Technology Engineer and Entrepreneur. Currently working with International Clients and helping them scale their products through different ventures. With over 8 years of experience and strong background in Internet Product Management, Growth & Business Strategy.
There are a lot of things product managers are accountable and responsible for. A product manager is not only liable to strategize by creating a roadmap but also needs to articulate the release cycle of a new product to the team along with everything that comes in between.
They are also required to have the expertise in knowing how to identify the priority tasks and manage the team accordingly. Not just this, but mobile product managers are also given the responsibility to analyze the features added to a product (mobile app) and whether they are in sync with the client’s goals.
All in all, every process, activity, and decision associated with a product is synchronized and aligned by the mobile product manager. What helps these product managers achieve their KRAs is a certain set of skills.
Now, obviously they will be required to explain certain product management ideas to their team members so that they all are on the same page. But, the thing to wonder is – how do they explain all the product management concepts and key ideas?
Well, I think a few useful diagrams for product managers do the trick. If you are interested in knowing what these diagrams are and how and when they are used by mobile product managers, stick till the end.
Diagram 1 – Communication bottlenecks
It is understood that as a manager, you need to be aware of what is going on in your team and how the team members are managing their tasks. But, it is ludicrous for any person to be involved in every communication and decision – one person cannot handle all the things on one’s own, right? Isn’t this why the delegation was invented?
Now, it is natural you would want to be included in all the important inter/intra-team conversations, but you need to reflect on one thing – is it necessary? Is it something you should do by putting aside your other responsibilities?
The answer is – analyze whether the team is capable of communication which is not dependent on you. And if it is, you need to make some conscious decisions to ensure that important things like fluent communication are not solely dependent on you. A diagram that can effectively explain the case in point is given below.
Let’s say, a Web Engineer needs to discuss something with the Product Analyst and then the PA says they need to discuss something with the iOS developer in this regard. Now, the Web Engineer should ideally approach the PA and iOS developer directly, instead of being dependent on the PM (as shown in the image on the left).
The diagram on the left shows the dependency of the team on product manager to communicate with other members of other teams – something that adversely affects the workflow and slows it down. And on the right is the diagram displaying an efficient communication flow that is not dependent, instantly eliminating unnecessary points of contact.
Diagram 2: Waterfall vs agile
Though there are many resources out there on the internet participating in the debate of the Agile vs Waterfall approach, it may still seem like a vague concept in relation to product management. So let’s clear the fog of ambiguity.
It is generally known that the cost of mobile app development is calculated on the basis of hours it takes to develop that product.
Now, if the product manager of that mobile app development company chooses to use the Waterfall approach (i.e., a large release of the product), this would mean that the product will be launched all in one go.
Now, when a product is released, it is expected to become an instant hit – something which won’t be easy in this instance, since the product is launched all at once and is definitely a home to some issues. The value that they will get from this release won’t be equivalent to the investment (time) made by the developers. It is because they would require to fix the issues from the start.
On the contrary, the agile approach supporting small releases and iterations would show instant value results, since you are simultaneously identifying errors and fixing them. The diagram above clearly shows the difference in the end result of choosing these product management approaches.
Diagram 3: Representation of delivery size
When it comes to delivering a product on time, it is a very crucial part of the whole development process. It can literally make or break the future of any mobile app. If time-to-market is too long, some other app could capture the market and it would render the mobile app in question futile.
Here is a representation of the sizes of initiatives taken when developing an application –
The diagram on the left shows the throughput of the delivery size that only deals with working on big projects (large chunks of work at the same time). It is absolutely clear that working only on big projects of a product would create a blockage at one point of time in the future, since these projects would require more time, attention, resources, etc. And if anything goes wrong, the impact would be devastating on the whole process, inevitably increasing the time-to-market.
{Also read our article on “Project Managers vs Product Managers: Difference, roles & challenges”}
The diagram on the right is a classic “to do”. The advantages of adopting the Agile approach have rippled down to this stage in the product management process as well. This approach advocates the mixture of performing small tasks with large chunks of work (blue), something that we also follow at Anteelo.
As visible in the diagram, unlike the one on the left, here small chunks of work (Pink) can easily pass through the funnel (can be done easily). If these prove successful, the product managers can carry on with this idea (yellow circles) and invest completely. And if otherwise is the case, then they can iterate again and invest accordingly.
{Check out this extensively detailed article on “10 most important documents product managers must prepare”}
Diagram 4: Level of leadership involvement
The diagram below comprises two models for elaborating this product management concept. One on the left displaying the initiative size, number of tasks done at a time, and the risk factor in them, and the other concerned with the level of involvement of the product managers (leadership) correspondent to these tasks and initiatives.
The one on the left is a pyramid of tasks/initiatives to be performed by the team. The bottom of the pyramid means many tasks being performed at once, and the diagram on the right shows the amount of involvement with respect to these menial tasks having low to none risk.
As we move to the top of the pyramid, the number of tasks decreases while the risks associated with these tasks increase as well, this is where the product manager MUST be consulted, while in the formed he/she can be just informed. This diagram would help not just help mobile product managers but also the team members in knowing when to depend on the leadership.
Diagram 5: Analyzing segmentation value
There are a few practices that organizations are accustomed to following. One of them being the habit of optimizing for the average instead of a segment. Meaning, they tend to focus on the average instead of particular segments that need improving.
In the circumstances where the targets and hypotheses are fairly broad, it becomes challenging for the product managers and development teams to create an impact via product. It is because you are here trying to satisfy a variety of targets at the same time, which is not at all possible.
Diagrams, such as given below are a way to analyze each segment for identifying which ones are impacting the performance of others. All this to resolve the prevailing issues.
The diagram above consists of three hypothetical experiments 1,2, and 3 with segments A, B, C, and D. Out of three experiments, in the first case, there was an uplift in the segment A, followed by a decrease in the second case, and third with no change.
Taking an individual look, in experiment 1, segment A performed well with others, except segment B. Now, the diagram has highlighted the decline in this segment juxtaposed to the others. This could help product managers in finding the reasons for this happening which will eventually improve the average in the longer run.
A similar situation occurs in experiment 3, where segments A, C, D underperform in opposition segment B which showed significant change. Again, a study would clear out the reasons for this happening.
These useful diagrams for product managers can easily be customized to one’s needs, irrespective of which industry the product managers are operating in. As far as Anteelo is concerned, I think these models really help our teams in simplifying the process and maintain open communication between inter/intra-teams.
The health insurance sector is finding itself in a whirlwind of change. For insurers, this means getting an understanding of the domain’s benefits and tech stack powering the change.
New-age healthcare space or digital health ecosystem, as it’s usually called, is engineered to keep patients on a pedestal. The transformation of healthcare has created an ecosystem where every medical industry stakeholder and process has been operating to keep patients at the center stage.
While this patient-first system is coming organically to the caregivers, insurers – the third key stakeholder of the healthcare sector – are finding the transition a bit challenging. In this article, we are going to look into the capabilities that payers need to inhibit to survive the growing competitiveness in the digital health insurance world.
The insurance industry is staring at a cultural shift that will put people’s well-being at a primary stage. The shift has forced the sector to move from paying financial compensation to injury, illness, or loss towards the end goal of mitigating or preventing them.
A key role in bringing this shift to health insurance digital transformation has been brought along by technology adoption by every custom healthcare software development company.
In this article, we will dive into the technologies insurance companies can adopt in the digital health services landscape. But first, let us look into the benefits that would make the domain an active participant in the changing landscape of digital transformation in healthcare.
The Benefits of a Digitalized Insurance Sector
1. Digital solutions help people make healthy decisions
Digital healthcare solutions powered by wearables and insurance-inclined apps help people: prevent diseases, better diagnostic, manage a chronic condition, limit lifestyle risks. A number of modern users expect their health and care providers, insurers to provide them digital wellness solutions.
New-gen insurers, by offering consumer-centric programs like health quantification, etc. can meet this consumer expectation.
2. Digital platforms help insurers connect with the users
Digital tools and digital health platforms provide insurers the ability to give their clients a welcoming, interactive platform using which the insurers can create an ‘I care’ strategy. The platforms do not just act as a mode to have positive interactions with the customer but also gather data that can help make processes and values efficient.
3. Insurance digitalization help lower risk and cost
Digital healthcare services help make a detailed picture of users’ overall health. Upon the data, the insurers can create an approach that can be used for personalizing premiums through dynamic pricing. The data-driven approach also enables risk assessment that enables accelerated underwriting.
According to a Capgemini report, the use of data-driven assessment helps insurers adopt a more value-driven care model where the digital tools provide a transparent picture of the dynamic pricing model.
4. Digitalization in the insurance space optimize customer experience
Digital space helps healthcare insurance service providers optimize the customers’ experience by increasing the number of touchpoints and providing new services. Here are some of the use cases of how it happens:
Digital health insurance plans for managing personal health
Virtual healthcare delivery
Connected vehicle and smart-home solutions
Voice technology for advising customers.
5. Digital tools can secure data dominance
The insurance sector is producing more data than ever before. They have been building and scaling big data ecosystems to create visualized data sets that can suggest benefits plans according to the success factors.
Providers and healthcare app developers that are best able to use big data are delivering personalized customer experience, bettering retention, and are creating more accurate quotes – all at a lot faster speed compared to traditional approaches.
These and a plethora of other benefits are a guarantee that is dependent on the adoption of a new-gen technology set. Technology in health insurance has become a driving force that can take the domain towards end-to-end digitalization.
Let us take a closer look at some of the technologies we suggest our insurance sector partners, in our capacity as a healthcare app development company USA and India, to integrate into their solutions.
3 Technologies Aiding Insurance Digitalization
Machine learning
Insurers, as they process claims, gather a large amount of data from multiple sources. Incorporation of machine learning in the process and healthcare mobility solutions can help build customer relationship management systems that offer targeted service and eliminate churn.
The industry is also exploring ways to use the technology for helping doctors deliver proactive, timely, and cost-effective care to patients.
Internet of Things
With over 1 billion wearable devices active in the market, the healthcare industry is no more unsure about the technology’s capabilities. The biosensors present inside the wearables are getting more sophisticated to become links in the digitalized healthcare system which lays emphasis on home-based treatments.
Through the data collected by the sensors, insurance companies can help wary customers of problem signs before they develop into diseases.
Distributed ledgers
When a patient interacts with a healthcare system, they talk to a number of parties: doctors, pharmacists, insurance companies, etc. A distributed ledger can enable all the stakeholders to be on the same platform, making the interactions and following transmissions, transactions transparent and real-time.
An example of this can be seen in how the patients no more have to wait for the insurance companies to release payment since the latter is updated of the stage where they are at in the healthcare system.
One of the key resources in the healthcare economy is data – a resource that places insurers in the central of the provider side of the digitalization landscape. A number of insurance companies are making use of data to become active participants in healthcare transformation, while there are still a number of providers who are waiting for the digitalization lighting to strike.
Whatever the case may be on the insurer end, the other side of the reality is that members are appreciating insurers’ digitalization efforts by increasing the usage of value-added services. For an insurance company, it means that now is the golden time to enter the space. We can help you.
Our team can help you make an infrastructure that can bring you on a shared transparent, value-plus platform as your customers. Contact our team of insurance industry digitalization experts.
Gone are the days when advertising was considered the most prominent marketing channel to promote a brand. With rapid transformations in the digital landscape, having a strong mobile presence has become a necessity for businesses to thrive.
Mobile apps have emerged as an effective marketing solution. A mobile app not only helps automate business but also provides better customer service. With apps, brands do not have to struggle to establish themselves- they can foster a deep connection with netizens of all demographics and age groups, promote brand awareness and garner the right market visibility.
Studies show that more than 50% of customers who regularly use a branded app are more likely to buy from the company.
It is relatively easy to target a mass audience base with other marketing channels but targeting each individual based on their unique preferences is the need of the hour, and it has become all the more possible through mobile apps.
A branded app is a powerful approach to facilitate brand promotions in a persuasive way. By using a mobile app as a brand marketing channel, you can reap huge benefits. It keeps users engaged and you can enjoy higher conversion rates.
Why should Brands go online?
According to a report, smartphones account for 70% of the mobile time out of which 90% of smartphone time is spent on applications. Most people today have access to their phones wherever they go, which implies that you can reach your target audience almost anytime, anywhere through a mobile app. This doesn’t necessarily apphttps://appinventiv.com/blog/mobile-app-as-brand-marketing-channel/ly to other marketing channels, some of which are limited by the restricted availability of the devices that they depend on.
Brands have realised the potential of what a mobile application can do and that goes beyond simply selling a product or service. This discovery has opened up new marketing avenues. It provides businesses the opportunity to engage with their audience in new and creative ways and turn them into loyal customers.
Studies show that desktop internet usage is dropping and mobile internet usage is rising significantly. Although mobile websites get more visitors, visitors tend to spend
Mobile app industry is flourishing. It is estimated that by 2021, there will be roughly 7 billion mobile users worldwide. (Source) With the advent of disruptive technologies such as AI, AR VR companies are finding new ways to market their products. Artificial Intelligence allows mobile apps to store user data in order to recognise and preempt their preferences, needs and choices.
Mobile apps are a powerful marketing channel for brands. It helps companies connect with the audience, convey brand messages, keep users engaged and create customer loyalty in a crowded marketplace.
Today brands are using mobile apps to improve offline experiences for their customers and boost sales. According to a recent survey, 75 percent of customers engage more with loyalty programs that provide rewards in a mobile-friendly way.
So, if you are still not going mobile for marketing, it’s time you consider the many benefits a branded app has to offer.
Benefits of Mobile platforms as Marketing tools
There are a number of ways how mobile apps help businesses. They humanise companies, lead to better interactions between brands and customers, and increase loyalty and sales.
1. Enhancing Brand awareness and visibility
Businesses are often on the lookout for an effective platform through which they can market their brand. Apps enhance brand awareness and visibility and can strategically increase the customer base.
Once an application gets installed on a mobile device, users will come across the brand logo frequently, thereby enhancing visibility and awareness. The more often a user interacts with a brand’s app, the sooner they tend to buy their products and avail their services.
If you want to get users talking about your unique app, you must ensure that your app provides all the features that your target audience is looking for.
The app should be interactive and keep users coming for more. Afterall, it all boils down to effective frequency- the more people are introduced to an app and the more they interact with it, the more chances that they will actually buy.
2. Forming a connection with your Customers
Engagement is extremely crucial and a mobile app helps you form a deeper connection with your customers and prospects.
With declining attention spans, it has become significantly important to curate compelling personalised content and keep your users coming back for more.
An effective way to engage your users is to frequently offer them fresh Personalised Content. Users are interested in content that is relatable and piques their interest. In this rapidly changing environment, user preferences keep on changing and to establish yourself in the market you need to keep up with them.
Regardless of the type of application, a brand must invest in personalized in-app content. One way to ensure that happens is to create and study customer personas to better understand what type of content works best for your audience.
Another effective strategy is Push Notifications. Push notifications have the power to capture user attention and make them check out what’s new in your app. They encourage customers to use your app. The key with push notifications is to make them compelling. A push notification must be of some value to the end user no matter if it’s a copy, a promotion or some perk. Don’t overdo the notifications or it may irritate the users.
3. Collecting Data about Customers
A good marketing strategy revolves around analysing customer behaviour. If your app solves a pain point for the user, they are likely to share their data with you.
You can use mobile app as a brand marketing channel to monitor users, their personal shopping behaviors, engagement levels, browsing habits, locations, mobile app usage, favorite hours and much more.
This way you can collect valuable user insights, analyse through the data, understand the needs of the customer and improve your product quickly.
You can collect user data in the following ways:
Onboarding: You can have a basic questionnaire during registration which includes pertinent information about age, preferences, habits and more.
By offering Bonuses: It is an ideal approach to swap discounts, bonuses or special offers as a reward for completing small questionnaires.
In- app Behaviour: Marketers can always keep track of the marketing process in a closed loop by monitoring and analysing user’s in-app behaviour. For brands it has become relatively easy to collect user data based on purchases and reviews of the product.
This way you can evaluate the data and change your brand development strategy based on user feedback.
The Starbucks mobile app widely uses this opportunity and monitors in-app user behaviour. As of April 2019, Starbucks claims 16.8 million active loyalty program members. It all became possible by analysing user data, looking for new avenues and rolling out strategic data-driven initiatives to target users.
It is essential to have a review/ feedback section. Allow your users to tell you what exactly they want from your app. Iterating and improving the product the way your target audience wants it reaps excellent rewards.
4. Increasing Customer Loyalty
Rewarding frequent customers is a great marketing strategy. Getting customer loyalty has become a challenge for a number of brands. A mobile app is the right tool to increase your customer loyalty.
When you reward frequent customers, it encourages them to buy more and they are more likely to share your brand with their fellow friends. This strategy can be easily implemented using push notifications or via in-app messages. Loyalty rewards help in establishing a strong connection and turns users into loyal customers.
5. Scaling up your target Audience
The Internet is not just breaking boundaries but making things that were impossible a decade ago happen in real-time. Mobile apps enhance the user base, not just in their country of origin but also across the world.
Through geo-targeted push notifications, localisation and location based brands can send specific messages to their target user audience. Location based call to action via region or location mapping feel more personalised to the user, grow the target audience and can drive more sales.
6. Increasing Sales Ratio
Applications enhance customer experience by making the buying process simpler, convenient and intuitive, thereby resulting in the increase in sales ratio.
But an app doesn’t have to necessarily offer purchases to boost sales, it can do so by offering loyalty programs and additional services.
Domino’s faced a serious sales issue back in the mid-2000s. With the wave of digitalisation, Domino’s decided to go mobile. Besides making significant improvements in the quality of their product, Domino’s created a branded mobile app that was extremely responsive and rendered a delightful experience.
It resulted in the app’s contribution to half of the company’s online sales in 2015.
When Domino’s started facing issues with retaining their customers and witnessed a rise in the bounce rate, they came to us. We worked on their UX, refined their UX Strategy and brought a steep rise in their conversion rate by 23% and significantly increased their session time.
7. Social Network Marketing through apps
Mobile connectivity has become essentially important and the ability to synchronise it with social networks provides businesses a higher chance to disperse the content and make it go viral. Mobile apps allow users to easily share the brand’s content across all social networks.
For instance, PUMA’s empowering Propah Lady campaign created a ripple effect on the social media and gained a huge amount of followers and brand customers.
Common Mistakes to avoid when making a mobile app for Brands
The advantages of a mobile app for business are endless. Sure, you can create a unique app and get users to download it but it doesn’t necessarily guarantee that the user will return to your app.
According to Statista, 25 percent apps downloaded by mobile app users worldwide are only accessed once after download.
So, how do you ensure that users keep coming back to your app for more?
The underlying reason why most users abandon a branded app is either poor UX or it focuses more on novelty value and lacks functionality. So, here are some common mistakes that you should avoid when creating an app and to establish it as an effective brand marketing channel.
1. The app doesn’t provide any value to the user
Every app operates on a pain point and it is designed to solve a specific user problem. This holds true for branded apps as well. If your app is a means to place advertisements on your customers’ mobiles, you are doing it wrong.
A branded app should solve user problems in one manner or another. It is only when you create a useful product that provides some value on an ongoing basis, that users will keep coming back to the app. The ideal approach is to know your target audience, study their needs and determine what they expect from your app.
2. The app lacks special offers
The idea behind a branded app is to create awareness and enhance customer loyalty. If a branded app doesn’t offer discounts, special offers and other app usage benefits, customers will most likely abandon the application.
3. The app is difficult to use
The simplest way to identify a good app is how convenient and intuitive it is for the customers. If the app is complicated to use regardless of the functionality it offers, it won’t appeal to a mass audience.
4. The app lacks updates
It is essential to keep up with the rapid shifts in technology and implement the same into your app. If you change your marketing strategy, website design or provide better branding, you must ensure that you have enough resources to make the same updates on your app.
5. The app doesn’t move beyond the desktop experience
If you consider an app as a smaller version of the website with the same features, you aren’t leveraging the app as a right marketing channel. A branded app is more than a novelty value and must provide important features and information.
6. The app doesn’t provide a personalised touch
Today a wide variety of content is available on the Internet and with ever decreasing attention spans, it has become significantly important to provide a personalised touch with your application.
Through a branded app you can target each individual based on their unique preferences and get closer to your customers. By sending personalised push notifications you can retain your users and turn them into loyal customers.
How to establish a Mobile App Marketing Strategy?
Having an app marketing plan is extremely crucial when creating a branded mobile app. So, dig deep and understand what your business needs. There are many types of mobile apps but the crucial factors that come into play when creating a branded app are as follows:
Acquisition: You must ensure that when a user onboards and shares their personal information on your app, they come across a variety of useful mobile features that add some value to their life.
Engagement: Your app should be able to capture user attention, engage customers with the brand and keep them coming for more.
Conversion: Besides engaging customers, your app should focus on driving users to conversion.
Next thing that you need to figure out is the product pricing strategy. Product pricing strategy or mobile app monetization plays an instrumental role in getting your app the initial traction and visibility in the app store. The app pricing model determines the success of your product in terms of the number of downloads and user retention in the long run. It is essential to take into account the cost and value, run a competitor audit, gauge the estimated demand and analyse the cost of user acquisition before opting for a pricing model.
Here’s our Insight on how to choose the right pricing strategy for your mobile app project
Making a branded app is one thing but you also need to understand that the mobile app ecosystem is a challenging environment.
It is a given that regardless of how well crafted your application is, it will not get its spot under the sun until it is marketed right and there is a buzz around it much before it hits the stores and users’ devices.
So, how to promote your brand with mobile apps?
Well, here’s a definitive mobile app promotion guide that will help your market your brand
A Brand Marketing Channel for the world’s largest Furniture retailer IKEA
The lack of mobile app as a brand marketing channel is often felt by startups and established enterprises.
For IKEA, we developed an impeccable solution that helps walk-in customers go through the products catalogue. With a simple and comprehensible user interface, the application displays the products straight from the inventory, eliminating the chances of disharmony between the customer demand and the product supply.
Moreover, it offers customers access to product discounts and offers all in one place.
We solved the problem that IKEA was facing, and with our effective solution customers got a catalogue that displayed all the store offers and discounts in one place and retailers got the contact information of hundreds of store customers for sending them marketing collaterals.
Conclusion
A mobile app is considered a brand’s own marketing platform. It establishes a direct marketing channel and allows marketers to reach a wide range of users around the world. If you are still not leveraging mobile apps as your brands marketing channel, you are certainly lagging behind. It is time you explore the new marketing avenues and jump on the wagon.
Generally, when it comes to computer security, people often misunderstand terms of cybersecurity and information security for the same meaning. But do both of these terms mean the same though? Well, let’s proceed further to find out!
What is Cybersecurity?
While cybersecurity and information security may seem synonymous to users, both terms are theoretically different in the concept of security. Cybersecurity is the amalgamation of processes, technologies, and practices, chiefly designed to protect data, systems, networks, and programs from unauthorized access and cyber-attacks.
Organizations transmit sensitive and confidential data across networks and to other devices for business purposes on a daily basis. This is where cybersecurity plays the role of securing information and systems used for process or storage from various types of attacks in cybersecurity.
As ever-evolving cyber-attacks are rapidly on the rise, implementing cybersecurity solutions helps in safeguarding the data related to confidential and financial records of the company. Employee security awareness, training tools, incident response tools, email authentication protocols, brand monitoring tools, etc. are some types of cybersecurity solutions.
What is Information Security?
Cybersecurity explained above states the focus on the security of process and technology. However, information security is entirely a different concept. Information security plays a role in ensuring that both digital and physical data is being protected from unauthorized access, exploitation, recording, disclosure or modification.
The abbreviated term of information security is “infosec” and is also referred to as “data security”. It aims to keep data secure regardless of digital or physical form. Moreover, information security is a set of practices to keep data secure during scenarios where it is being stored or transmitted from one device or place to another.
While information security remains to be a primary focus in protecting the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data, maintaining organizational productivity is equally an important concern. This is why information security offers guidance, security policies, industry standards in passwords, antivirus software and information security awareness to provide best practices.
So, if cybersecurity and information security work on the same goal of safeguarding an organization’s data, then what differentiates both terms? Let’s find out with the difference stated below!
Cybersecurity Vs. Information Security: 5 Key Differences
Before continuing to learn what differs both terms, it is important to understand that cybersecurity is basically a subset of information security. You can consider information security as an umbrella with cybersecurity coming underneath it along with other security standards.
Now let’s read further to figure out the differences between these two terms:
Cybersecurity
Information Security
Security of data and information in digital or electronic form.
Protection of data from cyber frauds, cybercrimes, cyber-attacks, and law enforcement.
This focuses on securing the cyber resilience of an organization including personal data present on the digital and electronic platform.
The advanced step to combat persistent cyber threats that are imminent.
Deals with cyber threats like phishing, ransomware, risk of removable media, cyber scams, vishing, and smishing.
Security of information assets, existing in both physical and digital form.
Protection of information from unauthorized access, disclosure, modification, misuse or destruction.
This focuses on securing information assets of an organization like integrity, confidentiality, and availability.
The foremost step in the foundation of data security.
This deals with all sorts of security threats to ensure that proper security protocols are set in place.
From the above-given table, now we can easily differentiate between both the terms. While information security mainly concerns protecting data of organization from any sort of unauthorized access, cybersecurity ensures that an organization’s electronic data is secure from cyber threat actors. Cybersecurity is a broad practice of ensuring that servers, networks, and email channels remain protected and accessible to only authorized users that fall under the realm of information security.
Although, the information is not the only area of concern for cyber threat attackers. Some hackers are keener about uncovering the user’s login credentials and gaining unauthorized access to closed networks. Their purpose to do so is to manipulate the data and website or hamper the essential functions.
To prevent hackers from attempting such malicious activities, patching up existing vulnerabilities in networks and devices is a must. Doing so leaves no room for hackers or cyber threat actors to make any possible interaction between the computer device and network or server.
This is why we have certain types of cybersecurity solutions that hold a wide scope right now. Moreover, the experts in this field will have high demand over the next decade too due to the introduction of new technology trends.
The Parallel-ground Between Cybersecurity & Information Security
After all these differences, you might wonder if there is any parallel-ground between cybersecurity and information security or not. Well, the answer is yes! Both cybersecurity and information security are the foundation to information risk management.
While cybersecurity professionals are mainly concerned with safeguarding electronic data from cyber risks and data breaches, they still perform physical security practices. Just like information security professionals keep a cabinet full of confidential information locked, cybersecurity experts require physical security measures to keep adequate data protected. It is impossible to physically lock a computer device, but having security protocols in place, one can easily prevent unauthorized access.
Both cybersecurity and information security are crucial aspects of technology in this evolving 21st century. Organizations looking forward to data security must understand the importance of these two aspects of technology. Every security administration of an organization must stay one step ahead of the ever-evolving security threats.
They are needed to provide and implement the best security awareness training practices and as well as analytical tools to monitor phishing and fraud activities taking place on the online platform. With constantly developing technology and the IT world, security professionals must stay updated to tackle down the evolving security risks and prevent future cyber threats.
But when Facebook acquired WhatsApp, startups’ third eye of innovation opened. And we saw a new slew of messaging apps entering the sector and the existing ones expanding their business model.
Facebook’s acquisition of Whatsapp, which was one of the biggest business deals of 2014, presumed to make Facebook all the more profitable, ironically flamed the demand for Telegram application – one that was operating as a sidelined app before.
Users who were already wary of Facebook in terms of how it used their data, switched to Telegram – the app which offered end-to-end encryption of messages. And within no time, without any single point promotional effort, the download rate of the messaging app increased by 1.8 million users.
Between then and now, the messaging industry has not just acknowledged Telegram as a top player but is finding answers to how to build a chat app like Telegram. Especially its flagship incorporation of Bots in messaging app but also an encryption architecture that makes it impossible to hack.
Today, we are going to look into the different facets of Telegram like messaging app development, helping you get to the bottom of what made Telegram successful and the roadmap you will have to follow to become a success.
How Much Does it Cost to Develop an App like Telegram?
How Does Telegram Makes Money? What is the Telegram Business Model?
How To Make Money With An App Like Telegram?
Business Level Challenges In Making An App Like Telegram
Telegram App Outlook
While the above image surmises the Telegram market share and its basic level synopsis, in order for you to get a complete understanding of the application, you will have to look at the business from the inside – who constitutes its users, which companies it competes with and what makes it stand out in the otherwise competitive messaging space.
Knowing what the business stands for will help you understand how to create a messaging app like Telegram.
Who Uses Telegram Application?
The prime difference between Telegram vs. WhatsApp chat applications is that Unlike WhatsApp which specifies that the users should be 18 years of age and above, Telegram has posed no such restriction on the platform. People of any age can interact with the application. Purpose wise, Telegram is used for both personal and business purposes by its users. The set of features that the app works with makes it a competitor of both WhatsApp and Skype.
The application is active in a number of nations, but it is most actively used in the Asian nations.
The primal reasons why users opt for Telegram application are:
Encryption of message, which highlights the brand’s focus on users’ privacy
The fact that they are not backed by any agency that would have the need for users’ data to support their business model.
Who Are Telegram App Top Competitors?
Telegram messaging app sees competition from both business messaging and personal messaging app front. So, the app has competitors in both WhatsApp, Facebook messenger and Slack, Skype for Business.
Must-Have Features for Telegram App Development
Being a messaging app, the features and functionalities that Telegram app comes with is similar to other messaging app platforms operative in the industry.
To revise, here are some of the features of a messaging app which Telegram app also shares within their ecosystem – Login, Text functionality, Creation of Group, Ability to make calls, Notifications, Sharing of Live Locations, etc.
Admin-Side Features of Telegram Application
In addition to these features, there are some functions of a messaging app like Telegram that help the brand stand ahead of its competitors.
Here are what those Telegram specific features are:
1. Multi-Platform Availability
The application is not only active on Android and iOS, but also Web. So, can take the help of either an app development company or take an iPhone development route to get started with the process of when you build Telegram clone app.
2. End to End Encryptions
Telegram is one of those few messaging apps that use end to end encryption to safeguard the information shared on the platform.
3. Multiple Accounts
The app allows users to log in from multiple accounts and use the application from different numbers, instead of restricting their usage on one number, like in case of WhatsApp messaging application.
4. Chatbots
Telegram was one of the first messaging platforms to include the functionality of chatbots within the application. The bot helps users with a number of tasks starting from reporting the recent news to enabling in-app purchases.
5. Cloud Storage
Telegram works on cloud storage. And since cloud storage is known to be dynamic, it allows users to access their data from anywhere once it is saved in the app, without asking them to back-up their data.
This cloud storage facility also enables them to track their sessions and download files any time they see fit.
6. File Type and Size
The maximum data size that you can transfer within the application is of 1.5 Gigabytes. The app also does not stop users from sending over specific file types. This makes the platform a go-to messaging apps for people who uses rare file types.
7. Multiple Groups Creation
There are two types of groups which you can create on telegram application:
Normal Groups – Ones where you add people from the contact list. These can have 200 bots and members
Super Groups – Every group can be promoted as a Super Group which is private and can have over 100,000 members and bots.
While the features that Telegram comes packaged with, already creates a distinction between the famous messaging app and its competitors, what truly sets it apart is the user experience that it offers to its stakeholders.
Telegram App User Experience Module
The application, straight from its onboarding page, highlights the best of its offerings and showcases what the users will get when they’ll install the application.
From the moment you sign in, the whole user flow that follows, makes the application an example of a focused, minimalistic mobile app.
The colour combination and icons, text combination that Telegram uses is also directed towards making it an easy in and out experience for the users.
Elements wise, they have not added multiple functionalities in the application that would take the focus away from messaging or making video calls.
Creation of an application that can support an expensive feature set and minimal design standards like Telegram app does, calls for a technology stack that is hand-picked to provide a safe ecosystem for millions of users to interact and share data in real-time without any lags and breaches.
Let us look at the probable tech stack that Telegram app operates on next.
Technology Stack of Telegram Application
Telegram application is assumed to be made on some of the most robust technological combination of the modern time, which includes C++, Cocoa, JavaScript, and Objective-C etc.
How Much Does it Cost to Develop an App like Telegram?
Even though the factors that affect mobile app development cost remains same in case of Telegram app like it would in any other app, the cost of Telegram application is several numbers ahead of the developmental cost of messaging apps like WhatsApp, Android Messages and Facebook messenger etc.
The reason behind a greater cost of developing chat app like Telegram is the backend technologies it works around and the measures it takes to keep the data secure and unhackable.
Additionally, the fact that the app witnesses millions of users being active on the platform in real-time, performing multiple actions like messaging, making calls, making in-app payments, shopping, etc. makes the designing and development of the application all the more cost inducing compared to other apps in the same category.
How Does Telegram Makes Money? What is the Telegram Business Model?
Business/revenue model is the core structure of any business. This offline business necessity holds equal prominence in the online/ mobile space as well.
Businesses, irrespective of what category they operate in and what user size backs them need inflow of funds to keep the operation afloat – At least that is what we have grown to believe in.
Telegram, opposedly, did not had a single source of revenue planned for themselves till much recently. Meaning, the Telegram revenue model was something that never existed in the company’s books.
Right from the company’s establishment, the founder, Pavel Durov has been very clear that Telegram will never be a money-making business. The aim would always be on offering a safe, encrypted platform for people to interact in. This is the reason why the brand never saw funding coming in from only source nor any other mode of revenue generation. Telegram is till date working on the money that Pavel received upon selling his social media platform.
But as the rule of the business goes, you cannot grow your business forever until you maintain a balance between expense and revenue. Telegram took its first step monetization 3 years back where the team developed and released paid stickers on iMessage and the money which is being earned through the medium is being used to pay designers and developers.
Now while the amount earned through this Telegram revenue model route is not enough, the brand assures users that it will introduce non-essential options but will never turn towards advertisements option to earn money for making profit is not their end goal.
But just because Telegram’s founder had a financial back doesn’t mean you would to. In order for you to survive in the industry, you will have to look into multiple ways to earn money on your Telegram clone app.
How To Make Money With An App Like Telegram?
There are four most-applied ways that are a part of chat application monetization model, through which messaging apps generally make money and how you can too. Here are what those ways are:
Advertising
Partnering with brands to show their ads on the app is one of the most incorporates ways to earn money on your app. Everytime a user clicks on an app, you get money in return from the business.
In-App purchase
You can add elements in your application like Stickers or Gifs which you can allow your users to purchase in monetary terms.
In-App money transfer
Although this would require you to expand your messaging app business, but you can create a structure for your users to send money to other users from within the application. This way, while you will get a portion of the transaction fees, they will not have to jump to other applications to perform the task.
Gaming
This too, like in-app money transfer would require you to expand your business offering. In this part of the application you can give your users the ability play games within the application by making payment – either to play the game or jump to the next level.
Business Level Challenges In Making An App Like Telegram
The challenges that startups might face when developing a complex application like Telegram are majorly four-fold. Two of those issues are such which would need a technical solution while there are two issues which have to be solved by the business itself.
Choosing the Platform
While Telegram is available on all – Android, iOS, and Web, the maximum installs that it gets is from Android. While Telegram has reached a business level where it can afford lags in terms of low traffic, for a startup, it will be very important to choose between Android and iOS platforms to start with and then decide whether or not to expand into the Web platform.
A wrong decision on this front can lead to startups losing a good portion of their limited money in vain.
Database Choice especially on Concurrency Grounds
The next technically inclined challenge that businesses can face would be in terms of the database choice. An issue that emerges with developing architecture of messaging apps of all types and complexities.
Ideally, they should prepare for a Telegram like messaging app development process that would prepare the app to can handle multiple users in real time, assuming they are all performing the most server draining tasks like uploading large sized documents or doing video calls.
As a mobile app development company that specializes in the development of complex telegram like messaging app development, we make use of Microservices architecture instead of Monolithic to ensure that the app never crashes and is ready to hold millions of concurrent users, with all of them performing highly complex tasks.
Raising Money for Development and/or Expansion
The technicalities, minimalist design, and complexities that Telegram like messaging app development process comes attached with doesn’t just make it a time taking affair but also a highly costly one.
While Telegram had a financial backup to manage their operations, assuming you are a startup that doesn’t have the same privilege, you will arrange for funds to build Telegram clone app.
Attracting Users
Telegram claims that it has till date not spent a dime on the promotion of the messaging platform. The mediums that have helped them spread their business actively and attract new users are:
Telegraph
It is a publishing tool which lets users develop fully formatted post along with media files. Additionally, the Telegraph posts are supported by the Instant view functionality, making it easy to access content within the application.
Gaming Platform
Telegram comes with a Gaming platform that allows you to develop HTML5 games with minimal sounds and graphics. These games are then loaded on-demand like web pages instead of asking to be downloaded on the users’ devices.
Telegram Passport
The service lets users store their personal data like passports, national IDs, receipts, and bills etc. on the cloud which is protected with end-to-end encryption. The messaging platform itself cannot access the data, which makes it an attraction point for security focused users.
Bot APIs
The API enables developers to connect their program to Telegram system. They also give mobile app developers a space to create their own bots, which can even be powered by Artificial Intelligence.
While Telegram has taken an unconventional route to promote their application, you can follow the usual practices to promote your application – advertisements, creation of website, using social media to promote the app, pushing it on product sites like Producthunt, etc.
We can help you find solutions to all these issues and many other unsurfaced ones. Get in touch with our business consultants today.
On one hand, while the world is struggling with the pandemic COVID-19, another struggle is going on. Offices are now vacant and people are working from home. Employees do matter and so does the business. This is the reason behind the worldwide active adoption of ‘work from home’ culture.
However, work from home culture has its own drawbacks. Offices are secured with strong cyber security infrastructure along with a dedicated security team that monitors suspicious activities. Even after such stringent monitoring, cyber attacks still occur on organizations. One can imagine how vulnerable cyber security becomes when employees work from home.
In research conducted for the month of February and March, it was realized that there was a whopping 600% increase in cyber threats related to the COVID-19 pandemic. 40% of companies which enabled work from home policy for employees reported an increase in cyberattacks.
Employees must be provided with the knowledge to identify cyber-attacks such asawareness against phishing emails, risks associated with the use of public Wi-Fi, to ensure the security of the devices being used for work.
2. Secure medium of communication
Always use a secure medium of communication for official purposes. Make sure that security protocols such as DMARC are set in your email domain to secure it against any attempt of spoofing or abuse.
3. Deploy a phishing incident response team
In such a critical time when businesses are being hit hard, neglecting security can be an extremely dangerous situation for any organization. Every single effort matters and each form of vulnerability has to be taken into consideration. Since the majority of cyber attacks occur via emails. Therefore, a Phishing Incident Response tool is the need of the hour. A single vigilant employee can save the entire organization. A phishing incident tool empowers employees with the capability to report suspicious emails.
4. Deploy a VPN
Deploy a VPN for secure data transfer between the core system and work systems that employees are using remotely. It adds on as an additional layer of security by encrypting data while travelling.
5. VDI
Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) allows employees to work in a virtual environment as if they are connected to company’s local network from any place, at any time and from any device that is connected with the Internet. With VDI, data is stored on a server rather than the individual system. Not only does it significantly lower down risks to data but also, a lesser amount of bandwidth is required to store it.
6. Encourage employees to use cloud services
Encourage employees to use cloud services like doc, spreadsheet, etc. since this minimizes the risk to data as it is not stored locally.
7. Deploy an MDM solution
Deploying an MDM solution helps the organization in retaining control over business-related sensitive data. The solution allows administrators to remotely lock the devices and wipe all the data in case the device gets stolen. This prevents sensitive data from falling into the wrong hands.
Do You Want to Keep Your Organization Secure?
We are providing a 30-day free cyber health checkup for your organization. This will consist of free cyber security consultation and solutions including:
SaaS-based email authentication and anti-spoofing solution KDMARC
IoT – the concept which started taking leap decades ago has today not just gotten mainstream but has also marked a presence, across industries and the globe.
With its market size poised to be 1.6 trillion by the time we reach 2025, entrepreneurs and businesses from all corners are finding opportunities to enter the segment.
In this article, we are going to look into the IoT trends and its advantages, which would act as a torchbearer for businesses looking for an area to expand into.
And since we are well past the stage where we address what is IoT and how IoT works, and what are the advantages of IoT, let us jump straight to IoT app development trends in the world.
But before that, here’s a quick synopsis of the IoT market to set the tone of the article.
18 Striking IoT Trends 2021 and Beyond
1. Rise in number & types of IoT devices
2017 ended with 8.4 billion IoT connected devices, 2018 saw the number increase to 9.2 billion. The 2021 number is all set to be 20.8 billion by the time the year ends.
It is not just the number of connected devices which is on a rise but also the types. Here are the different IoT device types that are expected to go mainstream this year:
Voice Assistants
GPS Trackers
Smart Bands or Fitness Bands.
Smart Locks
Smart Smoke Alarms
Amazon Dash button
Smoke Detectors
Child Monitor
Doorbell Cameras
Home mesh Wifi Systems
Fitness Devices
Wearables
IoT based Security Systems
Security Cameras
2. Consumer IoT (CIoT) and Industrial IoT (IIoT)
CIoT is an IoT ecosystem that assists organizations with improving user experience by utilizing “insight” on users’ Internet-connected gadgets.
The customer IoT market is active for the last five years and is giving indications of slowing down. The Industrial Internet of Things on the other hand will start getting more attention as more and more companies start building modern industrial systems that want the adoption of IoT. Utilizing industrial IoT can decrease the probability of unexpected episodes in data transmission, information processing, or centralized administration.
3. Smart homes will become a norm
Even people who discarded smart homes as devices for pretentious youngsters are now finding it difficult to ignore the capabilities the technology comes with. While it started with a steady growth, the demand for connected home devices will see a sharp rise in the years to come.
This demand, in turn, will increase the need for the manufacturing of connected electronic devices.
4. Cloud & edge computing
For a long time, the IoT devices have been relying on the cloud for storing their data. But the IoT application development industry has now started wondering about the implications of utilizing storing, calculation, and analyzing data to limit.
They are demanding that instead of sending the data from IoT devices to cloud, the data should first be transferred to local devices which are closer to the edge of the network. This local storage helps in sorting, filtering, and calculating the data and sending a part or the whole data to the cloud, thus reducing the traffic to network.
Edge computing offers a series of benefits to an IoT application development company and developers, which makes it one of the key emerging trends in IoT technology –
Better management of large amount of data which every device sends
Lowered dependency on cloud helping apps perform faster with reduced latency
IoT based mobile apps consumes less bandwidth.
5. A greater focus on IoT security
With the adoption being on a rise, more and more devices are getting connected to the Internet of Things. And as the network is expanding, the volume of data is also expanding and there is more information which is at risk. In fact, the security vulnerability has also become a prominent answer of what are the challenges in IoT domain.
This greater use of IoT tools and technologies must be accompanied with a greater boost to IoT security awareness and training. The year to come will see machine to machine authentication overlapping, biometric logins becoming a norm, and technology combinations like IoT and big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence being used to eliminate data infractions.
6. Greater personalization
There would hardly be any industry left which has incorporated IoT in its offerings and is not taking advantage of personalization. With the help of beacon and sensors, the retail domain will be able to deliver next-level service offerings, through the use of IoT technology. Likewise, sectors like Healthcare and Edutech will also be able to deliver customized value offerings to their end customers.
This time can also be seen as a golden period for marketers looking to make a unique impact on their customers.
7. Incorporation of artificial intelligence, big data, and machine learning
There was once a time when the goal of IoT was to collect data coming in from multiple sources. But today, the intent has become to not just collect data but also extract useful information from it.
Incorporation of next gen technologies like Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning will define the trends and implications of IoT in the coming time.
Using the data analytics tools in the connected devices, businesses will be able to decisions around both predictive and preventive measures. And soon it will become a part of the latest IoT trends, both of the present time and the future.
8. Blockchain for IoT security and BaaS will become mainstream
Although an extension on the security section, the integration of IoT and Blockchain deserves special attention of Blockchain development companies.
There are some pestering issues that IoT faces which have been adversely affecting the overall IoT growth trends and its mass adoption – Scalability, High Cost, Security, etc. being a few of them. A majority of these issues can be traced back to the centralized network.
Being centralized, there is minimal to zero guarantee in terms of security, especially since the data is held by a specific party.
Blockchain, being decentralized eliminates the issues of lack of security and control being with one party. The plethora of benefits that the combination of IoT and Blockchain offers makes it one of the important trend in IoT technology.
9. Smart cities will start flourishing
What has been lying in the background for some years now, Smart Cities will become a thing of reality in the time to come. 2021 and the years to come will see the inception of several internet of things applications, which would be directed at improving environmental, social, and financial elements of urban living. The tech spending directed towards smart cities and the efforts to build IoT architecture, which is anticipated to reach $80 billion by 2050 will become a prime ingredient in the goal to improve the quality of living and sustainability.
10. SaaS will emerge as a norm
It is impossible to talk about the technology without mentioning the benefits of cloud computing in IoT. By making data accessible in real-time, SaaS will find itself getting explored by a number of businesses as part of IoT trends 2021.
The time to come will see more cloud vendors coming in the picture for becoming an active part of the dependency that mass IoT adoption will bring alongside.
11. Unified IoT framework
The absence of a unified IoT framework is something that has been a major challenge for the IoT industry for a long time. The fact that not many companies work around a shared central platform, affects the adoption process to a huge extent.
Solving the issue through Blockchain will be one of the major IoT trends 2021. Blockchain driven ecosystem will bring all the data in one place with a decentralized operation model where the information will not be in control of any one entity.
12. Increased consumer adoption
One of the prime IoT market trends and the time to come will see IoT being used for not just personal or consumer based use but also industrial use. A validation of this can be seen in the numbers that the IoT connecting devices were set to grow to over 3.7 billion by 2019 and to over 50 billion by the time next year ends.
While the consumer based adoption of IoT is well talked about, we will look into the industrial internet of things in much detail in the next section.
As of now, the future of IoT lies in worldwide adoption.
13. Location tracking and wireless sensing will become a lot more relevant
One of the major IoT Mobile App Development Trends will be seen in efficient tracking of location and wireless sensing.
With 5G prepared to come on the forefront, apps will get new capabilities on these fronts. According to Gartner, wireless sensing will be used for the creation of drone and virtual assistants, in addition to being helpful in object recognition, and medical diagnostics.
14. Greater efficiency and personalization in customer service
There are several use cases of how is IoT shaping up the future of better customer service. Operative majorly at the back of IoT and Big Data convergence, customer experience is poised to become a lot more personalized in the coming time. The combination of both is what would help in achieving true omni-channel customer experience, which is a need of every modern day business, irrespective of what industry they belong to.
15. Voice will become the new mode of communication
Voice search, while already extremely hyped in the market, will see new demand flourishing this year. This time, it will be around IoT devices – for summoning them, connecting them with other devices.
This operation has majorly been done by algorithms, but from this year, you will see the operation becoming voice centric.
16. Predictive maintenance will witness a rise
The next-gen manufacturing tools will make use of built-in sensors and advanced programming for performing predictive analytics and forecasting the potential issues much before they actually happen.
This will not just lower the downtime but the data based predictive analytics will also eliminate guessing games from the preventative maintenance strategies. It will enable engineers to schedule and then initiate maintenance when the machines are dormant.
17. Automotive revolutionizing interaction between cars and people
The employment of IoT in the automotive sector has brought in a vast development in the field of fleet management, connected cars, maintenance systems, and in-vehicle infotainment and telematics.
An idea of auto cars is basically based on the establishment of the IoT, autonomous vehicles are about connectivity. This implies that the vehicle is remotely controlled by IoT and automated vehicles are a forthcoming entity.
IoT car support system assists an individual to take essential steps to prevent the parts of the vehicle/car from abrupt breakdown. Like dashboard indicators of a vehicle, this framework alarms the driver about the possible breakdowns. In any case, the alarms are sent to the driver’s phone, before the issue even happens. This assists the driver with making cost effective and efficient strides to evade component failure while driving.
18. Better workforce management
The use of headlights in recording the hours is expected to turn into an ordinary practice. Headlights are normally used to send messages to customers through smart phones. Decreasing the expense will expand the use of beacons in dealing with the work force. Beacons can be utilized to monitor personal and schedule tasks. All the information from these frameworks can promptly be used to populate the solutions of performance management.
Beacons can be generally used to screen the safety of the employee. This applies to circumstances where fitting safety equipment should be utilized. The health sector can utilize signals to screen the activities of doctors, medical professionals and nurses. This incorporates admittance to medical records and the use of medical equipment. IoT is quite possibly the most important subversive methods on the market.
These 18 IoT technology trends for 2021 that you just read are only the tip of the iceberg. The adoption of the technology would go above and beyond when it comes to changing the lives of millions, through connection.
On the note of changing lives, let us look at all the prospective industries IoT would touch in the coming year and how they would become new trends in IoT.
Industries That Will Get Affected by IoT in 2021
Although there are a plethora of industries which will witness IoT redefining their processes, there are a few which will play on in a front foot mode when the emerging trends in IoT are being defined.
A. Consumer electronics
The functionality of the IoT ecosystem depends entirely on the devices it interacts with. While there are already a number of IoT driven consumer devices operative in the market, there will be more to come in the coming time.
Here are some of the device types that will go mainstream in the coming time –
Next-gen locks to secure vehicles, home, and other personal belongings
Smart appliances which regulate power consumption
AI driven thermostats that adjust room temperature according to the weather outside.
B. Healthcare
The IoT trends in healthcare will touch every single aspect of the sector. IoT implementation in healthcare will affect not just the software but also the hardware systems of the industry.
Several new personal healthcare devices like wearables will enter the market, enabling consumers to monitor their own health. Another Internet of Things trends in the healthcare sector will be seen in several hardware coming into existence allowing medical officials to track staff and patients, while monitoring the medical equipment.
C. Manufacturing
The industry is one of the major sectors to become a part of industrial IoT trends 2021. Manufacturers from across the globe have already started investing in embedded devices for monitoring assets and equipment.
Commonly called smart manufacturing, Use of IoT in manufacturing improved the productivity and efficiency of operations.
D. Automotive
Majority of the IoT next six year’s growth will be seen coming from the automotive and industrial sectors, according to an IDC report. The two domains alone would highlight a yearly growth rate of 60% in the IoT sector, solely at the back of the growing number of complexities of sensors which capture data from machines, automobiles, and other industry based assets.
E. Financial service
With users opening up to the idea of conducting their financial services on different devices, the IoT trends in the financial domain will become too prevalent to ignore by financial software development companies.
The time to come will see introduction to smart cash points having connected vending machines that would allow consumers to take loan, accept deposits, transfer money, and undertake a plethora of other financial transactions straight from a device.
Apart from new financial models, the IoT trends in insurance industry will come in the forefront with the industry expanding their offerings to accommodate the risks and needs of connected devices and ecosystem.
F. Retail
The IoT trends in retail will see the industry seeing physical and eCommerce getting combined. Instead of visiting the stores, consumers will soon be able to try on outfits at home through the power of Virtual Reality. The grocery industry will also witness an overhaul with IoT changing food consumption, farming, and the overall supply chain.
The time to come will witness an Omni-Channel retail, powered by IoT app trends.
G. Energy
The incorporation of IoT in the energy sector will lead to the industry becoming a lot more efficient and streamlined in terms of energy management. The impact of IoT in the energy sector will majorly be seen in the following areas through the mode of smart cities and smart homes –
Cost Saving
Better energy consumption and management
New data source offering transparency in the system.
H. Education and training
The last but very impactful trends in IoT applications will be seen in the training and education domain. In the time to come, IoT will become a very important skill that a modern-day engineer or marketer should understand. Noting the heightened rise, we are going to see more courses lineup aiming at IoT specific studies.
We will also see businesses invest in boot-camp courses within offices to give their employees an exposure of the technology in action.
Challenges Of IoT
At present, there are four fundamental drivers of the IoT market: the ever-growing Internet connectivity, smartphone devices, and sensor devices with lower costs, great investments are filling the IoT. Also, there are four challenges for the growth of the IoT market: worries about cybersecurity, privacy, application process issues. Innovation is yet scattering.
The Internet Of Things is facing problems in many areas such as IT, Healthcare, Data Analytics and so on. Let’s discuss some of the challenges.
Scalability
Billions of internet-enables devices get associated in an enormous network where large volumes of information need to be processed. The system that stores, examines the information from IoT gadgets should be scalable. In the present period of IoT evolution everyday objects are associated with one another through the Internet. The raw information acquired from these gadgets need enormous information investigation and cloud storage for understanding helpful information.
Interoperability
Technological principles in many regions are still divided. These technologies should be joined to help us in building up a typical structure and the standard for the IoT gadgets. As the standardization cycle is still lacking interoperability of IoT. This absence of interoperability is preventing us to move towards the vision of associated everyday interoperable smart items.
Connectivity issues
In its present form, the IoT uses a centralized, server-client model to give availability to the different servers, workstations and systems. This is very productive, since the IoT is yet in its earliest stages, however what happens when billions of devices are all using the network simultaneously.
According to updated reports from Gartner, more than 20 billion individual units will connect to the IoT by 2021. It’s just a matter of time before users start to experience significant bottlenecks in IoT connectivity, efficiency and overall performance.
Conclusion
While these above mentioned emerging IoT technologies trends will be a good starting point, you will still need someone to help you with getting started with a full-fledged business in the IoT sector. And so, the next thing to follow after being accustomed with what is the future of IoT is getting in touch with an IoT app development company who would hand hold you towards future and next-gen offering.
You can also opt for companies in your area like IoT app development company USA, if you live in the US or any other area where you reside. But you have to be careful while choosing a company or developer to get quality results. Check the expertise and knowledge of the blockchain development company before finalizing any prospect.
Before cloud computing came into the picture, many companies used traditional servers to carry out operations, processes and data storage. Eventually, it became challenging and costly to completely rely on other companies later, for computing, data processing and storage. But thanks to the big giants today, for creating advanced cloud computing services for making computing and storage more convenient and manageable.
Cloud computing is a leading edge technology that stands for the delivery of high-demand computing services including applications, storage, and power processing, entirely over the internet. It means that instead of using external computer hardware and software, cloud computing offers the entire computing and data storage and processing service over the internet only.
In simpler terms, cloud computing is the practice of using a network of remote servers that are hosted on the internet. The purpose is to store, manage and process data effortlessly rather than relying on a local server or personal computer system.
For decades computer industries used to work by storing data and running programs from the hard drive. But ever since businesses have adopted the cloud computing service, with the help of online connection, it has become flexible to manage resources anytime and anywhere.
Cloud computing gives users easy access to use online services that are available through any device with an internet connection. Users don’t require to be in a certain location to utilize this service as ‘The Cloud’ is almost everywhere these days. In fact, here are some examples of companies that provide their services online through cloud services:
Understanding How Cloud Computing Works
Here is a layman’s guide to how to understand cloud computing works. Basically, cloud has two main sections: the front-end and the back-end. These sections are connected to each other through the internet network. The front-end is the user or client-side of the computer whereas the back-end includes ‘The Cloud’ section of the computer system.
The front-end that consists of the client’s computer enables the user to access data stored in the cloud with the help of the internet browser or with a cloud software. Although, all cloud computing systems do not necessarily have to use the same user interface.
On the other hand, the back-end of the cloud technology system is responsible for storing data and information securely. It includes servers, computers, data storage systems, and central servers. The central server uses a certain set of rules called protocols to facilitate operations. To ensure seamless connectivity between computers or devices that are linked through cloud , it uses middle-ware software.
Apart from these two main section components, the cloud computing services fall under three broad models:
Infrastructure as a Service(IaaS):
In this most basic service model of cloud computing, where the user can rent network connectivity, IT infrastructure resources like data center, servers, storage networking hardware and cloud computing securitycompliance from a cloud service provider. The enterprise can use the IaaS and customize it accordingly so as to build a cost-effective software offering.
Platform as a Service(PaaS)
This cloud computing service offers an on-demand environment to develop, test, deliver and manage software applications. The PaaS is designed for developers to make it easier for them to promptly develop websites or mobile applications without having to worry about the setup or management of underlying infrastructure resources.
Software as a Service (SaaS)SaaS is the largest model in the cloud market that is growing rapidly today. This model uses the web browser to deliver applications to clients that are managed by the third party vendor. Whereas, its interface is accessed to the client side. Most of the SaaS applications do not require to be downloaded as these directly run from the web browser but some plugins are required to be installed.
The Virtualization in Cloud Computing
Just like its name, cloud computing is very vast as it holds various processes, operations, and management. Similarly, it involves a process of cloud computing virtualization. The cloud computing virtualization allows a user to utilize the same server to run multiple applications and operating systems, thus providing an efficient utilization of resources as well as reducing costs.
There are four main cloud computing virtualization types:
Application Virtualization:
The application virtualization helps users to have remote access to the application from a server. The server stores the personal information and other application characteristics but still holds the potential to run on a local workstation with the internet connection.
Network Virtualization:
It is the ability to run multiple virtual networks that individually have a separate control and data plan. Network virtualization provides the facility to create and provision virtual networks such as logical switches, routers, firewalls, VPN, and workload security, either within days or even within weeks.
Desktop Virtualization:
This desktop virtualization enables users to emulate a workstation load in place of a server. It allows users to access their desktop remotely regardless of any location by a different machine. It offers the benefit of user portability, mobility, effortless management of software like installation, updates, and patches.
Server Virtualization:
This is more of a technique to mask server resources. Server virtualization stimulates physical servers by altering their identities, numbers, processors and their operating systems. This spares users from the burden of continuously managing complex server resources.
How does Cloud Computing Benefit an Organization?
Cloud computing is just not about trendy applications that people use for storing photos and videos online. It plays a major part in the business model nowadays and has taken the world by storm! With the help of cloud servives, businesses are not only getting the benefit of storing and accessing data but also the benefit of operating businesses innovatively.
Following are the advantages that cloud computing benefits organizations with today:
Cost Saving
It has been really expensive to run, manage, and deploy local systems for a long time and not to forget how much capital it has cost. With cloud computing, a user doesn’t require going through monthly expenditure of maintenance as everything is handled by the service provider itself.
Flexibility
Managing resources becomes quite easier with cloud computing as one has to simply pay for the resources that are being used each month. It offers the ease of process and operation as the Cloud storage providers offer flexible packages in which one can add or reduce the amount of storage that one pays to use.
Data Recovery
Cyberattacks can destroy a huge amount of data if everything is stored in physical servers and hard drives. As a result, it will not only lead to data loss but also to customer trust in the organization. With cloud computing, these issues are less likely to happen and even if it happens, there are massive storage locations where the data will always be safely present as a copy at another location.
Increased Security
With cloud hosting, your organization is always protected against hacking and internal data thefts. It offers a robust firewall technology that offers features like intrusion prevention systems and in streaming virus protection.
Has it ever happened to you that you try to achieve something but the end result was totally unanticipated?
Sometimes good things are an accident – Electricity, Discovery of America, Gravity, and PHP.
Wait, what?
Actually, PHP was never intentionally designed. Rasmus Lerdorf, a Danish software engineer attempted to design an easy common gateway interface by using the C language that would help him track views on his CV. Little did he know what he had created for such a menial task is going to change the face of web applications.
As for Python, the language has its own fan following spread worldwide.
What is there to see is how these two fare when put under juxtaposition. Yes! We are talking about the popular battle of PHP vs Python.
So, why don’t we begin the first round by discussing what they are, individually?
What is Python?
Well, of course, it’s not a snake (pun intended).
For real, Python is one of the few best web programming languages for web development that is winning the hearts of many around the world. It is a non-complex object-oriented, high-level, interpreted language, possessing amazing built-in data structures connected with dynamic typing and binding. It is features such as these that make developers choose this language for efficient and effective app development.
What is more, it is a scripting language that is proficient in binding and combining numerous components together. To add another jewel to its crown, it favors cross-platform development, making it ideal for web and mobile app development.
In fact, Python had recently won second place as the most popular language on Github, beating Java to dust and is one of the most loved languages.
Features of Python programming language
Fast in nature
There is no compiling in Python, for the programs are added to the interpreter which runs them directly. This is something that happens for the rest of the programming languages. It is very easy and quick to get access to the feedback on your Python code like recognizing errors, etc. Due to reasons like this, Python has the ability to execute and finish the programs speedily in comparison to other languages.
Supports test-driven development
With Python app development, coding and testing go hand-in-hand, something that is a tried and tested way to the efficacious development process. Developers are able to develop prototypes of the applications as Python allows them to refactor the code.
Amazing standard library
Another probable feature of Python programming language that enabled it to beat Java on Github, is its collection of impeccable libraries. Python’s robust standard library supports the programmers in choosing modules as per the requirements demand. Here every module allows developers to add other multiple functionalities even when the process is about to complete and that too without any additional coding.
Support for Big Data
If you have been looking forward to working on the Big Data technology but aren’t sure what should be in your tool set, then trust me, Python will be all you need to start with. This programming language is being used extensively in Big Data development; simply because it is faster and has a lot of libraries in store, that are in harmony with Big Data.
Highly compatible
Python is the first choice of developers who want to do away with the recompilation process. It is because along with supporting numerous OS like iOS, Android, Windows, etc., it allows developers to use Python interpreters to run the same code on all platforms and even modify it without performing recompilation. And on top of it, it allows programmers to check the code almost instantly when the changes are made.
Advantages of Python
Object-oriented and cross-platform programming language
Portable in nature due to WORA functionality
Highly readable, making it easy for beginners
It is open-source, a feature which makes it easily accessible
It is a constantly evolving language
Disadvantages of Python
Slightly in-effective in mobile computing and browsers
Design restrictions: Duck-typing may cause run-time errors
Delayed testing of web applications
A little too simple for certain tasks
What is PHP?
Speaking of the name itself, it has a little kick to it. The acronym does not fully describes its full form which is Hypertext Preprocessor. It is also an open-source scripting language (means a script-based program) that is server-side in nature facilitating development for every web app development company.
Additionally, it is possible to embed PHP in HTML to create dynamic web pages for web applications, database apps, and E-Commerce apps. In fact, developers consider it to be a pretty friendly language as it can connect with databases like Oracle, MySQL, etc.
Features of PHP
Highly flexible and scalable
To be successful, a language should be flexible and scalable enough to give a wiggle room to programmers to have fun, something which PHP clearly offers. It can be easily integrated with other programming languages, namely, Java and others. The components built with this language are reusable.
There are many extensions available to enable different functionalities, that help in defining many kinds of project requirements.
Fast loading speed
Speed plays a crucial role in making any programming language a favorite of developers. PHP is considered to be a high-speed rendering language as it easily establishes a connection with the database to fetch the requested data in less time as compared to many languages out there in the market.
Supports Cross-platform development
PHP is no way behind Python in catering multiple platforms, i.e, it is also a cross-platform language that helps developers in creating web applications for operating systems such as UNIX, LINUX, Windows, and more. What is more, it also supports Apache and MySQL database.
Loosely typed language
PHP is denoted as a loosely typed language as it supports variable usage without even declaring its data type. It will be taken at the time of the execution based on the kind of data it has on its value.
Error Reporting
One of the amazing features of PHP is that it has a function that generates a warning notice when something is wrong, allowing the developers to address the issues in real-time.
Advantages of PHP
Has an enormous ecosystem
Object-oriented and open-source language with an active community
Interoperability- has numerous pluggable frameworks
Supports first-class debugging
Disadvantages of PHP
Threaded and slower execution
No Internet of Things community support
Limited visibility and control
Externally dependent
PHP vs Python: Battle begins
Now, let’s see how Python Compares to PHP and vice versa.
1. Performance and speed
Speed is often synonymous with great performance in web applications. And in the case of PHP vs Python performance for web applications, it is no different. It is crucial for web apps to perform error-free while processing millions of requests at a time. PHP is considered to be much more effective at speed. Though PHP 5.x was fast, PHP 7.x broke its own records, leaving average Python programs to dust. It completes the tasks almost 3 times faster.
2. Syntax and code readability
Syntax plays a prominent part as a point of difference between PHP and Python. To be brief, the syntax of PHP kind of resembles that of the C language. The programmers have to be careful and need to use curly brackets, operators, and additional characters. What is more, developers can also ignore the white spaces while the compilation is on-going, bringing the additional usability that will assist in structuring the code into logical components.
As of Python, the syntax is made on the separation of codes with spaces and tabs, expediting the process of coding to a great extent. Moreover, Python’s syntax is readable which makes it easy for beginners to learn it effectively.
3. Price
It is a good thing that both languages are open-source which means nothing but that they are free to use. In fact, developers have advocated that these even though free in nature, maybe better than some of the paid frameworks.
4. Library Support
What gives Python an edge in the battle of PHP vs Python 2020 is that it has exceptionally extensive and well-developed library support for all types of applications developed using Python. Some of the most preferred libraries that developers use in Machine learning development along with others are TensorFlow, Theano, Scikit, etc.
Though PHP is lagging behind, it also has packages repository “Packagist” that is pretty popular among the developers.
5. Web frameworks
Both PHP and Python have loads of responsive and incredible web frameworks to start with. For Python-based web frameworks, some that stand out the most are Django, Bottle, CherryPy, Pyramid, and more.
As for PHP-based web frameworks, we have Laravel, Codeigniter, Zend, Symphony, and so on. As both Python and PHP programming languages provide a pretty good variety of choices to the developers, beginners are still a little bit more inclined towards Python’s Django framework because it is mighty fast.
6. Debugging
To give you the verdict on this point of comparison of PHP and Python before even diving deep into it, we have to say that it is a draw.
You ask why? Well, if Python has “Python Debugger” (PDB), a well-documented and facile debugger, then PHP has its “XDebug” package; both offering the most basic debug features – stacks, path mapping, breakpoints, and more.
7. Front-end feasibility
Web programmers also look forward to developing the layout or the front-end of their websites and portals using numerous effective tools along with languages like Bootstrap, CS, Angular, etc. Python here provides numerous opportunities for the developers to adopt the same techniques and later combine it with Python code by employing frameworks.
This way, designers can easily design websites, whereas the backend developers find it easy to use via a much subtle and understandable language like Python. So, definitely, Python here wins over the PHP.
8. Usability
It is prominent to consider the architecture of the languages before we conjecture anything in favor of either language.
The fact that both Python and PHP are object-oriented translate into that they compress code modules containing some functions and data in objects. So, any developer who is even a little bit familiar with object-oriented programming can use either of the languages.
9. Maturity
On the grounds of maturity, Python is inevitably the winner since it was first introduced in 1989 by Guido van Rossum and released in 1991. Its latest update 3.8.0 was released recently on 14 October 2019. It is the most mature and secure among the technologies which make the fundamental building blocks of the intricate mosaic that is the IT industry.
As for PHP, it was created in 1994 by Rasmus Lerdorf. Though not as mature as Python, it still has created a still in the market with its features. The very first manifestation of PHP was a simplistic set of Common Gateway Interface (CGI) binaries that were written in the C language. The latest version of PHP is 7.2.7.
10. Package Management
Speaking of Python, its package managers are effective in organizing the code and keeping the backups along with the version numbers. It helps the developers track their progress while helping businesses perform regular updates on the activities.
As of PHP, though is package management, however, it doesn’t match up to the PIP, a tool to manage and install Python packages. It allows developers to install, upgrade, and even uninstall while using a wide range of sources for external as well as internal libraries.
11. Market Popularity
If you want to judge or compare two things, market popularity tops the list of points of comparison, because it indicates why developers and programmers love something.
Looking at this graph above we can surmise that Python is the most searched on the web in the US as compared to PHP.
It has been observed that 7,212,664 websites have been developed using PHP, and as for Python, the number amounts to be 146,702. What is more, PHP is leading in countries like the US, Japan, Germany, and other 150+ countries. In a survey by w3techs.com, as you can see in the graph, it is evident that as of May 29, 2019, PHP was the most popular language based on traffic.
12. Versatility
Python in comparison to PHP is evidently versatile in nature as it is an ideal choice for developing websites integrated with Machine Learning and AI. It comes with an abundance of libraries that support these technologies and facilitate their integration into the web apps.
13. Well-thought-out design
While comparing PHP vs Python for backend, we found that Python, as compared to PHP, is fairly easy to grasp. Python has a well-thought-out-design (refers to the method used to insert code) than PHP. This means that developers find it easy to program for backend with Python than they do with PHP. It is simply because Python is a flexible yet robust programming language, something that PHP lacks.
14. Documentation
Well, it is a draw. Both languages have an abundance of documentation spread across the internet. Any beginner can easily find resources and documents related to any aspect of these languages and can get answers to even the most complicated queries- All thanks to their communities.
15. Environment Management
Speaking of environment managers, Python is extremely lucky in this regard. There are some terrific breed applications to manage the environment. One such example is Virtualenv – a system that is used to install and use numerous versions of Python simultaneously and switch them as often as needed with ease.
Though PHP also has an analog for Virtualenv known as VirtPHP. However, it is advised to use containers.
16. Learning Curve
Starting with PHP, being a straightforward language, it has a fairly low learning curve. It is ideal to learn PHP for short-term projects, but if you want to learn something that gives long-term benefits then Python is your match.
Though on its own PHP is easy to learn, however in comparison to Python, PHP has a steep learning curve for Python is the most readable and easily comprehensible language. It is because the language uses a much simpler syntax.
17. Community Support
Both languages enjoy the support of active communities. It is a crucial aspect for a beginner to consider before committing oneself to a particular language, simply because the learning process is full of doubts and queries and having strong support resolves half the issues.
However, we have to admit that community support of PHP is outstanding, given how actively they have been deprecating the language’s outdated aspects.
18. Salary and Job opportunities
While considering the payscale of both languages, we found that Python developers, on average, make somewhere around $120,024 every year in the United States. Whereas, PHP developers make an average of $86,017 per year.
In fact, you can see in the image above that Python developers, globally make nearly $63k, whereas PHP did not even make it to the list accumulated by Stack Flow.
Final Thoughts
To end this discussion, we would state the most obvious – both languages are differently capable in all aspects. One may surpass the other in one aspect and may lose in others. They both have their own set of features and functions to perform.
They are a paradox in themselves; there are many similarities between PHP and Python, and at the same time are dissimilar as well in many aspects.
Nevertheless, Python has emerged to be the winner in most of the comparison points such as documentation, job opportunities, salary, etc. So, it is up to an individual which one they choose based on their requirements.
Phishing attack is basically the most common but dangerous cyber-attack vector that is capable of exploiting the entire data of an organization with one click! It is a fraudulent attempt to gain user’s sensitive information and financial information for the vicious intent. This attack is deployed via email or by creating any illegitimate web page or site of an official entity to dupe users.
It is the most successful social engineering technique that is used for deceiving users into handing over their confidential data. Cyber threat actors usually target users by the medium of communication as they pretend to be from legitimate sources. These sources can be websites, banks, IT administrators, government agencies or auction houses, etc.
In technical terms, it is an online theft where cyber frauds trick users to steal and exploit their data present online. This cyber theft practice is attempted through email, instant messaging, voice calls, fax, etc. These attacks are divided into two categories:
Spoofed websites:
A platform to trick users into providing sensitive details on the data harvesting sites by compelling them through email or SMS communication.
Malware installation:
Fraudsters lure users to install malware by clicking on a download link that seems to have come from a legitimate source.
Currently, businesses are the most affected targets of phishing attacks. Reportedly, today phishing attacks have accounted for more than 80% of security incidents and a loss of $17,700. Whereas, according to the survey, around 94% of emails consist of malware and malicious attachments. 56% of the IT decision-makers believe that phishing attacks are the biggest cybersecurity threat to organizations as almost 32% of data breaches involve phishing.
How to Protect Against a Phishing Attack?
Phishers become empowered during any public crisis, regardless of the severity of the situation. They become opportunistic and search for advanced ways to deploy cyber attacks. In fact, they have squeezed out of every opportunity to such an extent that today these cyber threat actors are misusing the COVID-19 pandemic for fraudulent practices.
In this fast-growing influx of COVID-19 phishing attacks, cybercriminals are deploying email scams and are creating fraud website domains to misguide people, especially employees working from home. According to security research, over 16,000 new domains related to Coronavirus were registered from the beginning of January 2020 and the number has been multiplying rapidly ever since!
Moreover, among these Coronavirus-related website domains, most of the pages or sites were found to be malware loaded. No wonder how these phishing attacks are getting more sophisticated day by day and very unprecedented in nature. But, if taken proper preventive measures and implemented better phishing attack solutions, one can avoid falling victim to it.
Here are the following ways to protect against phishing attack:
1. Check for SSL certificate
Always check and verify the site that asks for your personal or even general information. Some URLs might begin with http:// and others with https://. The only difference is having ‘s’ on the web address. In order to verify the authenticity of a website, always check for https:// and the closed lock icon on the web address.
Sign of secure website
The ‘s’ basically stands for secure which means the website is safe to use. Also, if you click on an email link that redirects you to a website then make sure to verify the site’s SSL credentials first. The SSL certificate ensures secure and encrypted data transmission over the internet.
2. Lookout for grammatical errors
When it comes to creating a look-alike website or email, phishers can be good with coding but are often bad at writing content. Professional copywriters always ensure the quality of the content and make certain to send well-tested content with almost no error or flaw. One can detect a phishing email or website by checking the quality of the content. For example, poor grammar, illogical content flow, etc. is most likely done by inexperienced cyber scammers or frauds.
3. Phishing attack simulation training
As cybercrimes are on the rise today, organizations are expected to buckle up and train their employees for unpredicted future security threats. The best way is to educate employees about the importance of cybersecurity in an organization and what preventive measures they should take to mitigate cyber risks. Also, seeing how employees are the most vulnerable resource in any organization, it is important to train them with the help of phishing attack simulation. There are tools that offer the training of phishing attack simulation for employees in order to make them proactive in identifying phishing websites and emails.
4. Pop-ups are not always friendly
Phishing pop-ups
Avoid entering your personal information in pop-ups that appear on insecure websites. These pop-ups use Iframe technology to capture the user’s information and send it to a different domain. Although renowned and reputed websites will never ask for personal information on pop-ups, forged domains and spoofed sites can easily trick users into handing over their sensitive information.
5. Phishing incident response tool
Not every email landing in your inbox is a legitimate email because according to a survey, there is always 1 email out of 99 emails which is a phishing attack. Similarly, every 1 in 25 branded emails is a phishing email. Therefore, it is important to verify emails to check their authenticity and to do so, there are various advanced email security solutions available today. In case you find an email suspicious and fraudulent in nature, make sure to report it to a phishing incident response tool for the verification. Such tools provide real-time service to report, verify and resolve email-related issues.
6. Stay cautious of shortened links
The best way to trick any user into clicking on malicious or fake links is by sending shortened links that do not expose the real name of a website. Hackers use these shortened links to redirect users to fraud websites and obtain their personal information easily. To avoid becoming a target of such scams, always place the cursor on the provided short link to check the redirecting location before clicking on it.
7. Update all security patches
Keeping all the security patches up-to-date will not only mitigate the chances of cyber attacks but will also offer a cyber-resilient working environment. Hackers and cybercriminals majorly look for vulnerabilities in systems, software or applications to gain unauthorized access and exploit user’s data. For the best practice, always keep your system and web browsers up to date with the latest versions. The main purpose of this is that all these recent updates are released in response to security loopholes that hackers and cyber attackers seek for.
8. Avoid unexpected alarming emails
Phishing email example
One of the best techniques phishers use is sending panic-creating emails that contain alarming content. These emails are popular with subject lines such as Alert, Deadline, Urgent Request, etc., to provoke users to respond.
It is always better to avoid such emails and specifically the unexpected ones that ask for urgent data submission or requests for downloads. You must always get such emails verified by the IT security administrator of your organization before taking any action to revert.
9. Double-check the sender’s email address
The first step to identify whether an email is legitimate or not is to always check the email address of the sender. Cyber thieves create spoofed email addresses to dupe users into thinking that the email has come from a legitimate source. Moreover, without giving a second glance, victims directly reach for email attachments. It is important to understand how the mindset of phishers works and how vulnerable we are left due to our negligence.
An organization’s reputation is very important on a digital platform as today most of the business comes from online resources and researches. Your brand represents your reputation online so it is essential to monitor activities taking place online in the name of your firm. Cyber fraudsters have now become more advanced and are using more complex methods to trick users for their malicious intent. Phishing websites are one of the widely used methods to dupe and diverge customers from the legitimate website of an organization to a look-alike fraud page. Security admins must implement an anti-phishing, fraud monitoring & takedown tool to monitor phishing and fraud activities taking place in the name of the organization. Once tracked, these fake domains can be instantly taken down the web browser to stop copyright infringement online.
![Importance of Project Documentation in Project Management [Updated]](https://www.simplilearn.com/ice9/free_resources_article_thumb/project-documentation-article.jpg)
