Security Awareness Training is Essential for Small Businesses
Security Awareness Training is Essential for Small Businesses.
Here is an example: A worker in your office, Sally, is checking her personal email at work and opens one that promises she will lose 10 pounds within the next week.
Try these tips: After presenting information about security awareness, come up with a scheme to set up a situation where employees are given the opportunity to open a very alluring link in their email.
This is called a “phishing simulation.” This link will actually take the worker to a safe page, but you must make the page have a message, such as “You Fell For It.” You should also make sure that these emails look like a phishing email, such as adding a misspelling.
The people who fall for this trick should be tested again in a few days or weeks.
Don’t make it predictable when giving out these tests.
Schedule workstation checks to see if employees are doing things that might compromise your business’ data, such as leaving sensitive information on the screen and walking away.
After training your staff and testing your employees, make a full list of all of the important concepts that they should understand.
Keep in mind that there is no such thing as sharing too many tips on security with your staff.
Take the tips, post them around your workplace, and schedule things such as short seminars on security or workshops.
How to Grow Managers into Leaders Through CEO Transparency
How to Grow Managers into Leaders Through CEO Transparency.
To help its employees through that event, Zappos started a feed on Twitter to allow each employee to react and share his or her thoughts publicly. “We believe that transparency is important and have continued to encourage our employees to Twitter,” Hsieh said at the time.
These leaders also need to communicate their desired level of transparency with their managers.
Self-appraisals can then be used in a performance review, to help managers engage in one-on-one discussions about their management success.
This action gives the manager an opportunity to offer feedback on how he or she could offer better leader management; the goal is to treat this process like a collaboration.
These meetings will engage managers and encourage them to hold themselves accountable to their personal goals.
Companies are always on the lookout for workplace leaders.
Training modules for managers should help them: Learn how to manage employees with different learning styles Connect with employees and people in unique ways Understand how strong leaders adapt to different learning styles Management training should be an ongoing strategy, not a start-and-finish program.
Also, encourage managers to share new learning opportunities they find and want to pursue.
How to Validate Your Business Ideas Without Spending a Dime
How to Validate Your Business Ideas Without Spending a Dime.
Start by searching the keywords related to your idea in both Google search and Google Trends.
You should also Google “XYZ industry report” or “XYZ market analysis” to get stats and data about your market.
Think of at least one company that offers a similar product to yours.
How do people find time to write those?
What you want to find at this stage is not necessarily a large market size, which often comes with the side effect of competitors galore.
Can you find existing players in your market that are already doing well to demonstrate there’s indeed market demand?
Do they use XYZ product (your competitor)?
There’s always a way you can find your future customers and talk to them using the Starbucks test.
The bottom line: Do your research and never stop taking feedback on your ideas.
This Robot Will Carry Your Stuff and Follow You Everywhere
This Robot Will Carry Your Stuff and Follow You Everywhere.
Move over, drone makers.
This company has created a cargo-carrying robot.
Gita is a blue ball-shaped robot that features two wheels, a hard shell and a number of cameras and sensors.
A human wears an electronic belt to guide it, but Gita can also roll autonomously in a pre-mapped area.
The more areas that Gita becomes accustomed to, the better it will be able to navigate on its own.
From going to the airport to grocery shopping, Gita can not only help you transport items but also do smaller, mundane tasks.
Gita is 26 inches in diameter and can carry up to 40 pounds, travel at 22 miles per hour and run for eight hours of continuous use.
For security purposes, Gita has a fingerprint scanner and a code to both turn it on and open it.
“The transportation and robotics industries tend to focus on optimizing tasks and displacing labor,” said Jeffrey Schnapp, CEO of Piaggio Fast Forward, in a press release.
5 Lies the World Tells Entrepreneurs about How to Succeed
5 Lies the World Tells Entrepreneurs about How to Succeed.
What is brutal honesty?
Listen to the data.
The data on the screen is full of shoddy underlying assumptions.
Market it and they will come.
Many early-stage entrepreneurs try to bulldoze their market with jazzy marketing.
This cannot work without brutal honesty.
Honesty is about perpetually asking your audience about why they need you and not simply investing money in marketing and believing that your market “will come around.” I’ve seen too many companies run out of capital pouring money into marketing tactics without first listening to their audience.
To succeed, you need the brutal truth from your market and the only way to get the real feedback is by trying to pitch a product while asking your audience to pay for it.
Only when the product feels real to your audience, will you get the critical feedback you need to succeed.
Meet This Year’s Fastest Growing Franchises
Meet This Year’s Fastest Growing Franchises.
Every year we at Entrepreneur publish our fastest growing franchises ranking.
You might expect to see a bunch of new and trendy brands on such a list, but as it turns out, most of the fastest-growing franchises aren’t flashes in the pan; they’re companies that have learned how to sustain their growth over years and even decades.
In fact, the average company on the list has been franchising for 24 years.
Altogether, these companies added a total of 8,695 franchises in North America between July 2015 and July 2016.
They are ranked based on their numerical growth during that time frame, with ties broken based on percentage growth.
Keep in mind as you look over this ranking that it is not intended as an endorsement of any particular company.
Growth is one good indicator of a strong franchise system, but it’s essential you do your homework to find the right opportunity for you.
Always read the company’s legal documents, consult with an attorney and an accountant and talk to current and former franchisees before you invest.
Check out this year’s list and learn more about successful franchising:
Some investors who attended Snap’s London roadshow voiced big concerns
Some investors who attended Snap’s London roadshow voiced big concerns.
Snap began its IPO roadshow in London on Monday.
However, they were disappointed there were no projections on the company’s future revenues or advertising share – an indication of how quickly Snap thinks it can make money from its huge user base. “That’s the million dollar question and we won’t find out for some time,” said one potential backer on his way out from the hour-long event where Spiegel ditched his usual casual wear and wore a suit with no tie.
One attendee, however, said it made sense not to push the hardware angle too much at this stage.
Governance concerns: A ‘major red flag’ Some fund managers have said they will stay away from Snap given its decision to adopt a three class share structure – the first of its kind – that will mean shareholders who buy in through the IPO will not have any voting rights. “My view would be investors should tread with caution here, the fact the shares will carry no voting rights would be a major concern for me from a governance perspective,” Richard Saldanha, global equities fund manager at Aviva Investors, said ahead of the roadshow.
Aviva manages 318 billion pounds across a range of asset classes.
Mike Fox, head of sustainable investments at Royal London Asset Management, said the inability to vote against a company at its annual general meeting was a “major red flag” and he would not be taking part in the IPO. “For tech companies early in their lifecycle the weak governance structure is fairly typical, and even with those concerns subsequent shareholder returns have often been stellar.”
Fundraising as the Female Founder of a Startup
Now that she has been through several funding cycles, Ms. Perkins works with younger female founders to help them develop strategies to raise funds for their companies.
In a conversation with The Wall Street Journal, she recalls the first time she and her female co-founder at Xuny.com pitched the women’s retail site to a room of male investors who she knew would never use the site.
MS. PERKINS: It’s always a little intimidating to go in.
Because the last two companies I’ve raised for are really focused on female consumers, it makes it even feel a little bit more challenging.
WSJ: Did you ever feel you were treated differently as a female CEO when you were pitching in Silicon Valley?
WSJ: How do you think your experience fundraising compares to other female CEOs?
For female CEOs who are just pitching for the first time, it can be really intimidating.
If they can pitch those first few times to female associates, female partners or small female seed funds, getting that exposure in a place that maybe feels less intimidating is probably a good thing.
WSJ: Do you pitch to more female investors now than you did during fundraising with your first two companies?
I also think that it’s interesting because I’m now in my 40s, I’m pitching to my peers and they’re more likely to have young kids.
This Man Wants to Disrupt Your Download
Paul Judge, a renowned security and computer networking researcher, has a new startup, Luma, It’s poised to revolutionize home Wi-Fi
The company makes a cutting-edge Wi-Fi router to combat the issue of wireless “dead zones”—using several smaller routers around a home to create what’s known as a mesh network to provide whole-home Wi-Fi coverage.
Both are networking experts who worked together for almost two decades.
in Network Security from Georgia Tech.
The move to entrepreneurship was clearly the next step after achieving much success in the tech industry.
Luma, which is Judge’s latest company, is a new type of startup for Judge because it’s hardware-based.
After an undisclosed seed round of funding to get the product to market, Amazon invested $12.5 million in Series A funding to Luma.
The Luma Difference To create an automated home, “it needs to be connected,” says Judge.
Wi-Fi is a thing that brings that connected toothbrush and allows it to get on the internet, or the connected luggage or whatever you’re into.” For Judge, Amazon, and other industry experts, the key to getting consumers to buy connected devices like the Amazon Echo, is reliable Wi-Fi.
“So consumers think those devices don’t work, they end up returning them to the store, but really the problem is you don’t have enough adequate Wi-Fi coverage to really build a base of a connected home.” “You wouldn’t buy one speaker and try and turn it up very loudly to cover your house in sound; what you do is get a couple of little speakers and put them around your home.
Singapore’s 2017 Budget focuses on more funding and international expansion for startups
Singapore’s 2017 Budget focuses on more funding and international expansion for startups.
So did the recommendations of the Committee on the Future Economy report, as Singapore seeks to adapt to new challenges.
In presenting the 2017 budget to Parliament, finance minister Heng Swee Keat echoed the report’s recommendations of enabling digitization for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), attracting more funding, and maintaining connections to international markets and innovation hubs.
Here’s how the future economy looks for the technology and startup space in Singapore: Helping Singaporean firms cross borders The government will set aside US$420 million for an International Partnership Fund.
The International Enterprise Singapore scheme helped more than 37,000 companies in 2016, 9 percent more than in 2015.
The minister said that Singapore’s Cyber Security Agency will work with professional bodies to train cyber security experts.
Commercializing research and innovation Through the country’s Agency for Science, Technology, and Research (A-STAR), Singapore will give local companies access to more research and development resources, the minister outlined.
The CFE recommendations are guidelines to build up Singapore’s adaptability and resilience.
A Global Innovation Alliance will include initiatives for education, including the Innovators’ Academy, with which university students can build connections and find training overseas.
US$1 = S$1.42 A Greek in Asia, Michael covers startups in Singapore and beyond.
Asian Fintech Startups See a Record $5.4 Billion VC Funding in 2016, Driven by China
Asian Fintech Startups See a Record $5.4 Billion VC Funding in 2016, Driven by China.
Fintech startups in Asia gained a record $5.4 billion in venture-capital funding last year, up from $4.8 billion in 2015.
The $5.4 billion is recorded across 165 transactions or funding deals in 2016, up from 162 in 2015.
On the global stage, the $5.4 billion VC investments into Asian financial technology startups is almost equivalent to the $5.5 billion raised by US-based Fintech startups, from 422 deals.
China’s Fintech Investment Heavyweights Contributing to the soaring FinTech VC funding climate, Shenzhen-based Ping An Insurance Group, China’s largest non-state-owned financial entity with assets of over $765 billion, led a Series B round of online lender Lufax, raising $1.2 billion in early 2016 toward its wealth management and financial advisory services.
Both of these transactions made for the world’s biggest venture capital funding rounds in financial technology startups in 2016.
The CBInsights report did not include a record $4.5 billion raised by Ant Financial, an affiliate of Alibaba, China’s own Amazon-like e-commerce giant.
$1.44 billion).
At launch, the fund began with $20 million to invest in bitcoin and blockchain companies.
More recently, Credit China Fintech Holdings, a Hong Kong-based firm entered a $30 million agreement and investment in industry giant BitFury.
Dyson Files Patent for a ‘High-Velocity’ Hairbrush
Dyson Files Patent for a ‘High-Velocity’ Hairbrush.
Dyson is taking another stab at the personal care market.
After releasing its $400 Supersonic hairdryer last April, the company may be working on its next high-tech beauty product — a “high-velocity” hairbrush.
In other words, the device will drain excess water from wet hair, speeding up drying time and untangling strands.
The patent depicts rows of single and double brushes and explains how the hypothetical device would work.
“Hair is wrapped around the head whilst air or fluid exits through the slots, drying the hair and/or styling the hair into curls and waves,” the document reads.
The hairbrush also features small apertures to prevent the device from becoming clogged with mousse or hairspray.
One hair salon owner, Biagio Morreale, told the Evening Standard that this hairbrush will be a great option for consumers.
“A hot brush is good if you’re doing your own hair because the problem with a brush and hairdryer is you need two hands — but this way you’ve got a hand spare.” Three years ago, full-sized vacuum cleaners made up 80 percent of Dyson’s business, according to the company’s website.
Since the launch of the Supersonic, Dyson has also filed a patent for a toothbrush containing water jets.
Why Start-up India’s $1.5 billion fund-of-funds needs to succeed
In January, as part of its ambitious Start-up India programme, it announced the Rs10,000 crore (roughly $1.5 billion) Fund-of-Funds for Start-ups (FFS) that would invest in local venture capital funds which would, in turn, back early stage start-ups.
Out of the first tranche of Rs500 crore, only Rs129 crore ($19.2 million) has been sanctioned to venture capital funds.
Rather, based on conversations Mint had with several fund managers, interest is quite high.
If the government as a LP is willing to commit 20-30% of a fund’s corpus, it’s a huge leg-up for a first-time fund,” says Manish Singhal, co-founder of Bengaluru-based pi Ventures which is in the midst of raising a $30 million maiden fund.
That means the start-up must be at most five years old at the time of raising capital from a FFS-backed venture capital fund.
A venture capital fund will typically participate in successive funding rounds in a portfolio company for a few reasons.
For instance, last year, just three of the largest firms active here—Sequoia Capital India, Nexus Venture Partners and Accel India—together raised more than $1 billion in new funds.
By rough industry estimates, nearly 90% of the venture capital that is invested in India every year comes from overseas.
The government also hopes that with time, encouraged by FFS, local banks and insurance companies, family offices and corporates will invest more meaningfully in the venture capital asset class.
The larger presence of domestic institutional capital in local venture capital funds, in turn, may encourage such funds to back businesses that are more India-appropriate and, in the long term fetch better returns for investors.
5 Important Business Lessons You Can Learn from Billionaire Oprah Winfrey
There’s no doubt that Oprah Winfrey is one of the most inspirational figures in business, and, while not everyone can have Oprah’s success, there are some very tangible business lessons that you can learn from her multiple decades of business endeavors.
I use a phrase that I call “TGFO” (Thank God For Oprah), because when she started the Oprah Winfrey Network, it took her just about three years to get her foundation settled.
If it takes Oprah, who had every business resource in the world at her disposal — capital, fans, a great brand and more — around three years to have a solid business foundation, that means it will likely take you the same.
Make sure you have planned not just for the launch of the business, but to support it — and yourself — financially or otherwise for up to three years before you know if the business will work.
This keeps her brand very consistent, and clearly, her promoting works, because just about everyone on the planet knows who she is.
Take the lead from Oprah here and be willing to promote yourself, your business and your products and services consistently.
Work with great talent.
Creating a good deal has been a hallmark from Oprah that you can learn from.
Her giveaway strategy created a ton of excitement, not just with the people who benefitted, but with everyone who heard about it after the fact.
Whatever you might give away, just make sure you’re creating excitement — for your clients, for your company and for your brand.
Troubleshooting Your Ecommerce Store: What to Do When No One’s Buying
And that’s a conundrum because you’ve reviewed your ad data and seen that customers are clicking on your product ads.
Whether it’s a new product you haven’t been able to move, or a sudden slowdown in product sales, know that a good place to start that’s easy to research is the price of your product.
Along with the listed price of the product, are other popular sites or stores offering discounts that can lower the price?
When comparing prices, look at the final cost for the customer, not just the retail price point.
Ninety-four percent of customers take the time to find the lowest price for a product before they buy it.
2. Review your audience targeting.
Check for common friction points.
Your site analytics provide a wealth of information and insight into why customers may be bailing before making a purchase.
Check the behavior flow in your Google Analytics to discover the path customers take through your site, along with their top exit pages.
If your ads are generating interest and traffic, but that traffic is bouncing or not making a purchase, check the destination.
Bill Gates Believes Robots That Steal Jobs Should Pay Taxes
Bill Gates Believes Robots That Steal Jobs Should Pay Taxes.
Many people worry that robots will replace human jobs, but Bill Gates has a solution: a robot tax.
As robots begin to infiltrate the workforce, why shouldn’t they be taxed just as humans are?
In a recent interview with Quartz, Gates argued that in order to offset job losses due to automation, governments should tax companies that use robots.
“If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you’d think that we’d tax the robot at a similar level.” From factory workers to cashiers, those whose jobs might be in jeopardy from robots would have the opportunity to transition to other fields such as health services or education.
A tax on robots could help fund the training needed for jobs such as caring for the elderly, teaching in schools and helping kids with special needs — roles that robots can’t fill.
Although taxing robots may slow innovation, Gates notes, a robot tax policy could allow displaced workers a sufficient amount of time to train for fields that need human workers.
Last week, EU lawmakers considered a tax on robot owners and makers.
Similar to Gates’s idea, the tax was conceived of to train workers who had lost their jobs to robots.
Ultimately, legislators rejected the proposal.
How to Motivate Your Team Members by Putting Their Needs First
Leadership styles are like fingerprints.
Trust your team.
Trust your intuition, and give up a little control.
Lead from the back of the room.
Create an environment where all voices and ideas are heard, and most importantly, give your team room to spread their wings.
For example, if they did the work, they should present the results.
This will encourage risk taking and help your employees learn how to manage similar challenges in the future.
One of my most important responsibilities is to develop the next generation of leaders.
Take some time to step back, assess your leadership style and look for ways to improve.
And are you personally invested in every employee’s success?
Pursue Those Scary Dreams and Crazy Ideas to Make Every Day Your Best Day Ever
Pursue Those Scary Dreams and Crazy Ideas to Make Every Day Your Best Day Ever.
What would cause you to feel the most accomplished and fulfilled?
Explore the things that make you happy and the things that benefit you long-term.
Every day is a brand-new opportunity to accomplish things and experience happiness — get excited about it!
No matter what it is, that one part of your day will motivate you to push through the parts of your day that are a little less than exciting.
A healthy body and a happy mind go hand-in-hand.
It’s healthy to try new things and progress as a person.
Remind yourself it’s okay to be a little experimental every now and then, even if doing so is challenging — or it freaks you out!
Celebrate others and their best-ever days.
How have you managed to achieve the best day ever?