7 security tips for your computer and the web

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Keeping yourself and your business safe and secure is essential, right? So why is it so many people use obvious, sometimes dangerously simply passwords? Here’s a few ideas on how to keep yourself and your business website safe.

But first, a story. Well, before the story, let’s have some background:

“According to a new analysis, one out of five web users still decides to leave the digital equivalent of a key under the doormat: they choose a simple, easily guessed password like ‘abc123’, ‘iloveyou’ or even ‘password’ to protect their data.”

When I first read about some of the terrible passwords people are still using, I really wasn’t surprised.

Shh .. can you keep a secret?

In one notable, recent example, I was asked by a former client to “fix” a web application I was developing so there was only the one username and password for everyone. At the time of being asked, I’d only set one account up, but someone had decided to share this account and soon after, people were signing in with the same account details.

The problem is, due to the security options I’d put in place, each person that signed in signed out the one previous. This was because the system couldn’t deal with two people signing in with the same account details. The client was dismayed.

“Why can’t we all sign in with the same details?”

They asked.

“Because the system doesn’t allow more than one person to have the same username and password.”

I replied.

“Can’t they just type their name in after they’ve signed in?”

They enquired.

“That’s the whole point of having a username; so the system knows who each user is.”

I replied calmly, trying not to sound patronizing or condescending. But the question, I suppose, is: why did they refuse to have a unique account for each member of staff?

Being a very large business that bestrides continents, they have thousands of staff all over the world, so issuing usernames and passwords for each member of staff would be a considerable undertaking, one their own IT people refused to manage, even though it was firmly within their remit. And, ultimately, no one could be bothered with having a new account to remember, on top of the ones they already have.

In the end, I came up with another solution, one that didn’t rely on usernames and passwords, one that was arguably as secure, but came with unique problems all of its own.

7 ways to keep your computer safe and stay secure on the web

Consider what you stand to lose if someone snags the password for your computer. For most people nowadays, they stand to lose just about everything.

So what can you do to stay safe and secure on the web? Here’s a collection of ideas for saving and storing all of those usernames and passwords to all of those websites and web applications you sign up to, as well as staying secure while using a computer:

  1. Avoid obvious passwords — OK, this is obvious by now, but do not use regular names (your own, for example), words (“duck”, “apple”, “tea”, “foot”, “dog” etc), notable dates (your own birthday, or national events) or sequential letters and / or numbers (“qwerty”, “123456” or “abc123”) for passwords.
  2. Password protect your computer — Most computers (such as Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, Linux etc) have user accounts. Don’t use the default account, because that’s often the master administrator account. Instead, leave that alone and create a new one, just for you. Then, set it up so you have to sign in every time your computer restarts.
  3. Be careful in public — If you’re sharing a computer, or using one in an internet cafe, do not allow the web browser to save your details. If someone else uses that computer and visits the same website, they could, potentially, sign in as you.
  4. Do you own a Mac? Then go into your Applications folder, then the Utilities folder and find the Keychain Access application. By default, many applications store your details there. You can use Keychain Access to add Secure Notes and new Password Items, to store your details securely and safely. Also, you can use Keychain Access to retrieve account details, should you forget them.
  5. Managing passwords on Microsoft Windows isn’t quite as straight forward; there isn’t an equivalent to Keychain Access. But there are tools built in that do help keep you safe — here’s how you manage stored usernames and passwords on Windows XP and Windows Vista.
  6. Don’t share your accounts with other people — Sometimes, you’re rushed for time and someone needs to get into application X right away! Sign in for them, let them do their thing and then make sure they sign out afterwards.
  7. Passwords on paper won’t do — Scribbling passwords down on scraps of paper, stuffed into draws isn’t optimal. You’re either going to lose them, or worse, someone will find them.
  8. Complex is good — When choosing a password, remembering it isn’t the most important thing, not with the plethora of options for securely saving them to your computer. So choose one that’s more than ten digits, a mix of numbers and letters, both upper and lower case. Some software will even let you use punctuation marks and accents, like !@£$%^&*()¡€#¢∞§ which is even better, because then you have password that contains more combinations than there are grains of sand on every beach on earth.

Got a security tip to share? Let us know how you stay safe…

How to protect and profit from your ideas

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The greatest prize I possess isn’t my computer, nor is it my programming skills, or even my experience — it’s my ideas. My ideas are what have kept me in business all this time. How you work those ideas from imagination to reality decides whether you profit from them, or watch on as others walk away with them.

Your ideas are your most valuable assets, even if you don’t realize it. But even a great idea is nothing if not acted upon. Sometimes, it’s necessary to share an idea, to make it real, but there are hazards to sharing ideas; you’re effectively giving them away.

“Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few engage in it.” — Henry Ford

Crucially, it’s all about how you share an idea. And the best way to share an idea is to sell it to someone. No, I don’t mean to put a price tag on it and then hand the idea over once they’ve paid you, although that’s not a million miles from what happens in the end.

When I say sell, I mean to pitch an idea, as in to a client. A client will come to me with a problem, or a set of problems, and I’ll have a think about how I could fix those problems as quickly, efficiently and cost effectively as possible.

As was the case with the To Book hotel booking application I developed for Premier UK, when I came up with a very efficient way of processing bookings that kept the user on one page, minimizing the number of actions (and by extension, the number of clicks) they had to make.

The client calculated that using this one feature often shaved off between 30 and 60 seconds per booking, which is a massive time saving when you’re dealing with hundreds and sometimes thousands of bookings.

Would you like to know more about web applications, or perhaps you’d like to know what a web application is? Read on to find out more.

Protecting your ideas from theft — the big tease

Clearly, this is a very valuable idea, but it’s an idea that only really worked within the context of the web application itself, although I’m sure someone could easily replicate the idea elsewhere.

The thing is, once you come up with all of your clever and innovative solutions, the trick lies in how you pitch those ideas as features of something much bigger.

You want to say just enough to tease them with the benefits and the potential for cost savings, efficiency etc, but not give them too much information that they could go elsewhere with your ideas, leaving you out of pocket.

Using project management to profit from your ideas

For a business like mine, the up-front innovative thinking is a legitimate cost centre; one that requires your valuable time. But it’s hard to put a cost to those ideas up front, so you’re best bet is to recover the time from within the execution of the project itself, over time.

But the challenges are still present, even once the project is underway — what’s to stop a client committing to work, you spending a month implementing your ideas, and then having them walk away without paying a penny? This is why you must break the project down into key stages and charge based on the completion of those stages.

By doing this, you’re financially insulating yourself and at the same guarding your ideas. Typically, I’ll withhold the major ideas until later in the project, but this does depend on the client.

Would you like to know more about projects and payment planning? Read on to find out more.

Balancing your ideas — protection against exposure

Ultimately, it’s a balancing act. On the one hand, there’s your ideas and your natural urge to protect them, and on the other hand, before a client is prepared to make a decision, they need to know what that idea entails.

A good relationship with a client is always going to be the more ideal start to any project, but even that is no guarantee. So do you consider some kind of contract? Many businesses think this kind of formal arrangement will scare a client, but I’ve found many appreciate the effort and understand the potential protection a contract offers.

Those that dislike contracts might not be the best client to get involved with; are they really all that trust-worthy if they squirm at the prospect of putting their name to a mutually protective contractual agreement?

NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement)

You could also consider a NDA, or Non Disclosure Agreement, which could work within a pre-existing contractual agreement, and be applicable to a specific project only.

A NDA is essentially a brief that often contains commercially sensitive and very specific technical details. The purpose of the Non Disclosure Agreement is, as it’s name suggests, to ensure you do not disclose anything outlined within the agreement to which you’ve put your signature to.

IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) contract

Let’s imagine you need to use a third party to help out, perhaps providing programming services. Also, the client has come to you with a NDA, which you are obliged to sign. There’s a chance that during the course of the project you and your third party:

  • could be providing intrinsically new methods / ways of accomplishing certain activities;
  • as well as using code used elsewhere, from within previous projects of your own;
  • and perhaps using commercial code for specific functions.

In these situations, you need to draw up an outline of who owns what aspects and which parties are entitled to do what with the various parts of the project, and perhaps for how long. If the client is willing to fully compensate you for your efforts, then fine.

However, if there are portions of code in there that belong to you or someone else, then some licensing arrangement may be required.

So the purpose of an Intellectual Property Rights contract is basically to protect the rights of your work, otherwise referred to as IP, or Intellectual Property.

Final thoughts

All of the above are personal / professional experiences of my own, drawn from over ten years of being in business. And as is the case with anything that involves contracts and signatures, it’s best to speak with a qualified legal adviser first, to ensure you’re using the right language, and that your agreements are enforceable, should either party break them.

Above all, don’t be put off by the pit falls and legal machinations. Just keep your mind open and those ideas flowing. You can always deal with the legalities later on.

Making the most of Google Wave

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Google Wave is a new web-based collaborative application that allows groups of people to work on the same document, known as “waves”. It’s free, it’s simple to use and can really open up your business communications in ways you hadn’t imagined.

Google Wave, the collaborative, web-enabled word processor

Back in November last year, I wrote an article for Marketing Donut about Google Wave, outlining various ways to improve business communication:

“We’ve all played email tennis, either with friends, family or business colleagues. That’s fine, if you have the time. If you’re working on a proposal document and you’re using Word, you can bounce revisions around forever and a day. That’s also fine, if you’ve got the time. Problem is, time is a premium asset these days and if you want to get the most out of your time, you need to save as much of it as possible. And what time you do use, you do so as efficiently as possible — that’s where Google’s new collaborative communication tool comes in.”

But I thought I’d offer another perspective; outlining how I Octane uses Google Wave to collaborate with Emily Cagle, my communications partner.

I saw the potential in Wave very early on and could see that it would be ideal for Emily (who handles my PR) and myself to use, and here’s how we use it:

  1. I write articles for my blog as well as business publications; I “ping” Emily when I’m into the first draft stage;
  2. then she goes through the wave and makes sure the theme and style are aligned with the house style of the publication in question;
  3. I revise, if required (expanding upon / trimming etc);
  4. finally, she checks for typos, grammar etc, sends the article to the publication and then we go live.

3 example scenarios for using Google Wave

In addition to using Wave for writing articles, you could use it use it for:

  • team brainstorming sessions, sharing visuals, photos etc;
  • project management, where you could conference call via Skype and divvy up task to team members;
  • internal communications, for listing key client / customers telephone numbers, email addresses etc, that everyone can update.

There are some things we’d like to see in Wave (such as more list type options, better undo support, for example), but we’re getting a lot of milage out of it already. So any new features would most likely just make things even better for us.

Google Wave is invite-only, and I have several to give away. If you’d like an invite, please leave a comment below, using your preferred email address (added into the email field, which only I will see) and I’ll send you an invite!

Earning trust in business

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There are no short cuts to making people trust you for your words or your deeds, and even less so in the business world. And on the web, trust is a hard-earned currency.

I single out the web because unless you’ve got a video connection, no one can see your expressions, hear the tone of your voice, see your gestures or the movement of your eyes — all of which are strong indicators of sincerity. Without those face-to-face guides, trust takes that much longer to earn.

In a recent article exploring a Google Labs experiment, I had this to say about the value of trust on the web:

“It is inevitable that trust will be the number one currency on the web. Trust is more easily given than it is bought. The more people who trust something or someone, the more value is given, which will therefore (most likely) attract more trust and amass more value.”

And trust as a currency — while being free from exchange rates — is often difficult to sell but earns some excellent interest.

Ways to earn trust in business

As a business owner, certain things have become clearer to me over the years. One of them is that people buy into people long before they buy into your products or services.

That’s why I enjoy meeting people face-to-face. This is my chance to make the most of my personal brand, that ‘brand’ being me!

I use my enthusiasm as a conduit for my business knowledge to show people that I care about what they do and how I might be able to make things better for them and their business.

For the impartial yet interested visitor coming to your website or ‘blog, they want to feel that you’re a person they can trust. They want to be able to use you and your services, while at the same time be confident that you’ll still be around the day after they’ve paid you.

They don’t want hidden costs, dodgy business practices or shoddy workmanship. They want demonstrable evidence of you being good enough for them to spend good money with, and that you’ll be around to support their present and future needs.

In short, they want to feel that they can trust you. But how do you convey all of your worthy and commendable values via the web, or from within a social network?

Testimonials

There’s just no substitute for a good referral, so word-of-mouth recommendations are still the top means of getting yourself known.

Word-of-mouth recommendations are by far the most cost-effective means of marketing, and only works because you were good enough to be recommended in the first place. And if you’re within a close-knit social network, there’s every chance this vocal referral will have an echo effect — being heard by many more businesses along the way.

If you have very satisfied customers and you’re sure they would have no problem singing your praises, then ask them for a testimonial. Ideally, this testimonial would come on company letterhead, written in hand, and signed personally — but that’s just an ideal!

Extending this ideal scenario further, maybe adding in a photograph of the aforementioned very satisfied customer along with their testimonial on your website will add that essential sense of trust. Additionally, getting your client to link to your website or ‘blog is even better.

Placement is also key. Some people might want to place all of their testimonials on one page, but I try to encourage my clients to place their testimonials within the web pages of a product or service that the testimonial relates to, assuming that’s the case.

Case Studies

So your customer is happy with their little lot. You’ve got paid, so you’re happy with your little lot, too. You look back on the job and realize that as well as learning some new things, you also managed to improve on many fronts — you hit the budget, breezed the deadline and managed to give your customer that little bit more than they’d asked for. I’d say that’s got the makings of a Case Study!

Put simply, a Case Study is a working, living documentary, evidencing your good work and the satisfaction of your customer. Ideally, a Case Study should be no more than a thousand words and should consist of four parts:

  1. A summary of what was achieved, typically entitled as benefits in the form of bullet points. They should match the prior objectives of the company, and be implied in numerical form (ex. increased 20%)
  2. A description of the project, the aims, the stakeholders and the particulars of the project.
  3. A summary of what was achieved, typically entitled as benefits in the form of bullet points.
  4. A conclusion, with supplementary links to the customers website and other related resources.

Why not add in a testimonial, right in the conclusion? Also, add in some photography, or maybe a picture of the client logo, their premises — something that’s going to add some visual interest. Also, if appropriate, link to the page on your website that relates to the products or services you supplied to the client.

Case Studies can be quite authoritative content for your website. So by adding in some strong words and phrases that relate very specifically to you, your customer and both your businesses, the search engines will make the most of that authority.

Standards, professional memberships and associations

Next time you’re given a business card from someone, look at the end of their name. Chances are, you’ll spot a bunch of letters.

If I wanted to, I could write my name as: Wayne Smallman ND, HND, Ba(hons). But for the most part, Wayne Smallman gets me by just fine!

When you see stuff like this, you’re given some vital information — that this individual had a formal education that resulted in a recognized qualification. So that’s years of studious education put to good use. If they providing a service to you, you’re probably going to benefit from their knowledge in some way.

If your business is ISO rated for example, or if you’re a British-based business and you’re an Investor in People, then your business has a valued, recognized accreditation that will open doors. In the case of the ISO 9001 rating, this means you have formal procedures in place that govern certain aspects of your business practices.

As for Investors in People: “Developed in 1990 by a partnership of leading businesses and national organisations, the Standard helps organisations to improve performance and realise objectives through the management and development of their people.”

In both instances, you have a wealth of trust that ought to be made a key feature of the benefits of using your business. Be sure to get the proper permission to make these associations and memberships known. Get the proper logos and add them into the relevant web pages and printed stationary.

It is easy to forget or underestimate the value of your “organic knowledge”, and your qualifications and accreditations are an integral part of that invaluable, ever-growing resource.

Trust as a value-added part of your business

By making the most of your qualifications, your accreditations, your more-than-happy client base, your professional associations, memberships and your processes & procedures, you have all of the ingredients to build a formidable series of Unique Selling Propositions, all of which will mature into a valuable and transferable store of trust.

So make the most of the respect your clients give to you every time they come back for more. Trust me — you’ll do just fine.

This article was first published on Octane’s sister blog, Blah, Blah! Technology, in an article entitled: “Earning trust in business“

Trust in a little business education

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“I’d like a car!” The woman announces confidently to the young salesman. He raises a quizzical brow as he nervously scans around the vast showroom of motor cars all around, in gleaming neat lines, not quite sure how to reply to such a broad and breathtakingly naive question.

You wouldn’t, would you? Yet I still get people asking me questions like: “I’d like a website that lets me advertise jobs. How much would that cost?” The feint of heart would feel that thump in the pit of their stomach, like the sales man, not sure what to say, or even how.

“I want my company website to be number one on Google” Oh yes! Less of pit-of-stomach moment and more of an angry-fist-in-the-air episode.

“We want to tell everyone about our new product. How much will that cost?” You want to tell everyone? Assuming you can really afford that, could your sales team even cope with the response? And do you even have a sales team?

But the fact of the matter is, we cannot in all fairness expect the average business person to know what we know. They have needs and expectations — sometimes naive, sometimes unrealistic — and it’s our job to meet them.

Of course, there are those amongst us who will happily say “Yes!” to all of the aforementioned, much to the detriment of our industry, and to the dismay of the client when in time, they realize they’ve been sold a lemon.

So what’s the solution? We educate. But that takes time, surely? Yes, but it’s all part of the added-value service and controlled experience we all really should be offering.

When a prospective client comes along, we inevitably invest an element of our time. How long is up to you and how much value you place in the potential for a lucrative contract. But if you’re able to demonstrate the value of your knowledge, that time can become an investment, because through education comes insight and understanding, out of which trust often emerges.

And before people buy from you, they must first buy into you. And trust is the one thing you can’t buy.