April 2021 - Page 2 of 4

Seeking a CTO for your startup? Here’s How!

Posted on 22/04/202131/05/2021 by Anteelo Master

You have a great idea for a new (or improved) software product. You’re ready to work hard for it and build your own company. You know a lot of startups fail, and you also know the people that make up your startup can either cause your startup to fail or to flourish. Talent, persistence, great communication skills – these are traits you look for in business partners. This is true for a potential CTO as well. But how do you go about actually finding a CTO? This post attempts to give some pointers.

Why is it Hard to Find a CTO?

Joining a new startup is risky. This isn’t different for a CTO too. What’s more, great CTO talent is scarce but startups are not. A potential CTO should be willing to take some risks, but you’re going to have to show him/her a potential reward too – This could be either a great compensation package or the impact your startup is going to have or a mix of the above.

Also, making the CTO feel like an important decision-maker and stakeholder in the company is also going to be crucial. A generous ESOP’s share may be important in hiring and retaining the right talent.

How to Find a CTO For your Startup

1. Be clear about your requirements

You must have a clear picture of your requirements. For example, you must have a list of technologies that are a must-have for your project. That could act as a filter to select the most appropriate candidates. Once you have filtered the candidates based on their technical skills, you can further get to know them and filter them accordingly. In a perfect world, you need to discover somebody who will consider this to be as a bar up on the stepping stool in their profession, for example, a senior programming engineer or specialized group captain who is ravenous to take on the CTO job. You may need somebody who’s strolled your way previously. Discover somebody who approaches things from a “try to get” point of view, not somebody who thinks they have every one of the appropriate responses.

2. Go to places where you’re likely to find good technical talent

It is always a good idea to go to cohorts where there are like-minded people as you and these places could be an answer to your question “How to Find a CTO?”. Hackathons, conferences, meetups, summits are all great opportunities to discover a potential CTO who would be a great asset for your company. Search for somebody who can get various innovations (maybe including back end, front end, and mobile). Keep away from individuals who state they’ll just program code in one language.

3. Look for developers at just below the CTO level at startups similar to yours

Jobs like VP or Engineering Lead where there’s as of now a CTO at that startup implies that they presumably have the experience required to be a CTO yet probably won’t get the open door where they at currently are. You can scan for individuals like this through LinkedIn. Ensure they have at any rate had experience shipping a product in the event that you need to give them the duty of building yours

4. Utilise the power of the internet

The internet is a potent tool in today’s world. Make sure you make the best use of it and benefit from its huge pool of talented professionals. There is an endless list of platforms which are dedicated to finding technical professionals such as a CTO. Some of them are listed below:

СoFoundersLab
Founders Nation
Angel.co
Indie Hackers
Co-founder’s subreddit on Reddit.com
Co-founding threads on Discordapp and Slack channels.

5. Pitch for the position

Beginning with the expected set of responsibilities and enduring through the offer, remember that the best CTOs will have many offers. You must sell the job to them all through the meeting procedure. You would realize that your startup is the most energizing, imaginative, astonishing organisation to work for but remember that the candidates presumably don’t have the foggiest idea about that yet. You have to sell your startup. Don’t simply list the characteristics you need in a CTO; list what they will gain from working with you: energizing challenges, the chance to be a piece of x, y, and z. Will the CTO get value? Will they have autonomy? Whatever novel characteristics your startup has, sell them well. Make certain to clarify the situation with impartial language to draw in a decent and differing candidate pool.

6. Ensure that you have a technical advisor before a CTO

How do you differentiate a technical advisor from a CTO? A technical advisor keeps their regular job but works for you 2–4 hours out of every month and fills in as somebody who’s not in the weeds with you, every day. They may do week by week or month to month code surveys and go about as a substitute for your CTO. On the off chance that you discover a technical advisor first, this individual can be immense aid in finding the CTO. Finding a technical advisor will probably be simpler than finding a CTO, on the grounds that you aren’t requesting that somebody quit their job to come work for you. Or maybe, you are requesting that they keep their current job and take on an advisory role that takes a couple of hours a week. Sometimes, you can pull off having a technical advisor and not having to hire a CTO.

What Qualities Should Your CTO Have?

Technical Expertise

This is obvious, but still important to note. In software, often a huge amount of tooling and software libraries available for many routine tasks that software developers face. Knowing what exists and the pros and cons of each tool and library can save your company a huge amount of time and money. It also saves your company from reinventing the wheel or using a less efficient tool.

Great Network

While everybody should have a great network, this is especially true for your CTO. As your company grows, you will need new employees. A CTO with a great network of skilled developers will have an advantage.

Experience

Experience is needed to have the previous point: expertise. Furthermore, it’s important your CTO knows what generally makes or breaks a great product. This knowledge can come from experience (ideally from other startups) and/or learning from other companies.

Communication Skills – Tech and Non-Tech

Your CTO is the one translating business goals to technical goals for your software developers. This means your CTO must not only have technical expertise but also be excellent at communication. You need to figure out how your CTO fits with the rest of your team (and especially with you). It’s important that your people share values with each other and understand each other since your company is made up of these people. What’s more, your CTO must be able to communicate with non-technical people too, especially those inside your company.

Deadline Management

You’re running a startup. Your team is going to be busy, and probably extremely busy. There will be deadlines, and a great CTO should be able to know how much his team can deliver in how much time. Not only that, he should be able to inspire his team to successfully meet these deadlines.

Team Management

Your CTO should be great at technology, but also at managing a team. He should inspire his team to keep focusing and working towards the same goals. It’s his responsibility to facilitate an environment where employees reach their maximum potential and to make sure the team is more than the sum of all employees.

Where to Find a CTO?

It helps if you have a great network of people where you can tap-in and ask for referrals. If that is not the case, start building one! Go on LinkedIn, connect with new people and start great conversations with them. If you click with someone, ask them if they are interested or know anybody who might be.

There are also websites designed specifically for finding a business partner. CoFounderslab.com is one of them. They have a community of entrepreneurs for you to build relationships with. This seems incredibly valuable even apart from finding your CTO. Other similar websites include indiehackers.com, founderdating.com and founders-nation.com. There are (many) more options tough, which are easy to find.

What Alternatives Are There to Having a CTO?

If you consider your own technical expertise to be high enough, you could consider taking on the role as CTO next to being CEO. Whether this is a good idea also depends on the type of product you’re building: an extremely high-tech product might need a CTO, but a less high-tech SaaS product might not.

You could also consider outsourcing the work of a CTO. However, this does have certain disadvantages, with the most important one being dedication. When outsourcing your CTO tasks, the person doing the work isn’t part of your company and is (probably) much less passionate about your product than an actual CTO would be. However, this person could be much more knowledgeable in the technical area than you are and could potentially join your startup faster than finding someone who’s willing to come in full-time. It really depends on the details.

Hopefully, this article has given you some useful pointers in your search for a CTO. There is a lot more material out there to read, but this can serve well to get you started.

Designing the Right Forms

Posted on 21/04/202117/05/2021 by Anteelo Master

When I think about forms, I remember the ones that gave me shudders more than the ones that were a cakewalk. And one major difference between the two which I can recall is that the easy ones talked to me in a human language, while the difficult ones looked like I was filling out a form for buying land on Mars.

*sigh*

What’s even more distressing is that these forms still continue to haunt us, even in the digital world. Wasn’t life supposed to become easier in the digital age?

So what can be done to save the world from bad forms?

Design with Empathy.

Usability experts and UX researchers have figured out common mistakes that designers make while designing forms. So, the ball is in our court now. It’s upon us, the creators of forms, to make sure that no form should deteriorate the experience of users.

Before I begin, I want you to go to your design repository and pick up all the forms that you have designed till today. Look at them and answer the below questions for me-

Are there any questions that sound confusing to you as you read them now?
Are you asking for too much irrelevant information from the user?
Have you given enough choices to the users in your multiple-choice questions? Is there a field where they can write their response if none of the options match their answer?
Did you give instructions to the user to help him/her understand the form & its purpose?
Did you add a disclaimer in the form about how you are going to use/not use this information for other purposes?
Did you ask for personal information? Like blood group, marital status- which was, somewhat, not needed for your perusal?

With this exercise, I want you to put yourself in your users’ shoes and answer this- how would you feel if someone asked you to fill this form? Bored, panicky, irritated, satisfied, happy?

Whatever your response is, it will help you figure out your mistake and design better web forms. But first, let’s see what are the common problems that we see in present-day forms-

They lack human conversation

Most web forms lack empathy while conversing with users. They present questions with are confusing, long or just burdensome. But it doesn’t have to be like that. Forms, like any other means of communication, should flow with ease. They should be clear, concise, sometimes clever, and at all times cooperative.

They ask for too much-unrelated information

We all love data but hate filling forms because they ask too many questions. People dread filling forms that ask for too much personal information.

Think of it this way- you meet a stranger while you are on a holiday. You indulge in some small talk but after that, the stranger picks on you and starts asking personal questions- like marital status, hobbies and your source of income. Does it freak you out? Of course!

Web forms are quite similar to that weird stranger.

They lack coherence and character

Nick Babich says-

“A form is a type of conversation. And like any conversation, it should consist of logical communication between two parties: the user and the app.”

Users who land on your form are here to start that conversation. But, when small things like input fields, alignment, spacing, text color, labels are inconsistent and look visually cluttered, it puts them off. It creates confusion and they either skip it or fill incorrect information.

And the list is probably endless. The only conclusion that we can draw from here is that bad forms are omnipresent- a form for registration, another one for a newsletter, a bigger and more complex one for the checkout process.

So, now the mental model is such that when the users come across three to four bad forms while interacting with the website, they assume that it’s going to be a waste of time and effort. They don’t even like the idea of ‘filling a form’. This is the major roadblock to designing forms– how to design a form so that people want to fill it?

We might help you with some suggestions. Here are 7 ways in which you can design better forms by keeping our end users in mind-

Know your users

Most forms on the web are “for anyone, for everyone”. Blame it on our mindset that just wants to collect more and more data, just for the heck of it. More signups=more users. But does more users equals loyal users? Certainly not!

In that mindless race to collect more user information, we often spoil the experience for the real users- the ones whose aspirations we want to meet. So, it’s important to know who is your targeted audience, why they visit your website and what do they want to achieve with the form? Do they want to purchase a product? Or, do they want to receive promotional offers in email?

Avoid collecting unnecessary data

When you ask for users’ personal information, it raises a red flag in their mind and they immediately start weighing if they should leave or continue. For instance, if you’re filling a form for becoming a blood donor with Red Cross and they ask for your email id, wouldn’t you wonder why they need your email id and not your phone number?

Now, as a blood donor, I would want to be notified on my phone, not my email id. And if a form asks me for my email id I would think- will they send me regular emails? Damn! My inbox is already full of spam emails. Should I proceed or skip?

So, carefully devise the questions that you want your users’ to answer. And if there’s a reason behind collecting specific personal information, mention it explicitly in your form.

Explain why you are collecting personal information

Information such as date of birth, address, physical characteristics (e.g. body weight, birthmark), marital status, sexual preference, religion, income, socioeconomic status, cultural background, and educational background are all considered to be sensitive personal information.

So, be aware of what information you’re asking users to fill in the form. Chances are, most users will drop out of the form if you ask them for too much personal information.

Ask questions that are easy to understand

Every user on the web is different. They belong to all age groups and they have their own reasons to browse the web. Some are experts, some are naive. Therefore, it’s important that your form doesn’t feel intimidating to any of them.

If you use abbreviations or terms that are regional or are understandable only to a certain age group, it will confuse people. They will either skip that part or answer whatever they feel is right.

Write labels that help users in answering

Labels are the text which identifies text fields, checkboxes, drop-down menus, and every other information field in a form. They instruct and inform the user about the information that they need to fill in. So, through them, you can communicate the action you want the users to take.

Therefore, make sure that labels are written in a language that helps even the first-time users in answering the questions easily. However, don’t write too long sentences. Labels should be crisp and short. As an example see Amazon’s previous sign-in page as compared to the current one with shorter, better labels.

Group related things together

Grouping related information in logical blocks helps users understand the flow of questions. When you group similar information, users are more likely to grasp things in a better way.

Consider the example below- in the first one, every field is thrown into the user’s screen and it feels a bit overwhelming. The first thought that will come to your mind is- “Am I supposed to fill this entire thing?”

However, when you group things together with proper labels, users understand what part of the information they are filling in personal, account-related, contact information.

Help them when they make errors

When users don’t have a clear understanding of what they need to do with a particular input field, they are more likely to make errors. So, it’s important that you don’t scare them with a red mark. Instead, guide them to success. Make them aware of the correct way with a helpful message.

For example- Facebook helps its users marvelously when they enter a wrong password. if the password that they have entered is incorrect, the interface reminds them that they had changed it a while back.

There are many more ways to simplify the form design. However, there aren’t any fixed steps to follow which will always lead to creating better user experiences. The only thing that you need to keep in mind is- keep it short. And simple. Users love it when they are left to do more without putting much ‘thinking’ into the process. So, respect their time and they’ll respect your designs.

2020’s Finest Startup Ideas

Posted on 21/04/202131/05/2021 by Anteelo Master

Regardless of how well paying your job might be, finding the best side business thoughts and in the end turning out to be completely financially independent is significantly important than incredible compensation and strong advantages. Picking the way of being an entrepreneur, and taking a shot at discovering extraordinary business thoughts, is unquestionably more hazardous than being content with holding a 9-5 employment. It requires far more penance. Be that as it may, when you’re receiving the lifestyle rewards of working for yourself and hustling your way into getting fundamentally more cash with your business thoughts than you ever could at your normal everyday job, the difficult work will have all been justified, despite all the trouble. In this way, let’s talk about some trending startup ideas for 2020.

Top Startup Business Ideas

You can now start a business from scratch without investing a lot of money. Following are the best startup ideas for businesses in 2020:

Plastic Recycling or Alternatives

What if you can build a big business and save your environment at the same time. Sounds impossible, right?

But it is possible with the Plastic Recycling business. “Rethinking Plastic” has become a global consumer trend for the year 2019. Businesses that help people in lowering plastic waste find it easy to strike cords in their hearts.

You can recycle any plastic material or offer its alternative at competitive prices so that a consumer prefers to buy your product over the old fashioned plastic one.

For example, you can recycle plastic straws to make a lot of appealing decorative items. Plastic Recycling business requires less investment but will give you good returns.

According to the report from Statista, the value of the recycled plastic market will amount to nearly $57 billion all over the world in 2024.

Buy and Resell Used Goods

If you are someone who loves sales, flea markets or local auctions, then it can be a great startup idea for you.

You can buy antiques, art pieces, collectables, retro clothes, and furniture, etc. at low prices and resell them at higher prices to the respective market at much higher prices.

But if you want to grow your business, then you have to become an expert on the value of goods and the right place to sell them.

According to threadUP, the secondhand economy (a $24 billion market in 2018) is projected to grow to hit a staggering number of $64 billion within the next 10 years.

Senior care services rank as one of the best Startup Ideas for Businesses in 2019. Although seniors are expected to live longer lives as compared to previous generations, unfortunately, it is not valid. They are expected to spend more time in hospitals, daycare or sickness.

Fortunately, they are wealthy and can afford to pay for the services required to maintain their lifestyles. This includes continuing to live at home in their communities. According to research by the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), nearly 90% of seniors want to live at home near their friends and family.

Many affluent seniors suffer from various health issues and find it challenging to drive and perform household chores such as cleaning, cooking or caring for their pets.

Therefore, plenty of opportunities exist for entrepreneurs who wish to start their own business from scratch.

Senior Care Services

Not all senior citizens are taken care of by loved ones and a significant number of them could utilize companionship and care-taking services all the time. At this age, senior citizens feel very vulnerable and regularly need to stay at home yet may require help because of handicap or action limitations. In the event that you’re passionate about this, this could be a considerable business idea for you.

Senior care services rank as one of the most trending Startup Ideas in 2020. Although seniors are expected to live longer lives as compared to previous generations, unfortunately, it is not completely true. They are expected to spend more time in hospitals, daycare or sickness. Which would affect their physical as well as mental health?

Home or Office Renovations

If you love construction and enjoy turning people’s dreams into reality, then Home Renovation business will suit you the best.

Almost everyone nowadays wants to renovate their homes or offices, but it is tough to find good contractors. It is a type of business that will do well even in the worst economic conditions.

According to Statista, an average homeowner in the US spends $3000 per year on home improvements. One of the most significant advantages of renovation business is that it requires less capital investment in tools and equipment than new construction. It is a perfect choice for individuals looking for a home-based business.

Virtual Reality

If you are tech-savvy and love to experiment, then Virtual Reality is the perfect start-up idea for you. Hardware and software vendors are working profusely to introduce new VR products in the market, and it is estimated to become a $40 billion market by 2020.

There are unlimited uses of Virtual Reality for either business or personal enjoyment. Real estate market is a great example.

Providing a virtual tour of an advertised house to a potential buyer can help in closing the deal. Hence, it can be a massive market for your Virtual Reality business to target on.

Some other examples include- 3D movies, gaming, social media, training and meditation. Even the trend of VR lounges is also growing on a rapid scale.

Meal Kit and Delivery

How many times have you ordered food online in the past week or month?

Whatever the number is, it must be higher than the number of times you have gone out to eat?

Yes.

Customized Healthy Meals delivery is becoming more popular day by day as people don’t have the time to shop and prepare healthy meals at home. It has already become a billion-dollar industry on its own.

The primary purpose of this start-up business is to make sure people get to eat healthy and fresh food whenever and wherever they want. If you enjoy cooking or love to bring a positive change in others’ lives, then meal kit delivery business will be the best for you.

Digital Detox

In today’s digital world it has become nearly impossible to stay away from modern gadgets. Life has begun revolving around smartphones and taken a toll on people’s health and lifestyle. The initial step towards coming out of this addiction is to accept that we are addicted to digital temptations. Luckily, countless individuals are attempting to detach and decrease their screen time. It has gotten well known to such a degree, that on the off chance that you look for the term Digital Detox on Google, you will get around 101 million outcomes. The year 2020 will be the time of advanced detox, and consequently, there are a lot of chances for new companies/organizations to assist individuals with eliminating screen time. For instance, a few new companies arrange a bunch venture out occasions to remove individuals from gadgets and find new encounters.

Luxury Pet Care

This year we’re seeing extravagance in pet care, which is basically childcare or providing a better and healthy lifestyle for pets. Regardless of whether that is taking pooches for strolls in the open country, offering a rich settlement for felines while individuals leave or throughout the day dog-sitting services in a customized setting, many pet guardians presently need these services for their adored hairy little companions. Owners need the best services and care for their pets, and they couldn’t care less about the amount they need to spend on this. From dog-keeping to premium pet care organizations, there is a huge requirement for growing business people who love furry friends and can fulfil owners high expectations. It is a sort of childcare administration for pets.

Inclusive Beauty

Gone are the days, when the market was flooded with make-up products for mainly 2 types of skin colour-Fair and Dark. Many international brands and models within the beauty industry such as CoverGirl, Missguided and Rihanna, have realised the importance of making beauty or skincare products for people with different gender, age, colour and race.

This type of industry is still quite nascent and hence offer a golden opportunity to aspiring beauty startups and beauty entrepreneurs.

Whether you want to start your make-up brand line for men or women of all colours, you can also begin to your vlogging channel to help women get their make-up perfect.

Internet of Things Security

Various difficulties forestall the verifying of IoT gadgets and guaranteeing start to finish security in an IoT situation. Since systems administration appliances and different objectives are moderately new, security has not generally been viewed as top need during an item’s plan stage. Moreover, on the grounds that IoT is an early market, numerous product designers and makers are progressively keen on getting their items to showcase rapidly, instead of finding a way to assemble security in from the beginning.

Event Planning

One of the primary things you have to do is visit each potential area in which you intend to work. Work with the marketing manager to visit each site and realize what is accessible in every area. Start a database that will permit you to sort settings by differing highlights, for example, the number of individuals each site holds, AV hardware accessible on location, on the off chance that you should organize rental seats, and so on. At that point when you are starting to plan an event with a customer, you can discover what the key parameters are for the occasion and effectively pull up the three or four locales that meet the essential criteria. also, engagement parties, etc.

Vocational Consultant

On the off chance that you are leaving a corporate job with a decent understanding to begin your very own endeavour yet have no clue where to start, this one might be for you. There are a few people out there who need to figure out how to excel at a promotion interview or request for a raise, or just land a lucrative occupation. On the off chance that you have valuable tips for them, you can simply begin your very own consultancy and individuals will pay you great bucks to gain proficiency with the subtle strategies. In the event that you aren’t prepared to fire up your very own site or simply need to try out the waters, you should see joining to platforms such as The Muse or Coach Me where others are searching for individuals like you to guide them.

Web designing

Web designing services have become a key piece of the market and have developed as the need of great importance. The main venture required in this business is a PC, internet connection, and significant aptitudes. An occupation as a website designer includes web organizing and content creation. You can complete this duty all the more easily when you are outfitted with the data, ability, and involvement with this area. You can likewise work from home as a freelance website designer.

So there you have it, 12 startup ideas that can help you get big bucks in your pocket. Most of us don’t have the advantage of having the option to leave our day job to seek after beginning a business idea today, without stressing over how we’re going to meet our money related commitments pushing ahead with no salary. That is the reason were an immense backer of continually beginning a side business while working all day, with the goal that you can test your way into your new product or services, get input, approve the thought, and start creating pay before you quit your day job. On the off chance that you can ace the craft of scaling one of these business thoughts while keeping your normal everyday employment, you’ll experience no difficulty succeeding once you’re completely independently employed. With such an extensive range of choices that span across different market segments, you should hopefully be able to find your next startup idea and transform it into a money-making machine.

CONCLUSION

The market is bursting with opportunities for tailored security solutions. So, gear up for your new and exciting startup journey. You can also go out and meet people and take advice from other entrepreneurs, but ultimately, you have to decide which business idea fits your budget and aspirations. And, if you still find yourself stuck or want to build your business idea, then Anteelo can help.

6 Indicators that It’s Time to Switch WordPress Web Hosting

Posted on 21/04/202116/06/2021 by Tushar

Hosting is integral to the success of your WordPress website and something you should never be complacent about. A poor hosting provider or a wrongly chosen hosting plan can impact the performance of your site and the customer experience of your visitors. What’s more, they can result in lower search engine rankings and make it more difficult to manage your website. In this post, we’ll look at six signs that indicate it’s time to upgrade to a more powerful package or move to a better web host.

1. Your website keeps going offline

In a 24/7 marketplace, you need your WordPress website to be constantly online and available for your visitors. If it isn’t and your site goes down, even for short periods, visitors will become frustrated, damaging your reputation. What’s more, when search engines see your site’s availability decline, they’ll downrank it in their search results. Combine these and you’ll end up losing business and long term customers. If this is happening to your website, it’s a clear signal that you can no longer rely on your hosting solution to keep your site online.

To discover if your site is frequently going offline, you should monitor its uptime. As a WordPress user, you’ll find several plugins to do this which you can install directly from your admin panel. Recommended plugins include WP Umbrella and Site Uptime Monitoring, both freely available from the WordPress Repository.

Ideally, you should look for a host whose WordPress hosting packages guarantee a minimum uptime of 99.5%.

2. Your WordPress hosting lacks the features you need

WordPress hosting has moved on considerably over the last few years in order to meet the demands of today’s websites and the needs of their owners. If your hosting plan lacks these new features, it might mean you’re having to spend more time and effort than necessary managing your website.

At Anteelo, for example, you’ll find WordPress pre-installed and ready to go, you’ll get a free domain on annual accounts and free SSL certificates for your sites. You’ll even have use of our specially developed WordPress Toolkit that lets you install, secure, update and manage your WordPress sites all from a single, easy to use interface.

What’s more, we provide the advanced security that WordPress sites demand with our application firewall protecting you from hackers and bots and our daily backups ensuring that you can rest easy should you ever need to recover your data. There’s also 1-click website hardening, automatic WordPress patching and more.

3. Your website is slow

Visitors and search engines expect websites to load quickly and respond swiftly to interactions, like clicks and data inputs. When they don’t, customers abandon the site and search engines downrank it. Ensuring the site performs well, therefore, is critical to its success.

WordPress does have some speed issues, often caused by the number of plugins working in the background and the size of the images used in a site’s content. While there are well-known actions you can take to speed up a site, such as caching, compression, image optimisation and content delivery networks, these only go so far.

By far the most important factor in driving the speed of a website is the performance of the server on which it is hosted. If you find your site sluggish, even when you have optimised its performance, it’s another sign you need to upgrade to a more powerful solution.

The WordPress hosting at Anteelo is built from the bottom up to provide enhanced WordPress performance. We use the latest Xeon processors and super-fast SSD hard drives in our servers and then configure them to provide optimal performance for WordPress using Apache + NGINX, PHP7.x + OPcache and HTTP/2. We even provide an in-built caching engine, so you don’t need to install a separate caching plugin.

4. Your host suspended your website

There are only a few genuine reasons why a web host would take a site offline or suspend a user account, for example, if the site was infected with malware, if it was being used to carry out illegal activities or if the hosting bill hadn’t been paid.

Some hosts, however, will take a site down and even suspend an account if the host’s usage limits have been exceeded, such as reaching a maximum bandwidth allocation. Meeting a maximum bandwidth allocation is a sign that your website is doing well in terms of the visitors it receives. It’s a time when the company should be reaping the benefits of its success, not getting punished by finding its site offline.

If your hosting has bandwidth restrictions, it’s time to move to a solution where this isn’t an issue. At Anteelo, our WordPress hosting plans have unmetered bandwidth – in other words, there is no data transfer limit, just a simple, fair use policy.

5. You have outgrown your WordPress hosting package

Over time, you’ll want your online venture to grow. This could mean having a bigger website, multiple websites, dealing with far more visitors or even running other applications on your server besides your websites. When this happens, there may come a time when the hosting plan you currently have lacks the resources (storage, CPU, RAM and bandwidth) or the features (number of websites, email addresses, databases, etc.) that you need.

This is one of the most obvious signs that you need to upgrade. And while there are bigger WordPress hosting packages you can upgrade to; at some point you’ll need to move on from shared hosting to a larger solution, like VPS. The issue for many WordPress owners is that dedicated WordPress VPS hosting is something of a rarity. This is not the case at Anteelo.

At Anteelo, we offer WordPress Starter and WordPress Standard shared hosting plans. However, for those making the move upwards, we also have a WordPress Pro-Server plan hosted on your own VPS. Unlike a standard VPS, this has been optimised for WordPress in the same way as our shared hosting solutions but with the added advantages of 50GB of storage, 4vCPU core processors, 4GB of dedicated RAM and unlimited websites and mailboxes.

6. Poor technical support

Who do you turn to when something goes wrong with your website or hosting? While there is a monumental amount of WordPress help available online, when the need is urgent you want a WordPress expert that can help you sort out issues quickly so that your site remains online and working as it should.

A key requirement of a good web host is providing technical support to its customers. At Anteelo, we go above and beyond. Our technical support is free with all accounts and our technical experts (not merely customer support) are available 24/7, 365 days a year. What’s more, you can contact them via online chat, phone, email or ticket – and about any problem you have with your site or hosting.

If you find your host lacking in the technical support department, then it’s another sign that you need to move on before you find yourself in a tricky situation with no one to help.

Conclusion

WordPress hosting is specially designed to improve the hosting of WordPress websites. However, not all plans or vendors are the same. Hopefully, the information given here will help you know when it’s time to make the move.

Time feasibility of Setting-Up a Website

Posted on 20/04/202131/05/2021 by Anteelo Master

Having a website has emerged as the need of the hour. Every business wants to establish their online presence and there no solution better than having a website for the same. However, one of the most common queries that pops-up in the mid of anybody dreaming of having an impactful online presence by building a top-notch website is ”How long does it take to build a website?”., which is reasonable enough. Each company has its timeline and budget and therefore, an idea of how long would it take to bring their idea into a highly functional website is very crucial.

Be that as it may, the straight answer is that It will take longer than you would anticipate that it should. However, you ought not to surge it. Building a custom site without any preparation requires some serious energy. In case you’re contemplating a substantial undertaking with a real spending plan, you may be taking a gander at a course of events of weeks or months. That is ordinary, yet it is likewise conceivable to get an astounding site off the ground a lot quicker, contingent upon what you need.

There are three primary factors in a website’s development timeline that affect the duration of the project:

How soon do you start?

Top-notch designers are typically reserved, so can’t begin your work right away. Therefore, they might take some time to begin working on your project, which might cause a delay.

Time is taken for the review

Most web engineers have a reasonable procedure for building a site and can generally depict how long will take to get a site in your grasp.

How long does it take to launch?

This last factor is the most significant variable and relies to a great extent upon you, the customer. It includes investigating the site, making change demands, and concluding substance.

Let us assume that you plan to hire someone to build your website for you. Whether it’s an individual or an agency, the advice still applies, although lengths of time can vary depending on the scope of your website. Before knowing how long it takes, you should be thorough with the procedure that goes around while building a website.

1. Know your requirements: No matter what project you are working on, you know that knowing your needs is the first step towards beginning the venture. The same goes for building a website. You must discuss with your team and jot down the aspirations that you have from your website. Having a clear picture of your needs will enable you to explain what you are expecting from your website clearly and simplify your planning process. This process generally does not takes more than one week.

2. Drafting a plan: Realizing what you plan on doing with your site is a significant initial step since it will direct you on the best way to create it along the way. A well-thought plan will boost up the chances of you building a successful and efficient small business website. However, strategising and planning is easier said than done. A good website work-plan must comprise of finding your target userbase, the primary objective of your website, the functionality of it, its significance to the visitors, along with your web analytics to measure your success. This process generally does not takes more than one week.

3. Finalising the Design: From variable text styles to moderate formats, web design is very crucial, and it additionally requires some serious energy as well as time. Discuss with your web designers what you have in mind and ask them for suggestions. Experiment with your web composition, and test out which patterns work best for your website. Before putting anything on the web, think about all possible devices and screen resolutions. Having a webpage that isn’t streamlined for smartphones and other gadgets can drive away clients, hurt your SEO, and look amateurish. Therefore, you mustn’t rush through this process and give it a decent time of around 3-4 weeks.

4. Development Phase: This stage is the place where the foundation of your website is laid. Your engineer will take the data you’ve given them, and transform it into a completely working site that (ideally) resembles the prototypes that you have affirmed. This part may take some time, somewhat in light of the fact that there are consistently some inevitable errors in each undertaking. You might want to have some modifications a part of the website once you see it in real life, or in case of any other inevitable errors. In any case, it will take at approximately a month or two to build up an independent website for business ultimately. It’s imperative to keep in contact with your designers during this stage. Great engineers will keep you on top of it and let you know how things are advancing; however, you too, ought to be proactive about reaching them.

5. Final Review: Before you can say that your site is completed and ready to launch, it needs to experience rounds of reviews and testing. You would need to analyse how all aspects of the website look, work, and feel and decide whether or not does it meets the plan you and your developer followed out together at the underlying degree of the development procedure. There are consistently revisions that should be made, especially in the event that you are focusing on a fault-less and highly-functional site. In a perfect world, you’ll rectify all the major issues during modifications for the prior steps during the review and testing. Now, there should only be minor fixes left to be made; however, your mileage may shift. Regardless, if nothing significant is broken, anticipate that this procedure should take somewhere in the range of about 1-14 days.

CONCLUSION

Indeed, even sites that look minimal from the start can take a lot of effort to fabricate. Most websites nowadays offer a lot of cutting edge usefulness and that implies additional time must be spent on creating them. Likewise you can also have a brief idea about how long does it your website take to design out and structure. So since you have prior info of what variables go into the planning of a website, you might be asking yourself what you can do to guarantee your undertaking moves as fast as possible. Undoubtedly, time is one of the concealed expenses to value your site. With regards to completing your site rapidly, the most significant thing to concentrate on first is your sitemap. The sitemap is the engineering of the considerable number of pages of the site and how they relate together. Getting completely clear on the sitemap, characterizing the number of pages, which of them will be particularly planned and how they will all identify with one another will go far in adequately describing the extent of your site venture and guaranteeing that it is conveyed quickly.

Here’s why to Design Responsive Web Apps using Angular JS

Posted on 19/04/202131/05/2021 by Anteelo Master

The decision of which tools or tech stack you should use to get optimum value of your investment is nothing but a conundrum. From a business point of view, you couldn’t risk going wrong here since these risks can cash-on in any minute. So, what tools are capable of giving you the most bang for your buck? – Well, off the top of my head – Angular framework.

Here comes the most expected question – But why?

The fact that there are various reasons for using Angular framework is why it is deemed one of the most recommended for businesses and enterprises.

For one, the current update Angular version 9 fixes all the bugs that created problems in Angular 8. The framework is not just better than most of the frameworks out there, but is a constant improvement on its previous versions as well.

For instance, Angular 9 comes with Ivy as standard renderer. Meaning, developers can ship less code as fewer instructions are required now. This ripples down to other advantages which previous versions were lacking.

So, let’s move on to the reasons validating why one should build Angular applications.

Benefits of using Angular for business

1. Functionality

When it comes to facilitating the development process, Angular is the one framework developers look up to. It won’t be overstating to say it offers out-of-the-box functionality. Not only it provides tools for routing (in order for you to fetch the data you plan to add into your app), but it’s preconfigured environment also takes care of development and testing.

With Angular, you don’t have to incorporate third-party libraries in your tech-stack for creating basic functionality for your digital product. It all can be done via its official library provided by the team of Angular, assuring you of its security and impeccable quality of code. All this reduces the app development cost and time, an advantage of Angular that businesses investing in mobile app development always look forward to.

2. Clear code with TypeScript

One of the Angular framework advantages is that it is built with Typescript. But what does this signify for a business?

Well, this means since Typescript is a strongly-typed and the base language for Angular, it allows developers to keep the code clean and neat. And the cleaner the code, the better your app will perform.

This ripples down to making bug-fixing easier. The developers can spot and then eradicate these errors as they are being typed. It’s basically like Grammarly for your code, cool right? Moreover, it also helps in managing and maintaining large codebase (beneficial for enterprise-scale projects).

Moreover, Angular 8 uses Typescript version 3.4 offering type inferring, reduced build time, and syntax changes and has exceptional navigation, autocompletion, and refactoring services.

3. Consistency with reusability

Let me put it out there straight – inconsistent coding not only increases the risk of delayed time-to-market but also escalates development cost while reducing the efficiency of the digital product. And that is not something you, as an entrepreneur, would want.

This is where developing mobile & web apps with Angular would play to your benefit. Angular offers consistent code, which has its own benefits such as it makes using websites easier while allowing the use of templates or even predefined snippets of code.

Notably, upon comparing Angular vs React, I found that Angular is more of a fully-responsive web design framework. To enhance consistency, the team has developed and optimized Angular CLI tools used for making specific repeatable blocks of code from the command line.

4. Productivity

Since the code is consistent, its positives also produce increased productivity. developers no longer have to invest their time in figuring out what utility, function, or a component does because it’s all taken care of by Angular.

Also, the readability of the code makes it all the more easy for developers to slot into an ongoing app project.

Moreover, Angular organizes codes into buckets (modules). These modules make app functionality organization facile by dividing it into features and reusable chunks while allowing for lazy loading that enables feature loading in the background or on-demand.

This JavaScript framework for building web apps makes it an achievable goal to dissect and segregate the labor across different team members while ensuring organized code, which improves productivity with appropriate modules built.

5. Maintainability

Speaking of the benefits of Angular, it addresses the concern of maintainability in two ways – by using Typescript and focusing on testability.

Almost all established mobile app development companies use Typescript that allows developers to find bugs as they type the code. Moreover, TypeScript also enables developers who are unfamiliar with the codebase to quickly get acquainted with it since they can see the types of data moving through the application.

As for the testability front, dependency injection is a crucial aspect of Angular which contributes to making test writing easier. In fact, the framework also includes support Protractor for end-to-end testing.

Additionally, when upgrading current Angular to its latest version, all packages related to it are also updated at the same time. This signifies that HTTP, Routing, and Angular Material are also included. And updating can also be done by one single command “ng update” and it would do the trick without wasting any time.

6. Angular material

One of the Angular framework advantages is Angular material. In brief, Angular Material is a set of UI modules and components that are well-tested and hence ready-to-use. It follows Material Design principles by Google and possesses a wide range of UI components like navigation patterns, buttons, indicators, and form controls. The components here are modified to match better with browsers.

What these modules do is make the design workflow easy, which as a result, enables developers to add new elements and create digital products in an expedited manner while hindering the app performance to a minimum.

{Also give our article a read on “Flat Design or Material Design- Which One to Prefer?”}

7. Declarative UI

HTML is used here to define the UI of the mobile app. It is believed that HTML is one of the less convoluted, declarative, and intuitive programming languages as compared to JavaScript.

Now, if you are wondering how this helps you as a business, then let me tell you that due to this functionality, developers won’t have to invest unnecessary time in program flows and deciding what should load first. All you have to do is define what you require and Angular can do it.

8. Simplified MVC architecture

On top of other benefits of Angular, this one really is a gem. This framework is fundamentally embedded with the original Model-View-Controller software architecture setup, though it might not be as per established standards.

Moreover, the Angular framework doesn’t ask developers to dissect the app into separate MVC components and create a code that could combine them. Instead of this, it only needs developers to divide the app and that’s it. In short, it facilitates less coding enabling apps to perform faster.

9. Easier Unit-testing

Because the components are independent of each other, it makes the unit testing process easier. As for the benefits of Angular, one of them that is highly appreciated is that it supports the development of highly testable websites and applications.

In fact, it is generally believed that this framework was fundamentally designed keeping the ease of testing in mind, something which renders impeccable digital products which is what any business expects from the development.

Type of applications and websites built with Angular

1. Netflix

Probably the most hyped and popular streaming entertainment application Netflix is a classic use case of Angular. More specifically, the team at netflix used AngularJS as the frontend tool and while the backend needs were satisfied by Python and Flask.

It is also apparent after what we have read above that the cost of developing an app like Netflix can be minimized with the benefits and attributes that Angular offers.

2. Upwork

A rather insanely popular platform for freelancers Upwork also incorporated the Angular framework for its website and mobile application to render the application impeccable performance.

3. Youtube TV

Youtube TV is Google’s alternative service to Hulu + Live TV. This platform was developed with the help of Angular 2 which launched in the market in 2017.

4. Gmail

Gmail, the mailing service in the form of both mobile apps and websites also employs the goodness of Angular framework. In fact, other products by Google are also developed using Angular, which serves as a reason why many enterprises and mobile app development companies alike trust it with their digital products.

To conclude – Although, contenders like React might have more searches online, the majority of developers show more interest in Angular because of the availability of ready-made solutions. As for the business front, Angular definitely outshines React on the grounds of development speed and productivity – an attribute that is a ‘deal-sealer’ for enterprises, isn’t it?

UX Designer Role and Duties

Posted on 19/04/202131/05/2021 by Anteelo Master

The UX designer role occupies an exciting place in businesses today. In today’s marketplace, the customer is the KING! Every business needs to ensure that its customers are having the time of their lives with their products and services. The User-Experience domain is continuously climbing up on the ladder of priority of organizations. This has given the UX designer role a very prominent place in the industry. It has become one of the most sought-after jobs and has opened the gates of enormous scope for anybody who can shine in this niche. However, the definition of how a UX Designer should be like differs from company to company as each of them has different requirements and different customer bases. Nonetheless, the primary aim of a User Experience Designer is to ensure that the customer is not just satisfied but delighted with their services/products. They work towards improving the overall experience of the customer with the brand. It comprises of improvements like making the product more intriguing, engaging, and user-friendly. User-Experience designers think from the perspective of the customer to create the finest UX and solve any problems that a customer might face will indulging with the brand. Although the expectations from a UX Designer can vary from company to company, the general duties of the UX Designer include the following:

User Experience Designer Role:

Generally, the duties of a User Experience Designer includes the following:

1. Finding Innovative Ways To Solve Common UX Problems

A good UX designer is expected to think and move as a user would. He is responsible for figuring out the general issues that a user might face while using the product or indulging with an app. For instance, if the font is too small on your website or if the sign-up process of your mobile application is just too long and tedious. All these parameters come under the UX Designer role.

2. Product testing

A very crucial part of a UX designer’s job is to test various products to see how they are working with the users. A UX designer can conduct multiple surveys, interviews, usability tests, or take thorough feedback from the customers regarding their experience with the products/services and then gather the data and analyze it accordingly. The whole process of being with the users while they use your products creates a better sense of understanding and gives an in-depth knowledge of the customers’ experience with the product.

3. Conducting Comprehensive Product Research

This step is the most initial one while beginning a project. Detailed product research makes a firm ground for the designers to start building their projects and avoid assumptions and work with more factual data. This research enables designers to understand exactly what a user is looking for. It provides them with information about market requirements, customer expectations, and customer behaviour. It helps UX Designers to fathom industry models and perceive prospects for the product/service in a given region. It additionally boosts the planning and prioritizing of various parts of the products.

4. Describing Information Architecture

The primary task involved with Information Architecture is organizing the data and information athwart the product in a way that enhances the whole user experience. They ensure that the information is displayed across the product in a manner that is easily comprehended by the users. IA is the development of a framework for an application, site, or whatever that product/service that empowers users to know where they are on a site or an application, and data about the present location the user is. IA brings about the formation of routes, arrangements, and hierarchies.

5. Wireframing

Wireframing is essentially a mock display of how the final product will look like. This strategy is very crucial to envision the product design and augmenting the entire UX. Wireframes depict each and every phase of the product and give comprehensive information about what a user might go through while interacting with the product. It provides an upper hand to the brand as it can figure out the drawbacks without actually presenting the product to the users. It saves time and maintains the brand’s reputation. However, wireframes are not used for actual product testing.

6. Designing

UX designers sketch the item’s plan dependent on the persona made toward the finish of exploring the target client. In this stage, the UX designer structures the substance per the situations/scenarios. Scenarios are narrative methods for speaking to the client’s excursion or a day in their life. They clarify how the item (regularly a site or application) fits into the client’s life. It is essential for a UX designer to precisely consider every phase of the client venture. In such a manner, UX designers regularly utilize the design practice of information architecture.

7. Testing

At this stage, UX designers find out about any issues that may emerge when clients connect with the product/services. Product testing might be as straightforward as observing clients or it might incorporate complex test strategies, for example, exhibiting differing renditions of the product to realize which performs the best. Designers may likewise conduct overviews and polls. Additionally, UX designers may talk with clients on the off chance that they recognize issue territories. The least difficult of all the client testing techniques is watching clients while they connect with the product/services.

8. Implementation

On the off chance that you’ve not had a lot of experience working with web developers, at that point, it’s critical to think about this pivotal part of the job. During implementation, you will be working personally with engineers to arrive at your ultimate objective for a venture. The engineers will be striving to change your thoughts and ideas into a genuine, working website; how you approach this relationship will decide the achievement or disappointment of your task. Keeping your engineers tuned in all through the procedure will make this last stage simpler for everybody included; you as the UX designer will have realistic expectations of what the developers can deliver (and in what time period) and the designers won’t get any terrible stuns ultimately.

A UX designer is answerable for this whole procedure, and its execution. In any case, bigger organizations will segregate this task into a couple of smaller jobs so that that attention is not divided.

Conclusion

UX Designing is a very vivid field as it does not just cover developing a product or selling it; it involves the through-out journey of a user with the brand. A different approach to the UX Designer role is to ensure that when a user uses the services/products, each component should be efficiently optimized and emerge as extremely easy-to-use and very practical. A company depends on its users, and ensuring that they have a pleasant experience is a serious business. Being a multidisciplinary field, UX Designing has an extensive scope. UX designers come from diverse backgrounds like psychology, engineering, designing, and even hospitality. To structure for human clients also implies that you need to work with an elevated degree of responsibility in regards to as inclusive as possible and consider the limitations and expectations of the masses. A User Experience (UX) Designer must have a solid comprehension of user conduct and business objectives and must be equipped for a wide assortment of aptitudes, going from psychology to structure and innovation. Even though UX designing is a field that feels essential to product improvement, its inherent capacity stays unidentified to numerous in light of its relative freshness.

Security Awareness Training: Key Advantages

Posted on 18/04/202131/05/2021 by Anteelo Master

The year 2020 has been the most unpredictable and tough year for each one of us. The first quarter itself included lots of mishappenings and unforeseen scenarios, leaving every country across the globe on alert mode! The pandemic not only affected many lives but also flipped day-to-day routines, bringing everything to a halt at a certain point where none of us were sure of how to bring things on track.Although, eventually, everything started to change rapidly, including how we work, communicate, or even interact with one another remotely. The major impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was almost on every industry and its verticals, including private and public organizations. Every working individual was mandated to work from home, ensuring to prioritize their health security, but unfortunately, it resulted in leaving cyber security highly vulnerable.

After the coronavirus, cyber security became one of the significant topics of concern in the first quarter of 2020. With organizations adopting the ‘work from home’ policy, cybercriminals found the situation as a golden opportunity to deploy cyber attacks more aggressively. Lately, many organizations have fallen victim to massive cyber attacks and high-end data breaches, resulting in the exploitation of confidential data and online theft of millions of users’ credentials.

In fact, hackers have been taking control of several networks, locking away the data of the organization, and demanding an excessive ransom to return back their data. On seeing the criticality of the situation, it is impossible to set up a secure IT infrastructure like that of an office at home. But it is possible to stay proactive and cyber secure by taking preventive measures to mitigate future cyber risks.

Organizations must consider providing security awareness training to their employees in order to help them have knowledge of all possible cyber threats while working from home and how to combat them. Let us proceed further to learn more about security awareness training and how it is beneficial for employees.

What is Security Awareness Training?

Security awareness training is formal training to educate employees about computer security. This practice of training employees includes educating them about corporate policies and working procedures with information technology. The main purpose of this training is to help employees become familiar with cyber attacks, data breaches, and all types of social engineering practices.

But the ultimate purpose of this security awareness training for employees is to teach them about the value of data as a corporate asset in the organization. A proper and effective security awareness training keeps employees engaged and interested in following the directives. The motive is to ensure that employees do not get indulged in handing over confidential information to any unauthorized person or do not commit mistakes that might help hackers to get unauthorized access into an organization’s restricted network.

More importantly, security awareness training helps in influencing the behavior of employees, reducing cyber risks, and ensuring compliance within the organization. This corporate security awareness training program is currently the best method to encourage cyber security awareness among employees while they are working from home.

According to a study by a security research lab, human error is the most common cause of 95% of cyber security breaches. It also stated that if somehow this human error is eliminated completely, 19 out of 20 cyber breaches might not happen at all in the first place. The Information Security Awareness Officers of every organization must consider planning and implementing proper security awareness training for employees.

How is Security Awareness Training Important for Employees?

While corporates are seeking digitals assets to mitigate cyber threats, it is important to understand that the biggest threat lies within the organization itself. Humans are the most vulnerable resource and the weakest link in the cyber security chain. They are easy targets of hackers as they can be easily manipulated due to psychological flaws. Recently, 60% of UK businesses fell victim to cyber attacks and data breaches because of human error, resulting in bringing their business to a halt for days.

This is why implementing cyber security awareness training among employees is highly important for every organization. Just by strengthening the weakest link in the cyber security chain, an organization can mitigate up to 90% of cyber risks. Moreover, the following benefits of security awareness training will definitely make you understand the importance of the purpose:

Cyber Resilient Working Environment

The security awareness training program develops a sense of responsibility within employees to work in a security-focused environment. When you offer training to employees, they automatically understand the importance of the topic being taught and learn how it has to be practiced in the future. Regular training helps in instilling better habits of staying cyber aware and secure.

Prevent Breaches and Cyber attacks

Without this security awareness training, employees wouldn’t have stayed updated on cyber attacks and malicious activities of hackers. So when employees learn how to recognize and avoid these attacks, they start using preventive measures in order to keep the organization’s network secure and maintain the workflow.

Robust Technical Defenses

Technological security defenses play a valuable role in safeguarding organizations from the reach of cybercriminals. But these defenses require manual labor to operate, update and upgrade security software which is only possible with proper security awareness training. These technological defenses become useless if they are being operated or updated without full knowledge.

Proactive Employees

One of the biggest benefits of corporate security awareness training is to help employees become proactive and confident about working around data, without causing any incident. After all, human error is the leading cause of cyber attacks and data breaches. With effective training, employees become empowered to work in a cyber-resilient environment, reducing the chance of human error.

Gets Everyone in Sync

Every security practice must be followed in sync, keeping every employee on the same page in the organization. Without official training on cyber security, all different departments in the organization might be practicing different principles, keeping data on the verge of risk.

This is why official security awareness training sessions are important to remove all guesswork when it comes to security and make every working individual follow the suit to mitigate security threat postures.

Let us not stay vulnerable by encouraging cybercriminals to take advantage of the pandemic and lockdown. Cyber security is a two-way street where we have to keep up with the advanced security tools to combat and mitigate cyber risks.

Workplace Threats of Password Sharing

Posted on 17/04/202131/05/2021 by Anteelo Master

The Shocking Statistics About Password Sharing

According to the security survey, 78% of the security professionals around the world believe that the biggest risk to endpoint security is human error. Moreover, the lack of cybersecurity awareness among employees is one of the biggest exploitable vulnerabilities in any organization.

Nevertheless, an organization can have the most robust security software in the world, but human errors like password sharing can lead to massive data breaches for a lifetime.

Some of these following statics show the criticality of password security in today’s date:

Approximately by the end of 2020, password usage across the globe will grow by 300 billion.
81% of the data breaches have been reported because of poor password security.
About 61% of companies use more than 500 accounts with non-expiring passwords.
A research article by ITProPortal stated that only 38%of companies update their admin passwords once a quarter while the rest do it very rarely.
About 54% of the small and medium-sized businesses don’t check up on their employee password practices.
25% of employees use the same password in all login credentials.

What are the Risks of Sharing Passwords at Work?

One of the most challenging things in the digital world is managing online accounts by securing passwords from the reach of untrusted sources. Whenever a new data breach or compromised information of a company makes headlines in the news, the most common reason shines out to be the poor password security.

Habits like password sharing, providing login credentials on unsecured websites, weak passwords, etc., put companies at expensive risks. In a study by a renowned password manager company, it was stated that around 61% of users more likely share their work passwords than personal passwords.

There are various organizations that still take the matter of password security lightly. It is important for them to understand the consequences of password sharing at the workplace. Here are the top five security risks of password sharing at work:

Single sign-on (SSO)

SSO is an authentication scheme that allows users to use a single ID and password to access multiple corporate software and applications. An employee can use one password to access dozens of enterprise login accounts at the same time.

Even though this practice seems to be beneficial in easing the burden of memorizing and entering passwords, it has disadvantages too. In the common practice of password sharing, it will give rise to major password security vulnerabilities and issues in the organization.

2. Credential sharing

In several organizations, password sharing at work is a common practice for various reasons, but this practice can lead to dangerous results. According to cybersecurity research, it was found that 42% of people share their work login credentials to work together with their teammates.

While 34% of stated that this practice reduces cost on user-limited software. Whereas the rest of the respondents said that it is their company’s policy to share passwords for accessing specific accounts. In the end, no matter how effective these practices sound, sectors like Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI) might fall under the risk of the massive data breach.

3. Password reuse

Almost every user has the habit of reusing the same password to log in to more than one account. But reusing the same old passwords only empowers workers to increase the threat of a single stolen password for the company.

Also, reusing a password across multiple websites might result in a data breach because if attackers get the hold of one site then they will try using the same information to target other corporate accounts as well.

4. Cloud computing

Today many businesses are flocking to the cloud as it offers enterprise advantages like cost savings and fast development. However, there are many applications and software that are based on cloud computing that are poorly secured. In fact, it was surveyed that out of 12000 cloud services, 80% allow weak passwords, which is a major password security flaw. A stolen shared password can easily provide hackers with access to valuable and confidential information of the organization.

5. Emailed passwords

In order to collaborate with colleagues in a project or some other requirement, employees generally share passwords over emails. This practice of password sharing on emails becomes habitual due to the lack of security awareness training.

A security service providing firm also once reported that less than 20% of employees telecommute are actually aware of the employee password sharing policy of the organization.

It is essential to make employees understand the significant risks of password sharing on telecommunication. Such practices empower hackers to take advantage of sent messages while they go through the hacked email account of the employee.

How the Importance of Not Sharing Passwords Can Secure Organization?

No matter where you are or who you find the most trustworthy, habits like password sharing should not be encouraged. Even relying on shared passwords, best practices like password reminding or saving tools are not 100% secure! It is just like handing over your valuables to some stranger over an application or software.

Risks of sharing passwords at work would not only make the professional data vulnerable but personal data too to cybersecurity threats. Organizations must consider implementing an employee password sharing policy to protect the confidentiality of data.

The purpose of using a password is to safeguard data or sensitive information from unauthorized access. Employees working in an organization must understand the value and risks associated with password security. The security administrator of an organization should encourage higher authorities to have GDPR compliance implemented in place for password security.

Apart from that, every organization must provide security awareness training to its employees in order to understand the basic cybersecurity practices and how they must be followed in their day-to-day life.

What is DevOps? – AWS

Posted on 16/04/202131/05/2021 by Anteelo Master

What is DevOps?

DevOps (Development & Operations), a design and operations system, is an approach that works closely with software developers and operations. DevOps was developed in 2009 with the aim of improving communication and integration development and operations in order to benefit fully from modern software development approaches.

The entire range of application management operations has become considerably more complex in this complex environment. At the same time, software applications must be designed, developed, deployed, architected, and monitored via an ongoing, never-ending lifecycle. DevOps is an agent of change in the current business environment, which supports such complex applications.

The clear answer to the frequently asked question, “What is DevOps” is DevOps is a collaborative, team-based approach to technology delivery that leverages experts with cross-functional development and organizational expertise to address issues relevant to applications.

Characteristics of a good DevOps

Corporations and companies have varying degrees of success in introducing and implementing a DevOps system for their IT departments, these are the common characteristics they show:

1. Short, iterative development cycles

DevOps allows an organization to develop and launch new products and services more efficiently through a build-measure-learn process, beginning with minimally viable products (MVPs) running on the production infrastructure.

2. Driven by Metrics

Use lean startup methodologies, evaluating ideas, and designing of MVPs offers immediate feedback to product or service creators and backers, providing valuable data to decision-makers on the continued feasibility of the current process.

If a pivot is required to align the plan more closely with the organizational and strategic priorities, the indicators will support that decision.

3. Focused on People

Even in library systems with a single member, the DevOps team of a library must always concentrate on the people being served. Professional resources and technology departments of the library need to guide research and decision-making based on the actual use of members of the library system and the interest of library leadership in looking for the edges of their populations.

DevOps working Lifecycle

DevOps principles are not only applied throughout the lifecycle, but they include growth, operations, and business stakeholders at all times. The DevOps framework explores the challenges of serving the dynamically changing and business-critical architectures of today’s technology.

In this model, the DevOps interactions at each stage are as follows:

1. Assess

Business stakeholder feedback (for new services) and service-level agreement reviews, (for existing services) are used to define goals for new business offerings and to modify existing ones.

2. Design

At this stage design and development are given importance. The primary responsibility of design is to incorporate requirements into a software design. Business is responsible for educating production on specific requirements, as well as evaluating the project and signing it off.

3. Develop

Development is ultimately responsible for building software that meets the needs of the business. Operations are introduced when necessary to support development teams in building and testing environments and/or to advise on network requirements and expected delivery times.

4. Test

While Development and QA teams perform unit and integration testing, Operations participates in integration and load testing to assess operational readiness.

5. Release

This is the traditional handoff stage of DevOps, but the handoff in this scenario is a change in leadership roles versus a shift in responsibility. Development and Operations (or DevOps) teams lead this stage, while end-user acceptance processes are conducted by business stakeholders.

6. Manage

Infrastructure, systems and application management tools track manufacturing environments and applications during this phase. Service level management (SLM), quality and availability management, troubleshooting/root cause analysis and resource management solutions all track and assess the output of applications as part of ongoing assessments.

AWS DevOps

AWS DevOps with Amazon security & Amazon cloudwatch provides flexible and speedy DevOps services for companies.

Features

1. Monitoring

Enables monitoring and logs to see how the quality of software and infrastructure affects the end-user experience of their service.

2. ChatOps (AWS Chatbot)

It is the latest feature which easier to review the notification and execute commands in Slack channels and Amazon Chime chat rooms. Chatbot supports:

Amazon CloudWatch
AWS Health
AWS Budgets
AWS Security Hub
Amazon GuardDuty
AWS CloudFormation

3. Microservices

Microservices turn the task of building an application into several microservices. Each system operates independently and communicates with other services via a well-defined interface using a lightweight mechanism.

4. Infrastructure as Code

The cloud-driven API model allows developers and system administrators to communicate programmatically and on a scale with infrastructure, rather than setting up and configuring resources manually.

5. Continuous delivery

DevOps have become essential elements contributing to the rise of continuous delivery. Continuous delivery is a software development practice, the term describes an iterative and continuous process of software development, evaluation, and distribution to the desired endpoint. The destination may be a manufacturing setting, a staging environment or a set of software products.

Advantages of DevOps

Speed: The developers and operation team is able to get their results faster
Scale: Operate and manage infrastructure and growth processes at scale. Automation and reliability allow you to handle complex and evolving processes effectively and with reduced risk.
Reliability: Devops highly reliable because of the quality of application updates
Security: You can use automatic enforcement protocols, fine-grained processes, and configuration management tools to implement a DevOps framework without compromising security.
Collaboration: Collaboration of developer and operation using DevOps team increases efficiency and save time

In this journal, we have discussed the enhanced definition of and vividly taken a deep dive in what is DevOps. We can now understand that DevOps provides software development teams with the ability to control and accountability to deliver software efficiently and often especially for small to medium-sized enterprises in the production environment.

In this case, the capability comes from their ability to acquire new skills from operations-related tasks while operating under pressure at the same time. I also established that DevOps in companies is a long-term endeavor that, in addition to technological methods, requires a supportive culture and a mindset. Such cross-functional collaboration is most effective when supported by senior management and customers.