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Number of cyberattacks rose 30% in 2023 and there were numerous major cyberattacks in 2023. Following the Russian-Ukrainian war, Fitch Ratings warned organizations about the growth of cyber risks.
Companies need to take action to improve their cybersecurity posture before they lose money and reputation as a result of a successful breach (see Figure 1). This article introduces the top 10 cybersecurity best practices for executives to improve their firms’ cybersecurity posture.
Figure 1: Cost of successful cyberattacks:
Long and short-term costs of cyberattacks
1. Prepare board and C-level leadersWithout board and C-level leadership buy-in and oversight, it is almost always impossible for firms to transform. The cybersecurity posture of a company is not an exception. The board needs to demonstrate a high maturity about cybersecurity concerns where they have at least basic knowledge about:
Cost of cyber threats.
Types of cyber attacks.
Industry-related cyber weaknesses.
Compliance measures.
Recent cybersecurity posture of the company.
Available technologies.
In a company that has an effective organizational structure, board and C-level leaders should have the following duties:
C-level cybersecurity leaders: The board must appoint a C-level leader, such as a chief information security officer (CISO), to be responsible for the company’s cybersecurity management. This person should be knowledgeable about both the business and technological aspects of the issue.
Regular cybersecurity meetings: Cyberattacks and their results must be regularly shared with the board. However, according to the “2023 cybersecurity breaches” survey, almost one-third of companies do not inform the board.
Board-departments collaboration: The company’s cybersecurity policy must be disclosed to the board. Departments and boards of directors must work up a budget for system maintenance and new technology investment. However, almost 70% of companies do not take such actions.
Third-party assurance: Firms must work with third parties to ensure their progress.
Targeting international certificates: Board must consider having international certifications like ISO 27001 or HIPAA that represent data compliance of companies. Targeting such certificates help firms to improve their cybersecurity posture.
2. Determine your current cybersecurity posturePrioritization is critical for introducing a successful transformation plan. Firms must begin improving their cybersecurity posture by minimizing the greatest risk instruments. Consider your firm and the data where attackers are most likely to strike.
Would they be interested in personal information about your employees or your customer databases or intellectual property? Make a list of the most likely targets. Consider the regulations you must meet and your current measures for protecting employee and customer intellectual property data. For example, in March 2023, the US Congress passed a bill requiring firms in vital sectors (finance, transportation, and energy) to report cyberattacks and data breaches immediately to defend national infrastructure.
After finding these weak points, you can search for ways that mitigate these risks.
3. Enhance employees’ cybersecurity awarenessAlmost half of the business leaders think personal mistakes are the primary cause of a data leak at their company. The rise of remote/hybrid working expands the scope of employee-caused data breaches, as mobile workers frequently use insecure computers and Wi-Fi networks, making them easy targets for hackers.
Therefore, educating employees regarding the following issues is an important cybersecurity best practice:
Pop-ups, unknown emails, and links: Phishing and hacking people by sending some links or pop-ups are frequent types of cyberattacks. Fraudsters try to steal information from employees by sending them official-looking emails. Employees of all levels should receive regular cybersecurity awareness training to help them become better at recognizing phishing emails, fake websites, bogus, and other signs of fraud.
Passwords: Fraudsters have sophisticated methods for cracking passwords, and it is relatively simple for them to do so, especially if your password contains your name or date of birth. A password should be at least 12 characters long and have a combination of numbers, symbols, and upper- and lower-case letters. Firms should, however, utilize multi-factor authentication for added protection, as we outline in best practices #4.
Wi-Fi security: Cybercriminals can utilize wireless sniffing software to reach data and transactions when employees use public access points that are not secured. Thus, employees should not use public Wi-Fi, especially when they work with sensitive data.
Software updates and patches: Only 43% of corporations have a commitment of installing software upgrades within 14 days. On the other hand, businesses can protect themselves against cyber dangers by updating software. Thus, they should educate their employees on the need for updating.
Regular virus monitoring: Employees often use their own laptops or devices due to remote/hybrid working. However, they might not have antivirus programs or they might not use them regularly. Thus malware software can cause data breaches.
4. Implement zero trust cybersecurity paradigmAccording to the zero trust cybersecurity paradigm, potential users, devices, and network systems are always verified to gain access to documents. Thus, it is a suitable cybersecurity best practice in today’s hybrid/remote working practices where the device and network security is ambiguous.
Introduce multi-factor authentication: Cyber attacks often use hacked accounts to gain access to a firm’s internal resources. Multi-factor authentication makes it difficult for hackers to access corporate data.
Validating devices: Device identity and security, in addition to user identification, should be validated systematically.
Minimize data access: Allowing employees access to as little data as they need to complete tasks (least access privilege) reduces the attack surface and, thus, the cost of successful breaches.
Adopt micro-segmentation: To prevent computer viruses from spreading quickly (lateral movement), data should be stored in numerous micro-segments.
5. Adopt suitable technology to reach zero trust principlesSome technologies support a zero-trust mentality. Companies can deploy the following technologies to improve their cybersecurity posture:
Secure access service edge (SASE): SASE is the unified network and security solution for organizations that have network and security components together. SASE’s network as a service components includes SD-WAN, carriers, content distribution networks, and edge devices. Security as a service components includes firewall as a service, ZTNA, and SWG.
Zero trust network access (ZTNA): ZTNA is the cybersecurity solution that constantly verifies users and devices to permit access.
Secure web gateway (SWG): SWG provides protection against internet-based cyber threats thanks to functions like URL filtering and malicious code detection.
Software defined perimeter (SDP): SDP is the new generation network cloaking tool. Unlike VPN, it allows micro-segmentation and ensures the least access privilege.
Firewall: Firewall monitors and regulates network traffic based on established security protocols.
6. Conduct API security testing90% of developers rely on APIs to enhance their services efficiency and customer friendliness; however, only 11% of businesses have an API security plan that covers testing APIs in its entirety. That is why it is not surprising that 95% of APIs experienced security exploits in 2023. vulnerable API can be exploited by:
API security testing can:
Protect from external attacks.
Identify security flaws in the code before API deployment.
Comply with security regulations.
Report potential risks to the API in real-time.
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7. Employ white hat hackersMeasurements are always necessary to assess the performance of your measures. Therefore, it is logical to employ white hat hackers who examine your cybersecurity without causing any data leakages.
White hat hackers (also known as ethical hackers) utilize their hacking expertise to find security flaws in infrastructure, software, and networks. White hat hackers do not violate the law and do not cause data breaches, unlike black hat hackers.
To examine the performance of your cybersecurity posture, white hat hackers use the following methods:
Email phishing.
Denial-of-service (DoS) attack.
Pen testing.
Implement social tests within the company to assess workers’ weaknesses.
8. Implement audit trails in your digital operationsAudit trails are used to bring robustness to operations in cases such as:
Lowering the risk of fraud
Preventing significant errors in financial statements
Preventing unauthorized users from accessing company resources
Assisting businesses in identifying attempts at asset theft
Similarly, they are useful in cybersecurity in providing the data to figure out how security incidents happened.
The key to responding to unanticipated situations quickly is a timely investigation of the behaviors or movements of your staff, privileged users, or third-party vendors. An audit trail can benefit your company by:
Enhance the responsiveness to incidents by preparing security teams to learn from past incidents to better prepare for future security incidents by reconstructing events via audit trail analysis
Aiding security personnel in spotting instances where hackers attempt to breach networks and do harm.
Detecting cyberattackers’ previously hidden activity
Preventing negative actions like system abuse and internal fraud
9. Back up your critical dataAt its core, cybersecurity management is concerned with minimizing the reputational and financial consequences of cyberattacks. Consequently, businesses should consider not only preventing data breaches but also minimizing the cost of successful breaches.
Ransomware assaults, which seize business data and release it in exchange for a random amount of money, more than doubled in 2023. If the leaked documents are critical to the company’s core activities, the corporation becomes heavily dependent on hackers. As a result, routinely versioning key data and keeping it in a separate location (hardware, for example) might help businesses stay operational following a ransomware attack.
10. Purchase cybersecurity insuranceAs we digitize, new risks, such as cybersecurity risks, emerge. Thus, the insurance sector finds new instruments that reduce an entity’s risks. Cybersecurity insurance minimizes the damages of cyberattacks. As of the beginning of 2023, almost 70% of companies use such policies.
Cybersecurity insurance provides coverage for the following scenarios:
Privacy liability coverage: Covers against legal costs and penalties
Network business interruption cost: Covers expenses during a period when they are unable to function as a result of a cyberattack.
Media liability coverage: Covers reputational costs of cyberattacks.
You can also check our cybersecurity software and cybersecurity services lists.
If you need further assistance regarding cybersecurity, please contact us:
Cem regularly speaks at international technology conferences. He graduated from Bogazici University as a computer engineer and holds an MBA from Columbia Business School.
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10 Best Practices For Cyber Attack Prevention
Cyber attacks are growing in frequency and complexity, due to factors like a higher number of expert malicious actors, more distributed workforces and technologies to protect, and an increase in devices and users that can unknowingly act as attack gateways.
Although there’s no way to guarantee that an organization will stay safe from a cyber attack, several physical and technical safeguards can be established to better protect network data.
Read on to learn about how your team can stay up-to-date with the latest tools and knowledge to arm themselves against the next major cybersecurity threat.
Readers also read: Top 10 Cybersecurity Threats
Zero trust, the tools and practices behind the idea of “trusting no one and verifying everything,” is quickly becoming the most affordable and crucial part of cybersecurity efforts. Zero trust has even reached federal policy levels in the U.S., with President Joe Biden signing an executive order in May 2023 to increase national cybersecurity efforts through zero trust, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and improved encryption.
Many enterprise leaders have developed misconceptions about what zero trust means and what the security approach entails. Jim Taylor, chief product officer at SecurID, an identity and access management (IAM) company, explained what zero trust actually means when enterprises get it right:
“‘Zero trust tends to be thrown around quite a bit by marketers, so businesses should be warned: Zero trust isn’t a product, feature, or service,” Taylor said. “Instead, it’s a goal to strive toward. It’s a way of thinking, not a product. Risk isn’t the trade off we make in pursuit of convenience: It’s just a bad practice, full stop. If there’s no valid reason to expose an asset, then you simply shouldn’t, … [but] don’t get too swept up in trying to achieve true zero trust. Instead, use a risk-based approach to map the frequency, likelihood, and impact of a given event and prioritize the highest-value threats.”
Babur Khan, a technical marketing engineer for A10, a cloud and 5G network security company, believes that zero trust is an important component of cybersecurity but that it works best in combination with SSL inspection.
“SSL inspection provides in-depth traffic examination as well as detection and amelioration of malicious requests, monitoring data entering and leaving networks for analytics, and protecting against DDoS attacks, to name a few,” Khan said. “President Biden’s executive order is the most far-reaching cybersecurity infrastructure and cyberattack prevention strategy the federal government has ever put forward and its promotion of zero-rust architecture is the only practical and effective foundation for all of its goals. Adding SSL inspection completes the architecture and ensures, unlike our traditional brick-and-mortar bridges, that our cybersecurity and cyberattack prevention foundations are future-proofed.”
Getting started with zero trust: Steps to Building a Zero Trust Network
Your organization’s most frequently used apps more than likely include the remnants of users, permissions, and dated security approaches that make those tools vulnerable to attack. It’s important to check how all of those applications are configured and monitor who has access and when and how they use that access.
“The first step to keeping Active Directory secure is to ensure all aspects of AD that can be compromised are properly secured,” Melber said. “This includes users, attributes, groups, group members, permissions, trusts, Group Policy-related settings, user rights, and much more.
“A good example would be to require strong authentication on service accounts and actively manage the groups they are in. Part of this means mandating multi-factor authentication for all users. Enforce the principle of least privilege across all endpoints to prevent lateral movement, blocking default administration, denying access from a built-in local administrator account and avoiding many of the built-in groups, which have too many permissions.”
A large number of successfully launched cyber attacks make it into enterprise networks through the unknowing actions of an authorized user, usually due to a phishing email. Enterprises can’t ensure they’ll catch every instance in which a user falls victim to phishing, but they can add additional security measures to email and other applications that turn users into a gateway for external actors.
Mike Spanbauer, senior director and technology evangelist for Juniper Networks, a major global networking company, believes efforts in communications-based security are crucial to protecting your users and their network actions:
The majority of enterprise employees not only use corporate equipment for work activities, but also use personal mobile devices to check email, open collaborative documents, and perform other actions that can expose sensitive company data.
Spanbauer with Juniper Networks said the best way to make sure that personal mobile devices do not expose the network to unnecessary threats is to establish and enforce a mobile device and data management plan.
“Mobile technologies continue to gain in processing and data-gathering power, but many companies still employ a bring your own device policy,” Spanbauer said. “This is fine, so long as the resources these devices can access are sufficiently gated, and the networks they can access are restricted and robustly monitored. A proven master data management solution is always a good option. Effective inspection of the guest network can also help to prevent the spread of threats from device to device as well as to protect the organization from potential harm.”
Also read: Cybersecurity Market 2023
Employees often have trouble remembering their user access credentials, and to try to make it easier, they use simple passwords and store their information in unsecured places. Bad password habits expose enterprise networks to large amounts of risk, making it possible for malicious actors to steal credentials from any number of users.
As a result of the many cyber attacks based on credential theft, experts like Taylor from SecurID encourage companies to find passwordless and user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA) strategies for user account security.
“One way to address [remote worker security vulnerabilities] is with modern security principles, including passwordless, device-based, risk-based, and UEBA,” Taylor said. “These modern techniques and technologies increase security and improve the user experience. By simply having your phone in your pocket and performing a task in the same way you always have, you create a cybersecurity stance for users that’s far easier than asking them to remember a complex password — and far more secure as well.”
No matter how much security infrastructure you put into place, every network will still have some vulnerabilities that can eventually be targeted by a hacker. Most enterprises make the mistake of only responding to these events reactively, handling the security problem as it comes but not doing any additional work, training, or policy development to prepare for other attacks.
Dave Martin, VP of extended detection and response at Open Systems, a global cybersecurity company, believes that companies need to start by updating their incident response plan and actually putting it into practice.
“Seconds count during a breach, and you cannot afford to lose precious time that should be spent responding to a successful attack in a coordinated and impactful fashion,” Martin said.
In partnership with the policy development and training that comes with creating an incident response plan, it’s important to also have regular monitoring and security auditing in place to catch minor issues before they turn into major ones.
Martin with Open Systems explained the importance of getting your people and processes accustomed to a monitoring and auditing workflow:
“Preventive security technologies such as firewalls, antivirus, proxies, multi-factor authentication, and more are necessary, but they are not sufficient,” Martin said. “The threat actor landscape has evolved from simply developing malicious software to now including the sophisticated weaponization of that software, using trusted delivery methods to obscure malicious activity.
“The only way to know if your prevention layer is working is to have security experts continuously monitoring all potential attack surfaces using best practices and repeatable processes to detect and respond to threats. Many organizations take a ‘set-it-and-forget-it’ approach to the prevention layer, and as a result, continuous monitoring has emerged as an essential ingredient to minimize risk by providing an important feedback loop. Security is a journey, not a destination.”
More on network audits: Creating a Network Audit Checklist
Data security is a key point of greater cybersecurity principles, and data governance ensures that the right data receives needed protections.
Will Bass, VP of cybersecurity at Flexential, an IT and data center management solutions company, believes that strong data governance involves reviewing data at the source and protecting people from unnecessary data access on a continual basis.
“Organizations keep too much data for too long,” Bass said. “Sensitive data is a target for bad actors that increases organizational risk.
“Reducing this threat requires good data governance practices, such as deleting any data that is not required to provide their services or meet a regulatory requirement. Deleting unneeded sensitive data in the environment not only reduces the risk of a compromise, but also decreases IT costs by reducing the infrastructure footprint and narrowing the scope for privacy and other regulatory requirements.”
Especially in the era of big data, it can be challenging to distinguish between unneeded data and data to protect. But Seth Cutler, CISO at NetApp, a large data management and cloud company, believes that some of these data management best practices are a good place to start:
“Looking at the sheer volume of data that companies are having to manage, store, retrieve, protect, and backup,” Cutler said. “As this [data] continues to grow, so too does the cybersecurity implications of data overload.
“With this, developing strategies for data life cycle management, data privacy compliance, data governance, and data protection are critical. … To help remedy data overload, companies should consider data classification, data tagging, and development of clear guidance and policies on data retention.”
More on data governance: Data Governance Trends 2023
Companies tend to invest most of their time and finances into the right cybersecurity infrastructure and tools, often overlooking the importance of training all teammates on how they can protect themselves and the company from security threats.
Bass from Flexential said it is the organization’s responsibility to train all users on common social engineering attacks and phishing practices.
“Humans pose the biggest threat to keeping an organization safe,” Bass said. “With the perimeter becoming increasingly secure, bad actors are jumping the perimeter by socially engineering employees, using techniques such as phishing, vishing, and spear phishing to gain a foothold inside of organizations.
“To combat this threat, organizations should educate their staff to recognize the signs of a social engineering attempt and what to do if they suspect an attempt is being made against them. Organizations should also run regular exercises using these methods as a learning experience for their staff, to understand the risk posed by their user base and reduce the risk posed by social engineering.”
Although automation is not the answer for all cybersecurity problems, artificial intelligence (AI)- and machine learning (ML)-powered tools make it much easier to set security monitoring and other quality controls into action in the cloud.
James Campbell, CEO and co-founder of Cado Security, a cloud-native digital forensics company, believes cloud security automation is one of the most time- and cost-effective ways to secure distributed networks.
“Incorporating automation into the cloud investigation journey is essential to reducing the amount of time, resources, and money that’s required to understand the root cause, scope, and impact of an incident,” Campbell said. “With the amount of data that sits in the cloud today, organizations require the ability to automatically capture and process data at cloud speed and scale.
“Security teams shouldn’t have to worry about working across multiple cloud teams, access requirements, or the fact that their investigation spans multiple cloud platforms, systems, and regions. While all of these complexities have historically dragged out the start of their investigation or completely halted it from ever happening, automation flips the script by reducing the complexity and time required to conduct investigations.”
Read next: Key Cybersecurity Trends 2023
Model Monitoring: Definition, Importance & Best Practices (2023)
As we pointed out in our article, Machine Learning Lifecycle MLOps systems have a lifecycle that includes various processes, and despite all the effort and time, creating an effective MLOps is not guaranteed. According to McKinsey, only 36% of companies can deploy MLOps. If the model deployment process is successful, the longest cycle in the life of a ML process, model monitoring, can begin.
What is model monitoring?Model monitoring refers to the control and evaluation of the performance of an ML model to determine whether or not it is operating efficiently. When the ML model experiences some performance decay, appropriate maintenance actions should be taken to restore performance. You can think of the process as bringing your car in for maintenance from time to time and changing the vehicle’s tires or oil for better performance.
Why is model monitoring important?Many companies make their strategic decisions based on ML applications. However, the performance of ML models degrades over time. This can lead to nonoptimal decisions for the company, which simply end up with performance degradation, profit or revenue declines, etc.
To prevent such a devastating effect, companies should consider the ML model’s performance threshold as a KPI that must always be met. Consequently, they should monitor their ML models regularly.
What are the reasons for ML model degradation over time?Changing input data is the main reason why ML models degrade over time. Input data may change due to:
The environment that ML predicts is constantly changing, so ML models should adapt to the new environment.
Operating data in the pipeline may change over time.
Changing environmentML algorithms predict the future or optimize processes based on data from the time in which the model is established. Consequently, the algorithms solve business problems according to the parameter values of that time interval. However, the environment we live in is constantly changing and so are the parameter values. Therefore, for effective interpretation of the data, the models must be updated according to the changes in the environment.
Let’s take the case of a chatbot, for example. We know that language is constantly changing. That is why it is difficult to understand Shakespearean English compared to today’s English. The words we use are also constantly changing. Some words we used a decade ago might be considered rude descriptors today. As a result, a chatbot designed a decade ago to maximize customer satisfaction could be giving customers unsafe times if left unmonitored.
Changing operational dataTime to time the operational data that is used in the pipeline might be changed. It is very common since the data engineering team has a limited control over where the input data comes from. The reason for that might occur due to dynamics of the business or new business decisions of the firm. Also, regulations might be the reason for such a change.
Let’s imagine a company in Hungary that sells imported goods from the USA. Today, Hungary uses the Hungarian forint as its national currency, which means that fluctuations in the forint compared to the U.S. dollar affect operational efficiency. However, a few years later, Hungary might use the Euro as its currency, which is subject to different fluctuations compared to the forint. Consequently, the upstream data should be adjusted accordingly.
What should companies monitor for healthy ML models?In order to ensure effective working of ML models firms can check the following variables:
Cem regularly speaks at international technology conferences. He graduated from Bogazici University as a computer engineer and holds an MBA from Columbia Business School.
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Top Best Practices For Managing Project Budget
Every successful project relies on effective project budget management. Maintaining focus, averting shocks, and eventually completing projects that exceed expectations are essential. With effective budget management, you’ll have the plan to follow, a way to gauge your success, and assurance from knowing everything is in order.
What is a Project Budget?Project budgeting establishes the overall amount of money used for the project. The project manager and/or the project management team have calculated the budget. The budget is a projection of all the expenses that will likely be needed to finish the project.
Budgets are crucial for securing the project, supporting key stakeholders, and setting expectations. A budget also guarantees that the necessary finances are accessible and aids in performance evaluation for the team. The document defining the budget’s specifics throughout the project should be followed, updated, and evaluated.
Why is Project Budgeting So Important?Project Budgets are vital communication tools. They encourage open communication between the project team and important stakeholders. It is an important component of project management crucial to success. The following are some of the main reasons why project budgeting is vital −
Setting Financial Boundaries − A project budget establishes the financial parameters for a project and aids in determining the limitations of what can be accomplished with the resources at hand.
Monitoring Progress − A project budget is a road map for monitoring development and spotting departures from the original strategy. This makes it easier for project managers to respond quickly to problems and keep the project moving forward.
Managing Costs − Project budgeting aids in cost management by ensuring efficient resource usage and giving a clear picture of project expenditures. Additionally, it aids in reducing waste and the danger of overpaying.
Allocating Resources − Project budgeting helps project managers to effectively and efficiently allocate resources, such as persons, equipment, and materials.
Facilitating Decision-Making − Project managers have access to the data they need to make well-informed choices regarding the distribution of resources and risk management from a well-defined project budget.
Top Tips On How to Manage Project Budgets Establish the Budget with the Participating TeamBe prepared to include the team in charge of the project’s execution when estimating expenses. Get feedback from all relevant stakeholders since they are the ones who are aware of even the smallest cost that should be included in the final buildups. This is crucial to providing a value quote.
The budget situation must also be known to the whole team. Keep the project team up to date on the projected budget. A strong team that takes responsibility for its initiatives is well-informed. Transparency will be achieved by informing the team about the budget situation and soliciting their opinions to prevent further misunderstanding.
Track the use of ResourcesThe cost of labor will be one of your project’s highest costs. It will also include tools and technologies. Successful project management relies on continuously managing your resources, just as you would your budget. Review the number of employees working on your project regularly, and if you are going over budget, change your strategy. The same is true of your technology stack.
You can utilize the resources for your project efficiently if you take the time to evaluate them. It will also enable you to determine if more resources are required to complete your project effectively.
Recognize the Actual Needs and Requirements of the StakeholdersIt’s not always as easy to understand upfront what stakeholders say they need or desire from a project. Undefined aims and expectations on both sides of the table may result from this. Imagine that the project manager, sponsors, team members, and suppliers are unaware of the genuine preferences of the stakeholders. Under such a situation, determining the project’s needs is impossible.
Spend as much time as is necessary to have a comprehensive grasp of what stakeholders anticipate. Ultimately, stakeholder expectations, deliverables, and other needs determine everything, even the budget. So, ensuring that project needs are precisely defined, recorded, and validated with all stakeholders — and that they are communicated to all parties involved — is the first step to an efficiently managed project budget.
Hold onto your Project’s FocusThere is a propensity for some unanticipated work to enter your timetable for every project. This “scope creep” may significantly change the project’s emphasis, eventually failing its budget and the project itself. It’s crucial to often remind team members of your project’s initial goal to lower your danger of scope creep.
Unscoped work ultimately results in billable hours. Also, it can need outside assistance, brand-new equipment, or other resources. You’ll almost certainly overpay if you haven’t planned for this in your budget.
Of course, taking unforeseen changes into account is crucial for any project you oversee. Stay adaptable and open to change without worrying that your project won’t succeed if you budget for it.
Make a Budget for Every Stage of your ProjectWhile establishing a budget for each project phase, consider labor and material expenses. Salaries for project workers and any subcontractors required at certain phases are included in labor expenses (such as web designers during development). Office supplies, furniture rentals, and other items needed for each project phase are included in the material expenses.
Communicate with your EmployeesA project is only as good as the team working on it, and a team with poor communication will almost certainly overspend. Keeping your team updated on the project’s budget projection will promote responsibility and efficiency. Promote open communication to increase project ownership. Employees will generate excellent work if they are invested in the success of a project.
Monitor and Manage Change with PrecisionOne of the most underrated aspects of project management is change management. Project management experts know the value of communication and how procedures affect stakeholders. A small adjustment might result in major cost increases and budgetary problems in any process. The specific solutions to deal with internal and external changes that may cause expenses to exceed budget should be identified, documented, and communicated by change management professionals in collaboration with project teams.
Bottom LineBudgeting for a project is a difficult process. Budget issues are mostly caused by either overestimating or underestimating how long it will take to complete your project. You can estimate the project’s cost by knowing how long each component will take. It’s difficult to keep expenses down, keep employees on track, complete your project within scope, and, more crucially, under budget, without defined funding in place and without continuously monitoring your expenditure and your resources.
7 Local Seo Best Practices For WordPress Websites
WordPress is one of the most flexible open source Content Management Systems (CMS) in the world.
So it’s no surprise that WordPress has been downloaded more than 32.6 million times or that it powers 40% of all websites.
WordPress is also SEO-friendly, to the point where even non-techies can easily implement some simple optimization techniques. This is great news for small local businesses which may not have the budget for sweeping SEO improvements, but still want to rank better in local search.
In this article, I’ll show you seven simple SEO improvements you can make to boost the local search ranking of your WordPress site.
1. Optimize Your ContentYour content offerings are the most important assets on your website. Having a great site structure, lightning-fast load times, and tons of security measures won’t help you if your content isn’t up to par.
So, before you can think about optimizing your content, you need to start with something your audience finds valuable.
To do this, you’ll need to understand your audience’s pain points and know how your products solve their problems.
Once you understand this, you can turn your solutions into all sorts of compelling content, from videos to blog posts to infographics, which keep them coming back for more.
Once you have great content, the next step can seem a little daunting: on-page optimization. Fortunately, we can enlist the help of some basic tools like the Yoast SEO plugin.
Yoast SEO also points out some important on-page factors such as word count and keyword occurrences.
2. Review Your Link ProfileWe know from recent studies that links are still the #1 most important ranking signal when it comes to localized organic rankings.
The number of domains linking to your site, the quality of your backlinks, and the optimization of your link anchor text are all strongly correlated to your local ranking.
Good organic link building takes time to cultivate, but here are a few simple steps you can start with:
Focus on Quality Over QuantityThe number of domains, IPs, and C-blocks linking to your site are important, but one high-quality backlink from an industry leader in your niche is worth far more than dozens of irrelevant, low-quality links. Use link tracking software to find and eliminate low-quality links.
Find & Fix Broken Links Optimize Anchor TextOptimize some of your anchor text for local search by including your city’s name. Just be careful not to over-optimize (e.g., changing all of your anchor text, too many exact matches, etc.).
There’s no ideal percentage for location-optimized anchors, so conduct some competitor analysis to figure out what’s generally accepted in your niche.
Identify Potential Link Building OpportunitiesUse a competitive analysis tool to find potential link building opportunities, such as relevant sites in your industry that link to your competitors but not you.
3. Speed up Your WebsiteThe tortoise may beat the hare in children’s tales, but you can’t say the same in the SEO world.
Site speed remains one of Google’s most important “technical” ranking factors, and if you want to beat out your competitors in local search, then you’ll need to make sure that your site is as fast as possible.
Possible techniques include:
Compressing Large ImagesLarge image files are the biggest offender when it comes to slow websites. Use a plugin like WP Smush to compress and optimize your images.
Clean up Your WordPress ThemeGet rid of outdated page elements (e.g., unnecessary database calls, functions, JavaScript, etc.). And make sure you delete old themes – hackers may use these to infiltrate your site.
Reduce Server Load With a Caching PluginCaching plugins create state HTML versions of dynamic pages which significantly reduce server load times. There are a number of options for you to consider, including free options such as WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache, and paid options such as WP Rocket.
Don’t Go Too Plugin-CrazyYou can find a plugin for practically any function, but try to stick to essential plugins that provide real value to your site. Too many plugins will slow your site down.
Alternatively, you could make your life easier by investing in website auditing software. Quality products will analyze your on-page speed factors for you and suggest ways to speed your site up.
4. Optimize for MobileA lot of your potential customers are looking for local businesses via mobile. This, coupled with the fact that Google indexes mobile sites preferentially to their desktop counterparts, means that mobile optimization is more important than ever.
The best thing you can do to improve your mobile site is to focus on page speed and image compression, but here are a few other tips and tricks:
Use a Responsive ThemeAt the very least, you should make sure your WordPress theme is responsive and fits your content to all mobile devices.
Design Specifically for Mobile VisitorsUse the built-in wp_is_mobile() function to detect different devices on the server level and create custom experiences for your mobile visitors.
Launch a Mobile AppAccording to an eMarketer study, 88% of mobile media time is spent on apps. Mobile users like apps that give them a comprehensive way to engage with their favorite brands.
Create Accelerated Mobile PagesAccelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are incredibly fast pages designed specifically for mobile. WordPress comes with a default AMP plugin you can use to create AMP pages that are listed at the top of SERPs when users search from mobile devices.
5. Integrate Google My Business Into Your WordPress SiteGoogle My Business bundles together a number of key factors related to local rankings. Signals such as physical proximity, user reviews, and business descriptions and categories will all impact your position in SERPs.
Once you’ve claimed your GMB page, make sure you add your WordPress site to your profile, plus other key information, such as hours of operation and a description of your business.
Then look for plugins and widgets that will let you transfer key ranking signals such as photos, a business map, and customer reviews from your GMB page to your website.
You should also install a plugin that lets you add your GMB review to your WordPress site, such as the Google Places Reviews plugin. These will help increase consumer trust in your business!
You may also want to consider putting an intractable business map on your website via a plugin or widget. Google Maps Builder is one example that will help your customers find you.
6. Add Structured Data to Your PagesEver wonder why some local business listings seem so rich – including reviews, star ratings, and robust descriptions – while others fall flat?
The difference is structured data.
Using plugins like Schema, you can feed Google additional information about your business.
This will give your customers more detail when they find you in SERPs, including useful tidbits such as hours of operation, price range, and physical location.
7. Include Location Keywords in Your URLsGenerally speaking, URL structure plays a minor role in your page’s ability to rank.
When it comes to local search, however, including location keywords in your URL can help improve the user experience.
This is especially true if you have multiple landing pages targeting different locations and you want to assure your customers that they’re in the right place.
Previous versions of WordPress didn’t give you a lot of flexibility when it came to your URLs. They were all “ugly permalinks,” which looked something like this:
However, the latest versions of WordPress default to “pretty permalinks,” which include the date and name of your posts. They might look like this:
ConclusionWant to take your SEO game even further?
You can make even more improvements to your WordPress site beyond what I’ve suggested here by manually creating chúng tôi files, generating XML sitemaps, optimizing your site structure, and more.
Image Credits: Paulo Bobita
Biggest Cybersecurity Stories Of 2023
Biggest Cybersecurity Stories of 2023 Cybersecurity Threats of 2023
After peaking in 2023 Ransomware saw a downturn and was replaced by serious threats in 2023. Here we list various big frights of this year. These cybersecurity threats created a shift in the way world handles data, vulnerabilities, and cryptocurrency.
Vulnerabilities that changed processor design
This hardware flaw was called catastrophic as it affected all processors and brought a change in the way chips are designed.
FacebookWho can forget about the most talked data scandal in March that rocked Facebook. At that time reports about how political data firm named Cambridge Analytica collected user’s personal data was floating. Data of 87 million users was compromised due to which Facebook was condemned and had to face scrutiny. This was just the tip of iceberg as after this other online service were also under scrutiny including Google.
Another biggest cybersecurity threat that made news headlines was VPN Filter a router malware that infected 500,00 devices in more than 50 countries. This malware targets small offices and range of routers to steal personal credentials and knock off infected machine by making them unusable. Moreover, VPN Filter has the potential of cutting off Internet connectivity. Not only this VPN Filter has wide range of capabilities from spying on traffic to overwriting device’s firmware. Unlike other threats VPN Filter targets device using default credentials or those with known exploits.
Another dangerous cybersecurity threat that appeared in 2023 was cryptocurrency mining. With the progress of digital currency in late 2023 hackers too became interested in it. As they got attracted to the mantra get-rich-quickly with digital currency. Malware actors tried to develop new ways to mine cryptocurrency for which they even abused Internet of things, used malicious add-ons and other things. But the only way that turned out fruitful was crypto-mining. This means threat actors used CPU power to mine cryptocurrency especially Monero for their financial gain.
Besides these direct threats there were other indirect threats that were seen in 2023. This consisted of data breaches, introduction of GDPR in Europe that forced companies to change their privacy policy. If they were found handling users data incorrectly they had to bear a fine of millions in Euros or 2% – 4% of their annual turnover. Other prominent cybersecurity risk contained shutting down of Google Plus due to security flaws that affected 52 million users, unpredicted Chinese visitors at Marriott hotel chain this means Chinese hackers accessed information of up to 500 million guests including their phone number, passport number, email address and other personal data. This was said to be Chinese espionage operation.
Also Read: Why Do Cyber Criminals Want To Hack Your Phone?
This was just a glimpse of what 2023 had for us but looking at this we can surely say 2023 is not going to be easy. There’s much in the Pandora’s box for us. With the beginning of 2023 an increase in cyberwar arms race is expected. Traditional Trojans, Worms will remain a threat along with the new emerging ones that will penetrate software and lead to more dangerous attacks. Furthermore, we can see live hacking, use of AI by attackers and much more that still can’t be predicted.
In next article we will talk about cybersecurity risk of 2023.
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