Blockchain technology is cementing its position in the business marketplace to help you get more customers. Gratefully, the first thing that blockchain will help with is better security. But it’s going to take some time for the business community to adopt blockchain properly. With that being said, I’m going to explain ten unique benefits that blockchain technology will offer.

While some in the business community are hesitating to adopt the blockchain tech right now — all business will likely be forced to adopt blockchin tech in the future. Without the benefits of blockchain, businesses will be considered entirely outdated. Blockchain will take over almost every aspect of the business community. To safeguard your business, you will want to follow the blockchain trend, so that you and your business will be on the cutting edge of tech — and be able to compete in the future.

Helps Build Trust with Customers

Most businesses are under the wrong impression that their employees are the only ones who will be affected by the adoption of blockchain technology. Some erroneously think that blockchain might ruin their relationship with the respective clientele.

Surveys show many companies share a mindset sticking to the old ways to entertain long-term clients. Instead, we will urge you to provide your long-term clients better value as keeping a long-term client is far more important than acquiring a new one.

Blockchain can help you in this regard. The biggest fear that most business share is upgrading to blockchain systems will leave the current customer systems obsolete. Well, we are not going to dismiss this fact, because new technologies do take over old ones. While this is a drastic change, it offers several benefits like a better sense of security for the transaction, chat, and privacy.

Also, this change is going to take effect. Businesses that don’t adopt this technology willingly in time, will be forced to adopt it in the future or else they will lose their competitive edge. So, stay ahead of the trends and adopt it before anyone else.

Makes Fundraising Easy

There was a time when applying for a loan at a bank was the only way to fund your business. Fortunately, things have changed dramatically over time, and now you have several ways to fund your business venture, including Crowdlending or Crowd Fundraising.

Now, even if this is a far more feasible option than applying for a bank, this method has its challenges. Regardless, Initial Coin Offering or ICO has become the most popular way to raise funds for your business.

ICO is an initial coin offering which is also called a token sale. This raises funds by offering investors a token in the shape of cryptocurrency in exchange for real money or digital assets like Bitcoin or any other digital currency.

Prevents Spammy Ads

Blockchain will play an instrumental role to make digital ads less intrusive and prevent digital fraud. Now, businesses can use blockchain technology and build goodwill among their clients. But it doesn’t matter what you do, blockchain technology is going to make this change anyway as it will make online advertisement better for everyone.

Users will have a say on what sort of advertisement they want to see when they surf the internet. This means the content creator will get highly relevant traffic without begging any intermediaries to get it.

Improves Online Security

One of the biggest benefits of mainstream adoption of Blockchain is it offers Encryption and Validation. Everything that will happen will be within encryption. It helps to protect data from being altered. Thanks to the distributed nature, you will check the signatures across ledgers on all nodes in the network and confirm no one changed anything.

This will be rather useful for storage solutions, Private messages (between company/ clients or between friends on social media), Safer DNS, and IoT security. Blockchain will have several benefits for cybersecurity, but it will take some time before these improvements can affect how we use the internet.

Easy Payment Options

While online transactions are safer than ever, they still pose a danger to the user’s confidential information. Blockchain can help in this regard as this decentralized platform can help make payments transparent, and tamper-proof which will reshape the revolutionize the financial ecosystem.

The blockchain technology will help verify and secure data without any third party. Put simply, it lets you carry financial transactions without the need of a payment processor like a Bank, PayPal, Credit Card, it’s pure internet.

Blockchain technology helps make your financial transaction secure as it gets rid of central points of attack and failure, it improves enhances security to tamperproof with some fewer errors. This makes the process efficient and economical. Blockchain makes sure the transaction can’t be changed, and history is only viewed by people involved or allowed. It is not open like other platforms.

Blockchain for Insurance Industry

Blockchain will bring some positive changes to the insurance industry as well. These changes can be anything like efficiency gains, cost savings, faster payouts, transparency, and fraud mitigation. This lets the data to share in real-time between various parties in a trusted and traceable way. The blockchains will enable new insurance practices, which let in build better products and markets.

The insurance companies operate a highly competitive environment in which retail and corporate customers get the best value for money and superior online experience. Blockchain technology represents an occasion for a positive change and growth in the insurance industry.

The Ethereum smart contracts and decentralized applications, insurance can be conducted over blockchain accounts, it introduces more automaton and tamper-proof audit trails. The low cost of smart contracts and transactions mean the product is rendered more competitive for penetration of underinsured markets in the developing world.

The emerging trends will take some time but blockchain cyber insurance will be taken as a template, with extensions and endorsement, professional liability, and surety bonds, insurers will have to work with tech companies to assess risk and advise them for loss control and mitigation.

Enables Direct Selling

Blockchain will change the monopoly of social selling.  It disrupts current power imbalances and open industry to the broader retail sector. Blockchain tech is a decentralized and open source. The features can help empower sellers to work and prevent the customer data to be centrally controlled. The open-source aspect blockchain technology which lowers entry cost, it allows new merchants to enter space.

There is some blockchain social selling platform and these platforms have been successful since its inception. With a better sense of security, you can easily integrate your catalog.

Protects Your Information

Blockchain has top of the line encryption and validation. This way, everything that takes place in the blockchain is encrypted, and it’s easy to prove, and the data has not to be altered. The distributed nature, you can see check file signatures across and ledgers on all nodes.

The network and verify that nothing changed.  One thing we would like to mention here is that blockchain is virtually impossible to hack. This technology can be both private and public.

Better Auditing

Audit means the assessment of recorded transactions, which are supported by some evidence that the assessment of transaction is reliable, relevant, objective, accurate, and can be verified. When a bitcoin transaction for something, the transfer is recorded on the blockchain.

As a functionality, the blockchain will serve as an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two party’s efficiency and are in a verifiable and permanent way. The blockchain is used to verify the reported transactions.

Independent Energetics

Blockchain Technology will play a major role in the energy and sustainability sector. This ranges from utility providers to oil, gas, enterprises which are recognizing the transformative impact of blockchain technology. The industry will be catalyzed by innovation including rooftop solar, electric and smart metering.

The blockchain will spur growth in the energy sector as the smart contracts and systems have become interoperable. There are several use cases for the environment.  It might include new business models for the energy market, real-time data management, and moving carbon credits which will renewable and use then as certificates for blockchain.

The distributed ledger tech will improve efficiency for the utility provider as it tracks the chain of grid material. It goes beyond the provenance tracking; this technology does offer renewable energy distribution. As for the large energy sectors, they will take advantage of the implementation of enterprise Ethereum solutions.

The main benefits of blockchain technology for the energy sector will be cutting down costs, help to sustain the environment. While ton this, make sure you have excellent transparency for the stakeholders as it never compromises your privacy.

Conclusion

Blockchain offers several benefits to the business. It doesn’t matter If you are a business owner or entrepreneur who either wants to start their new business or maintain their already established business, this technology as something in store for you.

Above, we have discussed different ways of how blockchain will help businesses to advertise themselves and expand their reach. Now, these things will take a few years to be adopted by the mainstream industry. But you can always adapt it early to stay ahead of the trend.

The post 10 Ways to Skyrocket Business Growth Using Blockchain Technology appeared first on ReadWrite.

Despite evidence of multi-billion-dollar cybersecurity vulnerabilities in some of the world’s most trusted organizations, businesses still aren’t taking cybersecurity seriously. Big corporations are finding reasons to skimp on their cybersecurity budgets, cutting costs rather than investing in their infrastructure, and small business owners are simply negligent of the threat that cybersecurity issues present.

So why is cybersecurity still so underutilized and underappreciated, and what are the most common mistakes business owners are making?

Failing to Take Cybersecurity Seriously

One of the biggest issues here is that business owners continue to not take cybersecurity seriously—or at least not take it seriously enough. For big businesses, this is due to a combination of factors. For example, they may already be spending millions of dollars on IT teams and cybersecurity tools, and they may not have a barometer for whether or not this investment is “enough.” They may also struggle to see the results of their investments; after all, if your cybersecurity strategy is working, you won’t be the target of any major attacks or hacks.

On top of this, big organizations often struggle with departmental silos. Cybersecurity experts find themselves isolated from the rest of the organization, unable to provide direction or advice or limited in their abilities to influence the organization. Accordingly, people in other departments don’t give cybersecurity much thought.

For small businesses, the prevailing attitude is “we’re too small to be a target,” even though small businesses are some of the most common targets for cybercriminals. When faced with a steep bill for even the most basic cybersecurity measures, small businesses are disinclined to spend the money.

In any case, if a business doesn’t treat cybersecurity as important, they aren’t going to do enough to protect themselves.

Treating Cybersecurity Reactively Instead of Proactively

For cybersecurity to be effective, it needs to be done proactively. You need to put in the work long before you suffer from a data breach or opportunistic attack; if you wait until you know for sure you’re a possible victim, it will already be too late.

This is the difference between proactive and reactive cybersecurity. After suffering a data breach, companies are much more keen to invest in the infrastructure necessary to prevent another, similar attack in the future; but if they had done this in the first place, they could have saved millions, if not billions of dollars.

It’s much better to make cybersecurity a routine—something you invest in and improve continuously, even when things seem quiet.

Establishing Cybersecurity as a Separate Department

It’s tempting to think of cybersecurity as its own department, or as a subsection of your IT department. This approach allows you to hire experts in the field, and funnel funding specifically toward this cause. While this isn’t necessarily a bad strategy, this can be misleading—and possibly leave you open to attacks in other areas.

Instead, cybersecurity is something that’s best executed with teamwork and collaboration. For example, teams employing DevOps practices often work hard to ensure that security is incorporated into every stage of the development process—and isn’t simply shoehorned in at the end.

The big problem you’re trying to solve is that security vulnerabilities exist everywhere, in every department of your organization and with every individual. Only by working together will you be able to reduce these vulnerabilities to a minimum.

Implementing Bad Password Practices

Speaking of individual vulnerabilities, too many modern organizations still suffer from bad password practices. The majority of cyberattacks and digital breaches aren’t because of an insanely skilled hacker, but instead are due to an individual (possibly an unskilled one) finding, guessing, or stealing a password. With the right login credentials, anyone can be considered a “hacker.”

Password strategies can go wrong in many ways. Your people may choose weak or easy-to-guess passwords, like those that feature common words or predictable series of numbers. They may fail to update those passwords on a regular basis. Or they may have bad habits related to password storage; for example, they may keep a list of passwords written down on a sticky note by their desk.

Some organizations also use organization-wide passwords, copying and pasting the same sequences for all people across all platforms. This leads to a massive vulnerability.

Choosing the Wrong Software

There’s also something to be said for choosing the “right” software for your organization. Most companies need a variety of different tools to operate effectively, including CRM platforms, project management platforms, and communication platforms. Each of these is going to represent a potential point of vulnerability; these apps store information related to your business, and if breached, could represent a real problem for you.

Accordingly, you’ll need to think carefully about the tools you use. Pay attention to the reputation of the developers, and find out what kind of security measures are available; for example, some apps will employ features like AI designed for cybersecurity, or robust encryption standards.

Failing to Update Consistently

No matter how skilled a developer is, no software is perfectly coded. No matter what, there are going to be security vulnerabilities and issues with long-term integrity. If and when someone figures this out, they can take advantage of the flaw.

Fortunately, most development teams and open source communities are constantly on the lookout for new potential threats—and when they find one, they implement a patch to fix it.

Here’s the thing—the patch only works if you download it. Yet, many organizations fail to update their software or devices consistently. The easiest approach here is to mandate automatic updates, but many businesses simply allow their employees to update as they see fit—which isn’t as often as it should be.

Pinning Hopes on a Single Solution

There are several products and services that can minimize your security vulnerabilities, including firewalls, antivirus software, and virtual private networks (VPNs). However, too many business owners pin all their hopes on a single solution. They believe that since they’re using a firewall, they’re practically bulletproof.

However, complete data protection requires you to pay close attention to a number of potential threats, studying the landscape and employing unique solutions to guard against them. If you’re only using one or two techniques, you’re probably leaving yourself open to attack in some other way.

Neglecting Personal Device Vulnerabilities

Most businesses these days have some variant of a bring your own device (BYOD) policy. This works well for both businesses, which can save money on purchasing employee devices, and employees, who can exercise more control over what type of devices they use and how they use them. However, personal devices brought onto your network can pose a major security risk if your employees aren’t managing their devices correctly.

Additionally, employees may use their devices (with company accounts) or company devices on public Wi-Fi networks that are unsecured—a major risk for attacks.

Failing to Train Staff

One of the most common reasons for small business cyberattacks is simple employee mistakes. Most cybercriminals aren’t sophisticated hackers, but instead are opportunists—looking for ways to exploit basic ignorance or errors. For example, they may try to trick your employees into giving up their login credentials, or they may simply wait for an opportunity to conveniently learn more about your organization through social engineering. The better informed your staff members are, and the more trained they are in cybersecurity practices, the fewer vulnerabilities you’ll face. Unfortunately, most business owners neglect this.

There’s no easy way to get business owners to take cybersecurity seriously, especially when there are already many examples of businesses losing billions of dollars because of lax security habits. However, the more you know about the common failings of cybersecurity in businesses, the more proactively you’ll be able to work to prevent such disasters from happening to you.

The post The Biggest Cybersecurity Mistakes Businesses Are Still Making appeared first on ReadWrite.

Today’s businesses need to adhere to various security standards (e.g., PCI DSS, HIPAA, the GDPR) not only to prevent the high costs associated with data breaches but also to avoid hefty penalties.

However, ensuring the security of data transferred among employees, partners, vendors, and customers is becoming increasingly challenging due to the large amount of data that organizations need to handle and protect. One wrong step, such as lack of file encryption in just one workflow, could cost you dearly.

Thankfully, you can enhance the safety of your file transfer processes by using proven technologies, such as managed file transfer (MFT) software, without straining your IT resources or interrupting current business processes.

What’s Managed File Transfer (MFT)?

MFT solutions are designed to help organizations reduce the complexity of and costs associated with file transfer. They help improve cybersecurity by replacing vulnerable legacy file transfer protocols, such as FTP.

An MFT software solution is an all-in-one technology that automates and encrypts file transfers.

The administrator of the file transfer can access the program via a centralized dashboard from anywhere and perform tasks needed. The tasks can include:

• Sending encrypted files.
• Receiving and decrypting sensitive documents.
• Scheduling batch file transfers.
• Sharing information with partners via external servers or cloud-computing platforms.
• Reviewing audit logs.
• Generating audit reports for compliance.

Using an MFT solution, you can automate workflows, increase efficiency, minimize manual file transfer, and reduce the need for custom scripting.

8 Reasons for Implementing an MFT Strategy

There are many reasons why organizations should implement an MFT strategy to improve the safety and efficiency of their file transfer processes:

1. MFT Helps Ensure Compliance with Data Security Regulations.

An MFT software offers a high level of security to protect critical data, such as personally identifiable information (PII) in healthcare or credit card payment information in banking.

It helps you effectively eliminate many vulnerabilities from your business communication processes. This will help you not only prevent costly data breaches but also avoid fines associated with the violation of stringent industry regulations.

Most MFT solutions are compliant with common requirements (e.g. PCI DSS, HIPAA, HITECH, and the GDPR.) You can use various features, such as auditing, reporting, role-based access, centralized security controls, key management, encryption, and secure protocols to protect sensitive information.

2. MFT Provides an Audit Log for Your File Transfer Activities.

There are many situations in which you need to audit your file transfers. For example, a business partner requests an overview of the month’s transfer activities, you need to troubleshoot a failed file transfer, or you need to launch an investigation for a data breach.

MFT software stores detailed audit records for all file transfer activities and some also offer the capability to search the audit log for specific terms, users, or date ranges. You can get details about the transfer workflows and investigate whether each step succeeded or failed.

3. MFT Enhances Security Without the Hassle.

If you have been using FTP for file transfer, it’s time for an upgrade. FTP is an old technology that doesn’t meet modern security standards and fails to protect files whether they’re sent through private or public networks.

You should also consider upgrading to MFT software if you have been using homegrown solutions, which often have many security gaps and vulnerabilities that can easily be exploited by hackers. Not to mention, their maintenance is often time-consuming and labor-intensive.

With an MFT solution, you don’t have to worry about the risk, maintenance, and programming needed to set up a file transfer protocol. The software is easy to use and you can schedule batch transfers to improve efficiency. Secure data exchange methods such as SFTP, FTPS, and HTTPS help ensure that all the files are properly encrypted.

4. MFT Minimizes the Impact of IT Downtime.

Did you know that system downtime costs organizations an average of $100,000 an hour? While not all downtime is preventable, you can mitigate its impact on your organization by making sure that critical file transfer systems and servers are available to minimize delays.

A robust MFT solution offers active-passive and active-active (i.e. clustering) methods to help keep your processes running even if you encounter other IT issues. For example, clustering ensures the highest availability by running multiple servers concurrently so your communications won’t be disrupted if one server goes down.

5. MFT Helps You Comply with Government Requirements.

If your organization services government agencies, you’re required to follow special reporting and encryption requirements issued by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). These requirements are complex so it’s very challenging and inefficient to build a homegrown solution that meets all the criteria.

On the other hand, an MFT solution can fulfill various NIST requirements with FIPS 140-2 compliant AES and Triple DES encryption algorithms, audit logs and reports, secure authentication and user controls, etc. As such, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel when you get a government contract.

6. MFT Facilitates Secure File Exchange in the Cloud.

As more businesses are migrating to cloud computing, you’ll inevitably need to exchange files in the cloud — whether within the organization or among partners, vendors, and customers.

However, it’s often challenging to maintain proper cybersecurity practices in these situations. For example, how can you be certain that it’s safe to store sensitive files on a third-party cloud?

Advanced MTF solutions allow organizations to streamline and automate their cloud file transfers to platforms such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services with strong encryption, whether the files are at rest or in transit.

7. MFT Streamlines Workflows with Third-party Integrations and Automation.

Some MTF applications also offer integrations with popular cloud-based services such as Box, Salesforce, and Google Drive. This helps promote the movement of data between on-premise environments and a variety of cloud applications.

The automation allows you to streamline workflows, increase efficiency, and minimize errors or bottlenecks caused by manual processes. Meanwhile, you can continue to use the many cloud-based productivity tools and add an extra layer of security without interrupting your current business processes.

8. MFT Reduces Your IT Costs.

Devising your own file transfer solution while keeping up with the many security standards can be very expensive. Not only do you need to create custom scripts and single-function tools but you also have to invest in IT resources for ongoing maintenance and upgrade so the program meets the latest cybersecurity protocols.

An MFT solution eliminates many manual processes and therefore overhead costs associated with IT maintenance. Not to mention, the many automation features also allow you to increase efficiency and cut down on time-consuming manual tasks that can be costly in the long-run.

Conclusion: Improve Security and Cost-efficiency with an MFT Solution

To stay competitive and optimize profits in today’s complex business environment, you can’t afford to overlook the security and cost-efficiency of your data transfer processes.

Using an MFT solution allows you to leverage the latest cybersecurity measures to ensure the safety of your business-critical information.

MFT Guidelines helps you stay compliant with increasingly complex and stringent regulatory guidelines while streamlining the workflows so critical information can flow smoothly among various stakeholders to optimize operational efficiency.

The post 8 Reasons to Implement an MFT Strategy appeared first on ReadWrite.

The financial industry has always been a highly competitive sector. Considering how disruptive technologies like Big Data have reached their maturation, big data can be made a beneficial part of the financial industry. Businesses can harvest big data for security, personalization, and investment decisions.

Big Data is bringing forth new datasets that can help understand customer behavior and improve the area of predictive analysis. With this data-driven approach, let’s take a look at how Big Data is transforming the financial industry.

Enhanced Product Diversity

As stated previously, Big Data is now highlighting new datasets that are a powerful medium to understand the customer psyche and accordingly offer them new and improved financial services.

For example, companies now operate fintech Robo-advisors that offer holistic advice regarding digital investments. Given that these Robo-advisors make use of Big Data to gather insight on customer spending patterns and other parameters for personalization, the advice tendered will also be extremely relevant for the customer. Similarly, other services like loan availability, customer risk analysis, etc. can be included in the list of financial products.

Market Analytics

Investors can effectively tap into the potential offered by big data to analyze market trends and make smarter investments. Several companies have cutting-edge predictive systems in place, which can not only understand large volumes of data but also interpret them to offer informed investment decisions.

With AI-powered trading, investors can increase the profitability of their investments. As a result, the area of market investments is no longer limited to veterans or seasoned investors but also extends to newbies who wish to try their hand at capitalizing on market gains.

Robust Security

In the financial industry, certain services are more vulnerable to security lapses and frauds. Thus, big data can play a vital role in plugging these gaps and keeping customers safer. Lending institutions and banks are making use of a combination of machine learning and big data (clearinghouse.org) to automate their security. Further, it keeps them two steps ahead of any miscreant who looks at exploiting security loopholes, especially in outdated systems.

Location intelligence keeps track of where the customer is using the financial service. It also monitors the kind of products or services that they normally purchase and the number of transactions per cycle. With this information, big data can monitor and highlight deviations from the regular purchase patterns to alert and protect users from fraud.

Fewer Manual Processes

Big data will usher with it the era of artificial intelligence and machine learning. As a result, manual and repetitive processes like documentation, looking up customer history, etc. can be automated through algorithms. Furthermore, it also decreases the response time while also abiding by the prevailing regulatory structure.

While cutting down manual processes does offer a customer-centric approach, it is feared that it will jeopardize the job security of individuals involved in these manual processes. This fear is exacerbated by the fact that technologies are more efficient, more accurate, and much cheaper. However, the displaced human resource can be utilized in new and diversified positions after thorough training.

Customer-Centric Perks

Personalized services are one of the key takeaways of big data-assisted financial services. On the basis of the customer’s spending habits, financial institutions can offer personalized recommendations and upsell products that will meet their needs. With this value-added approach, the companies can develop customer loyalty across all verticals and enjoy a strong consumer presence.

Accurate Risk Analysis

Previously, financial services like loans were based on one or two factors like credit score, debt-to-income ratios, etc. However, Big Data has diversified these datasets and introduced several variables that can offer a more concrete and individualistic risk assessment of the individual.

Machine learning factors in economic conditions, business capital, customer segmentation, etc. in an unbiased manner to identify risky investments or defaulters.

Key Challenges

While, on paper, Big Data may appear like the ultimate solution for all financial institutions, it does bring with it certain challenges. These obstacles may be company-specific and include:

Data Volume

Big Data is characterized by three “V”s: Volume, Velocity, and Variety. Essentially, it means that Big Data technologies handle vast quantities of data in a static and real-time environment while supporting multiple data types. Financial companies are either unable to compute such volumes of data or cannot access this from multiple channels. Moreover, data silos make it difficult to integrate all the collected Big Data.

As a result, they are unable to tap into the full potential of Big Data.

Accuracy and Quality

Diluted and inaccurate data is of no apparent use. Companies have to make use of reliable data to capitalize on the opportunity. When it comes to the financial industry, it becomes even more imperative to seek accurate and reliable data, which is a major challenge faced by several institutions.

Security and Integrity

Banking and financial institutions shall have to maintain the highest standards of safety and security when storing sensitive personal data of their customers. Any security breach or possible threat could result in a severe loss of trust. Some companies may not be prepared to offer this level of data security.

Regulations

In addition to online regulations, there are several banking regulations regarding data security, consumer privacy, reporting, and transparency. Adhering to these regulations while also keeping to digital safety can be a difficult task to balance.

Final Thoughts

In the years to come, it is clear that Big Data will revolutionize how we perceive the financial industry. Big data will give companies an insight into customer behavior and profile the individual into certain types. Resultantly, this data can be of extreme value to businesses to further their business and establish a loyal customer base.

It is only a matter of time until Big Data emerges as a second currency in the financial industry.

Image Credit: Carlos Muza; Unsplash

The post Role of Big Data in the Evolution of the Financial Industry appeared first on ReadWrite.

Recent events have reminded all of us how much we rely on smart connected devices to accomplish daily tasks, get work done, and stay in touch with our families and friends. It’s very likely that many of these experiences will remain as examples for us in the future.

It’s a good time to revisit the topic of cybersecurity. Specifically, we need to look at the current forecasts that say we will have 75 billion devices connected to the Internet of Things by 2025. The sheer numbers are beyond comprehension. We should work together to seek better standards with adequate certification schemes, including harmonized safety and security provisions to be designed directly into those devices before they arrive in markets.

Do the numbers understate the potential growth in the amount and, more importantly, the use of connected devices?

Devices that can sense, think, connect and act will enable a world to do many tasks that are anticipated.  Automation will be making everyday activities “smarter” in ways we can only now imagine. The plethora of devices will not only sense the world, but they also will physically act on the planet. Globally, we should all be safer, and all things more sustainable for individuals and businesses.

Using our devices more often for more things could also make us more vulnerable as we depend on processing and zettabytes of data utilized through increased edge computing (locally, in those devices), along with a growing reliance on the cloud. We must, therefore, step up and assume increased security measures as a core function of these smart devices.

We’ll only realize the full potential of smart, connected devices if we can trust and rely on them to be safe and secure. Here’s what it’ll take:

Shared Standards

Currently, services like payments and eGovernment rely on ecosystems that follow globally accepted and implemented security standards, which are supplemented by strong and continually updated commonly trusted certification schemes.

IoT is still in its early stages where products do not interoperate easily, and such standards and certifications are missing, but we can learn from markets with high-security standards. Another brick in the wall that’s missing is standards that entail the appropriate combination of safety and security. IoT standardization has to learn from Healthcare, Automotive, Industrial, and Critical Infrastructure standards.

The trust in future IoT is to be based on independent, economically acceptable assessments and applicable to any type of IoT vertical. NXP advocates here a certification standard called “Security Evaluation Scheme for IoT Platforms” (SESIP), grounded in the Common Criteria certification scheme for highly secure components but covering the full span of IoT devices from low-end low-resources ones to the powerful edge-computing gateways.

In addition, IoT devices will have unmanaged lifetimes. Absolute security does not exist; this implies that we need standards defining ways to recover some baseline functionality in case a system is compromised: resilience is key, and this is where safety and security meet each other. If some level of control can be regained there, is less incentive for it to be attacked again.

IoT devices will be part of large complex systems; this implies that not only devices but also system security requirements standards are to be defined as well, globally with a focus on local requirements. Mutual recognition of security standards is needed to ensure scalability in the industry.

Last but not least, in addition to security and safety, a third pillar is to be considered: privacy. IoT devices are accumulating huge amounts of personal data that needs to be protected in a secure way.

For all those reasons, governments and industry need to redouble their work to develop and embrace common security standards and certification schemes for this next phase of IoT growth. One such mechanism for this collaboration is the Charter of Trust, which NXP co-founded with Siemens and other leading technology businesses. The Charter serves as a common ground for exploring the needs for shared standards, a way to collaboratively develop them, and a platform from which companies can adopt them.

Anticipatory Development

In our era of rapid and continual change, it’s only smart to anticipate that devices will need to either accommodate multiple security requirements and adopt to new ones as they’re developed and deployed. This challenges businesses to consider how to make devices and entire solutions more addressable and flexible too, and by those changing needs.

For instance, there are currently multiple standards for vehicle-to-infrastructure communications (or “V2X”), which is core to enabling smart cars to function as part of integrated, constantly learning, and real-time networks. Add access to all of the less mission-critical functions and services, such as entertainment content and shopping, and it’s vital that designs for new vehicles take into account the likelihood that multiple standards may apply now, and perhaps change in the near future.

This means designing for multiple standards; think product labels in North America that often include descriptions in English, Spanish and French, so the same products can be marketed on shelves in different countries (and made accessible to different users). It also means focusing on the secure connectivity of those devices, not just their functional safety and security, so that devices can be updated (over-the-air, or “OTA”) when needed.

Again, to stretch the language analogy a bit more, many countries use different algorithms to implement similar methodologies to protect against the same sort of security risks (i.e., attacks can be agnostically identified and ranked by likelihood, frequency, potential impact, etc.). Anticipatory development challenges developers to see these common or shared requirements and address them.

Security by Default

Ultimately, security is not only a functional attribute of a product or network but rather an aspect of the design itself; security is something that is inherent, “built-in” versus “added on.” Security and safety are holistic system properties. A key strategy to address the emergent security challenge of 75 billion connected devices will be to continue to produce them with security by default

One way to do this is to physically insert a small component into a device that provides an identifier key and a secure execution environment. Such hard-wiring of one end is what you could call “a secure handshake” (also known as a “root of trust”) makes it incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to hack or trick the device (unless an evil-doer possessed the proper identifier). It’s not a software overlay.

We possess potent tools to address the emergent cybersecurity challenge ahead of us: Pursuing shared standards, anticipating multiple requirements and changes, and building secure components into devices themselves can, when taken together, empower businesses and ultimately individuals and businesses to benefit from the immense productivity and quality of life advances that continued growth in smart, connected IoT devices will bring.

And we have at least 75 billion reasons to build a safer IoT world.

The post 75 Billion Reasons to Talk About Cybersecurity appeared first on ReadWrite.

California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) has put restrictions and conditions on how organizations can store, process, and share consumer data in California. The privacy act has given broad rights to the consumers over their data that organizations hold. Here is CCPA for marketers and what you really need to know about it.

The CCPS allows consumers to have complete transparency and control over all types of personal data. These regulations have been especially difficult for marketing and advertising companies. Especially those businesses that rely on sharing and processing consumer information to develop an efficient marketing plan that will reach the right people.

With all these regulations in place, it begs the question. How will marketing organizations prepare marketing plans without having full control over their customers’ information?

How does CCPA impact marketers?

Whether an organization collects its consumers’ information through social media or other means such as an email survey, CCPA requires them to disclose what information is being collected and how it will be used. This requirement is known as ‘right to be informed’ under the CCPA.

CCPA gives broad rights to consumers on how businesses collect and process their data. Upon request by a consumer, a business that collects and processes data on California residents must disclose:

• What it collects.
• Where it collects.
• Why it collects.
• Whom it shared with.

CCPA gives consumers the right to opt-out of having information being sold to third-parties.

For companies that earn revenue through selling data, it will be a struggle to work around this restriction, potentially putting a dent in revenues.

CCPA has also had a substantial impact on digital advertising.

The impact on digital advertising happens because digital advertising works on the transfer of consumer data from a data broker to the advertiser. The ad-serving platform has many other layers of supported systems in between broker and advertiser — often a third-party business.

If an organization is required to comply with the CCPA, it cannot transfer this data without the consumers’ consent.

So far, it seems like the CCPA is only having a negative impact on the marketing sector as it is restricting marketers from virtually doing anything as most of their operations rely on the sharing of data.

What Marketers Need to Do to Comply?

Trying to comply with the CCPA can be difficult for the marketing sector. The process is not just a matter of applying the same rules throughout the organization in hopes of complying with the CCPA rules. Instead, there have to be different goals set at each level to ensure that compliance can be met efficiently.

At the highest level, marketers need to make it their personal responsibility to understand how personal data at their company has been used to message and serve customers. They also need to ensure their team has a clear understanding and has proper training on the law and compliance processes. Lastly, they need to make sure that these responsibilities delegate within the organization as soon as possible.

On the next level of following CCPA rules, clarify the following roles:

• Dedicate an individual who has the responsibility of reviewing proposed regulations to understand how it impacts your business.
• Dedicating a person who is responsible for mapping personal data and gathering notices across all internal and external systems.
• Making sure these notices are presented to customers via the privacy policy page and “do not sell my info” links placed on the website homepages.
• Managing and carrying out online and offline consumer rights requests.
• Train request handlers or assist consumers in exercising their rights under CCPA.

Finally, within your marketing team, make sure if you’re providing discounts that could be perceived as an exchange for personal information, calculate the monetary value, and communicate that information in your privacy policy.

You also need to understand how the CRM and marketing systems will send messages and whether these messages comply. Finally, connect with service providers and legal teams working on vendor contracts to ensure consistency when handling the rights requests you receive.

CCPA Compliance Checklist for Marketers

To comply with the CCPA, organizations have to incorporate all the following points to wholly and efficiently comply. See how many of the following points have you checked out:

• Update Privacy Policies

Although companies follow the strictest standards when drafting privacy policies, they need to make sure that their policies are compliant with the CCPA.

• Create Methods of Accessibility

Establish a means for the customer to easily request data access and data deletion. This could be at minimum a toll-free number

• Verification System

People that can verify their identification can access their information held by organizations. Verification systems will be a part of the CCPA compliance regulations

• Data Governance

Prepare records, data maps and inventories of Californian’s personal data to fulfill any requests in an efficient and timely manner

• Opt-Out Button

Adding in an opt-out button will help you stay compliant without the added hassle of manually updating that customer.

• Obtain Consent from Minors

Minors under the age of 16 will not automatically consent under CCPA. Organizations need to develop a process by which they can obtain direct consent from those aged 13-16 years, or parents consent from minors under 13 years.

Conclusion

The CCPA has really made operations for the marketing sector, but these barriers bring with it opportunities as well. Organizations need to make sure that the regulations are enforced within all levels of the organization to make sure that compliance is easily achievable.

Regulations that are easily enforced means that there needs to be a proper level of training, responsibility, and tracking. As well as proper records to stay ahead of the CCPA and other global privacy regulations.

Organizations might find tracking and enforcing an added task. But in the long term, these regulations are going to be beneficial for both consumers and organizations alike. Doing the right thing is only a matter of adapting.

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