a leading provider of document and email security solutions. For more information visit http://www.essentialsecurity.com
When a company decides that it must raise capital, a key question that must be answered is how much the company is worth. For example, if the business needs $500,000 to get started and/or grow, how much of the equity in that company should $500,000 command? Once this question is answered, the company will go out and try to find investors. When doing so, a key question often arises as to whether the valuation is “pre-money” or “post-money.”
“Before the money” or “pre-money” and “after the money” or “post-money” denote simple concepts. However, these simple concepts can even confuse even the most sophisticated analysts at times. If a company is valued at $1 million on Day 1, then 25 percent of the company is worth $250,000. However, there may be an ambiguity. Suppose the company and the investor agree on two terms: (1) a $1 million valuation, and (2) a $250,000 equity investment. In this case, the company may offer the investor 250 shares for $250,000. Immediately there can be a disagreement. The investor may have thought that equity in the company was worth $1,000 per percentage point, in which case $250,000 gets 250 out of 1,000 shares or a 25% equity position. Conversely, the company may have believed that the investor was contributing to the enterprise which was already worth $1 million. Under this rationale, the $250,000 would give the investor 250 shares out of 1,250 shares or a 20% equity position.
The critical issue was whether the agreed value of $1 million to be assigned to the company was prior to or after the investor’s contribution of cash (pre-money) or post-money.
In the above case, a pre-money valuation of $1 million and a post-money valuation of $1.25 million were equivalent. Because mixing up the terms could significantly increase the cost of capital raised, companies must be sure to understand the two metrics and agree with investors to the metric that raises them the capital at the appropriate price.
Since its inception, Growthink Business Plans has developed over 200 business plans. Growthink clients have collectively raised over $750 million in financing, launched numerous new product and service lines and gained competitive advantage and market share. Growthink has become the firm of choice for venture capital firms, angel investors, corporations and entrepreneurs in the know. For more information please visit http://www.growthink.com or download our free Business Plan Guide.
It is only natural that when you start a business, you are doing something different than most people. They not only will look at you because you stick out like a sore thumb _ but human nature will cause people to naturally ridicule what you are doing. They will tell you all types of things like: “You’re not business material.” “You can’t make a living working for yourself.” “You’ll fail because nobody can ever make any money that way.”
Entrepreneurship is not just about having a lot of ideas or business sense. It is also about having a lot of guts. You have to build self-confidence in yourself. You have to only be concerned with pleasing yourself and your Creator (God) _ not mankind. Then, when (and if) you should fail with this particular venture, you’ll just dust yourself off and start again. It doesn’t matter if people “think” you’re nuts! They aren’t paying your rent and running your life. Don’t be concerned with what people “think” you should be. Just please yourself and do what you feel is right. People are too busy competing with society and “keeping up with the Jones’s” that they do things they are not comfortable with just to appease them and look “normal” (whatever that is.)
And if you have to start out small in building your self-confidence. I used to be so self-conscious that I would never eat at a restaurant alone because I thought people would believe I was lonely and had no friends. Unbelievable, but true. But, everyday I worked on walking into a restaurant, taking a magazine to read and eating alone. I would glance around, and to my amazement, no one ever looked at me. No one cared that I was eating alone. Then _ it dawned on me; “Who cares what these people think? I’ll never see them again.” Besides, there were a lot of other people eating alone also and I could absorb myself in the magazine I had took to read. Now, I can eat in restaurants and not give any thought to the people around me.
But back to business _ when most people do fail in business they try to “save face” by telling everyone they are “just in a slump” and everything will be back to normal soon. Besides, they don’t want people to say: “I told you so” and destroy any pride they are still hanging onto. Unfortunately, this only delays the problem and creates even more false hope for the people in your life as well as yourself.
The best thing to do for anybody in this catastrophe is to swallow their pride and admit they screwed up. Just face it head on! Admit that you were so proud of your accomplishments that your mind became diluted with “visions of sugar plums and fantasyland.”
If your small business is beyond repair, go out and find a job and begin working on your next small business in the near future. Keep your family fed and your financial obligations met but look forward to the day when you WILL succeed with your new business venture.
And why should you try again? Simply because you won’t make the same mistakes you made this time. If you built something successful before (but failed), you are certain to build the next business stronger and wiser. Even if you fail the second time, it won’t be because of mistakes you made the first time. You’ll learn more and more _ and eventually be successful. It’s inevitable!
With Internet’s help, you can get a lot of ideas by searching from google.com and overture.com, yahoo.com. In today’s information world, you are in a much better position to be successful if you really want to succeed.
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Julia Tang publishes Smart Online Business Tips, a fresh
and informative newsletter dedicated to supporting people
like you! To find out the best online business opportunities,
and to discover hundreds more proven and practical internet
marketing secrets, plus FREE internet marketing products
worth over $200, visit: http://www.best-internet-businesses.com
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AOL has announced that it will changed its email service. They plan on charging for email in order to help slow down or even stop spam. The price for this service is unknown, but non-for-profit organizations will be exempt.
I will start with my summary. This is not a good idea for several reasons. For starters it will not stop spam as a whole. It will just stop spam for AOL customers. Depending on the price, spammers will just pay it to continue. This may even give spammers credibility if they pay to spam you. For AOL this could be bad. There are hundreds of free email providers out there. I can see people switching to a free service if they have to pay for a spam free AOL email address. Creating a paid service although it will deter spammers, will not eliminate the problem. Spammers will find away around this. One possible disguise is to look like a non for profit organization. AOL is standing fast on this despite the groups of protesters fighting this.
In AOL’s defense they can do what they feel is best, however my personal opinion that this is a bad move. I think this will result in a loss of customers. No one wants to pay for email. Its too much a part of everyday life now. Its ingrained in our lives. You can’t blame them for trying to find a solution to the spam epidemic, and what better way than through a spammers pocketbook. However, legitimate email users are not willing to pay the price.
Matt Christensen
http://www.mattchristensen.net
Looking for typing or data entry work that you can do from home? You might consider opening your own Virtual Office Service. Many different types of businesses either don’t have the time or the resources to do this type of work on their own. Your clients could range from self-employed entrepreneurs and business travelers to small companies. Jobs can range from data entry to bookkeeping and accounting.
So what does it take to provide a Virtual Office Service? One of the basic requirements for this type of business would be good word processing skills. If you have experience in a certain field, like accounting, you should capitalize on that and market your skills to clients that would benefit from that skill. Of course, organizational skills would be essential. You may need to juggle several jobs for different clients at one time. You would only want to take on as much work as you could handle effectively in a given time period.
The basic equipment that you would need include a good computer and printer, and most likely a fax machine. A good computer will run anywhere from $1,500 to $3,000. Some computers have an internal fax as well. A good printer ranges from $150 for quality black-and-white output to $700 for more advanced color versions. Fax machines range from $200 to $500. You can find quality equipment online at Dell.
To sell your services to potential clients, you can make up a flyer or brochure outlining your skills and the services that you offer. In order to build up a clientele, you would probably need to do quite a bit of cold-calling. Introduce yourself to local business owners, and leave your flyer with them. You could also make up a website and market your business on the internet.
The standard for rates range from $20-$50 an hour. Depending on how many hours you want to work each week, you could make anywhere from $25,000 to $80,000.
Want more information on this field? Here are some relevant books:
Creating a Virtual Office -Ten Case Studies for Cpa Firms by Anita Dennis
How to Start & Manage an Accounting Service Business - Step by Step Guide to Starting & Managing Your Own Business by Jerre G. Lewis, Leslie D. Renn
How to Start a Home-Based Secretarial Services Business (How to Start a Home-Based Business)
Complete Typing Business Guide: Everything You Need to Know to Start and Successfully Operate a Home Typing Business
© Copyright 2000 Sharon Davis.
Sharon Davis is the Mother of two girls,
the owner of 2Work-At-Home.Com
and the Editor of the site’s monthly ezine, America’s Home.
In her spare time she reminisces about what it
was like to have spare time.
To subscribe to her free ezine, Click Here
This article may be reproduced providing it is published in it’s entirety, including the author’s bio.
Following on form our previous article hear are a few more things you should take into account in relation to Mergers & Investments.
a) Market Extension Merger is between the companies selling same product but in different markets. This merger enhances the market for the two companies since they now act as one sole company.
b) Product Extension Merger is like the one between an eminent company making motor parts and another that makes their own cars. So, the companies involved here sell different but more or less the same product in the same market. This merger promotes the sale of both the companies significantly.
c) Conglomeration is a merger where the concerned companies have nothing in common to sell.
There are various reasons behind merger of companies. Like
1) Synergy factor prompts the merger of most of the companies. The synergy in business pertains to the cost saving and revenue enhancement. The companies after merger decrease the staff keeping only the skilled labor, work with a single managing director, CEO etc. So there is good outlay saving. Moreover the economy of the sale i.e. the purchasing power of the company booms after merger.
2) To increase the output and rule the market- many mergers are made with the intention to oust the competition and jointly rule the market. This presupposes healthy relations between the competing companies.
3) Mergers also take place when a company is not able to perform well due to some or the other cause like the lack of required investment in the form of capital, tremendous competition etc. In such a situation this company can merge with one its parent company or any other company that has faith in the prior goodwill of the declining company and in its potential to grow and enhance. So companies also merge in order to overcome their internal inconsistencies.
4) Many a mergers besides economically are also politically driven.
5) Acquisitions which imply taking over of one stronger company with the other weaker one are also at times veiled by the name of merger.
However, the directors who plan to merge their companies should actually contemplate over it, keeping in mind all the possible pros and cons. They must seek advice from neutral financial consultants who do are more inclined towards the welfare of the company and not their own. Their own benefit is also hidden in a merger since the wages of the employees increase with the advancement due to merger. So it is recommended to take advice from all those who are the well wishers of the company before taking any concrete step in this direction.
For more any questions relating to asset management if they could be directed to Nigel Walter Chairman of Connaught asset management.
Poker is fantastic! It’s a game of incredible skill and psychology and not luck and pure gambling as it’s often perceived to be. As with all the best games and sports, it is extremely easy to learn how to play but takes a lifetime to master.
Poker is an ancient game of uncertain origins, but one thing is for sure - it’s going to be around for a while making some people vast amounts of money. Hopefully with the information in this course you will become one of them.
Let’s get one thing straight from the start, you don’t need to be a great poker player to run a great poker website. All you have to do is provide great poker information and make your site a valuable resource for visitors so that they will keep coming back.
Think about it - would you only visit a football site if it was run by a great football player? Or would you only be interested in visiting a movie site if it was run by a famous actor or actress? Of course not, other people run them - the stars are too busy and too rich to be running websites.
But…
The level of your poker experience will determine what kind of site you can run.
If you just happen to be a fantastic poker player who wants to start and run a website as a money making proposition (and why shouldn’t you!), there are avenues open to you that would not be open to occasional or average players.
For example you could use your expertise to give poker coaching that you could charge a premium for, or a fee based membership site for high level players or those who seek to be so.
For the rest of us (and I include myself here), there is still a vast opportunity to profit from poker.
As you are going to be running a poker website, you need to know about playing poker online. It doesn’t matter too much how good or bad a player you are, you just need to know about playing on the websites in order to be able to write about them.
So first things first - learn about poker!
Only when you’ve learned the basics of the game can you move on to thinking about running a poker site.
This article is part of Chapter 1 of “Poker Site Profits”. Find out more about how to start and run a profitable poker site by visiting http://www.PokerSiteProfits.com
“It’s the headline, stupid,” is the sign that hangs over my computer screen. It reminds me that to write effective articles, press releases, sales letters–whatever I want people to read–I need a powerful, grabber headline or title.
You are competing with a lot of others to get the attention of potential readers and customers, and you have only a few seconds to grab them. By using the tips and techniques here, you can stand out from the crowd with dynamite headlines.
Use alliteration. That means using words that begin with the same sound, such as “Peter’s Perfect Plan.”
Take a familiar saying and turn it around. Take a cliche and put a new spin on it. What does the early bird get (instead of the worm) in your headline?
Be timely. Reference something in the news, a holiday, or other happening that is on readers’ minds.
Use numbers. “7 Things You Need to Know Before You (Go to the Hospital, Buy a House, Use Your Credit Card, Get Married, whatever)” will get attention, because anyone contemplating the action will want the information.
Use “hot” words. Some words are powerful, and can be used effectively in headlines and titles. “Free,” “Secrets,” “Insider,” “New,” etc. are grabbers.
Be controversial. Make a statement that goes against the prevailing wisdom.
Use a question. Get readers’ interest by asking a question in your headline, then satisfy their curiosity by answering it within the text.
Keep it short. Long Headlines can work, but short ones are better. Don’t make readers work that hard.
Pique their curiosity. For a press release on mystery shopping, I used the headline, “Local Woman Spies on Businesses for Fun and Profit.” Why does she spy on businesses? What is she looking for? Who hires her to do this?
Promise a benefit. Everyone wants to know WIIFM.(What’s In It For Me?) Tell them right up front with a headline that promises a great benefit, then be sure you deliver the benefit.
Follow these tips and you’ll write better press releases, articles, and sales letters. They’ll be read by more people, and that means more success for you!
Copyright Cathy Stucker. As the Idea Lady, Cathy Stucker can help you attract customers and make yourself famous with inexpensive and free marketing ideas. Get free tips, articles and more at http://www.IdeaLady.com/.
