6 Global Best Practices to Combat Inevitable Cyber Threats on Your Online Apps

The need for web Apps is increasing in tandem with increasing digitization of businesses around the globe. There is hardly any online business today that is not using web Apps. This also increases the necessity of having these Apps secure enough to do business with. If you are taking your business online, even if you fulfill the need for an App, making sure the App is secure is quite essential. Online marketing experts generally agree that developing a secure web App is one of the most vital steps any business needs to ensure business security and growth. This is more so when you factor in the current trend of increased cyber crimes and the daring nature of cyber criminals. If you want to directly combat cyber crimes and threats to your online Apps, these here global best practices come in very handy.

1. Back Up all your Data

Online, there is always a threat of compromised or stolen data by cyber criminals. This is more worrisome because no matter how secure your App is, there is always a slight chance that your data can be compromised or stolen. Exactly why you must take all steps necessary to back up your data! Backing up all your data therefore becomes an important move to put your business on a safer side. This is one very important precaution you can take to checkmate any hacker who manages to get access to your online App data. You can arrange this back up by storing all your online App information in another location and replicate the archives in multiple places. If any hacker manages to get access to your data in the primary location and compromising it, you can protect your business from serious data losses by falling back on the back up location to retrieve your important data.
 
2. Use a Virtual Private Network, VPN

A very dependable way to protect against cyber crimes is the use of a Virtual Private Network, VPN. But using a VPN does not mean cyber criminals cannot get to you. They can but the VPN adds an additional protective layer. That gives you additional security because a VPN protects against cyber-attacks in many ways through traffic encryption. VPN also has some real advantage of being very cheap to use. This adds to its attraction for business owners.

3. Use SSL Certificates

With the use of Secure Socket Layers, SSL certificates, you can secure your online Apps by simply encoding all the data that is shared on it. Presently, it is one of the best practices to combat cyber threats. This it does using SSL protocols to secure the information available on the App from cyber criminals. It is hugely important for your business therefore to activate SSL Certificates for your online Apps. Once it is in place, it becomes doubly difficult for hackers and cyber criminals to easily access the information you share on the Apps. It is actually the cryptographic keys the SSL Certificate uses that really make it pretty difficult for hackers to read your data. If they can’t read the data, they can’t steal it.

4. Provide Adequate Training

Employees that are well trained and proactive can be vital assets to combat cyber crimes and cyber threats. So, if you train your workers well enough, they’ll have the requisite knowledge about cyber criminals and cyber crimes. That equips them to know what to expect from hackers and exactly what to do to prevent attacks. You can take advantage of well-packaged cyber security training for all your employees using reputable experts and experienced web App security masters. Through these experts, your employees can learn about the online Apps and the surrounding potential threats. Well-trained employees can always put the vital checks in place to checkmate any ambitious cyber criminal at any point in time when they dare to launch an attack on your Apps.

5. Update Your App Regularly

An updated App is always a safer App to use. One of the very best practices in the business is to ensure security against threats by releasing regular App updates for your users. This is hugely important because it is outdated Apps that are more susceptible to cyber-attacks. They are more vulnerable to these attacks as well because most of the time, an outdated software may lead to weak security features which may enable hackers to easily manipulate the data on the App. An App can have its online App’s components updated on and off based on its infrastructure. This prevents hackers from easily accessing the information on the App, thus making the App effectively protected from cyber threats and attacks.

6. Manage User Permissions

One smart step towards having a secure web App is to skillfully manage user permissions. Even if you have many employees in your business, you can limit vital full internet access to a few well-trained employees. The fewer the number of such privileged workers the easier it is to keep your online Apps secure. Doing this greatly reduces the volume of data that hackers can attack. But, if you are careless enough to allow everyone in your employ unfettered access, it will take one, just one successful cyber-attack to compromise all your data. Managing your user permissions skillfully is about the best way to prevent that.

Summary

Poor App security and other vital loopholes are increasingly making online Apps vulnerable to hackers and cyber criminals. Incidentally, as Apps are upgrading, cyber criminals are learning new ways to attack them. This is exactly where the real challenge is for business owners. For now however, making an App difficult to hack is about the most practical option available to business owners. The foregoing best practices come in very handy in that quest. Ignoring them can quickly spell doom for your much-cherished online business. It is smart therefore to take all necessary precautions now before you have cause to regret.

How to Turn Your Blog into a Profitable Business

To turn your blog into a profitable business, all you need is strategic planning and a bit of tenacity, if you want to get things right. Part of that planning should be how you can consistently provide good content to attract readers and to grow your audience. Even if your aim is to make blogging your full-time job, you cannot afford to ignore these basics in your strategic planning. The blogosphere may be currently housing over 600 million blogs on the internet and with less than 10% of them profitable, that’s OK.  You can make your own blog profitable if you do the right things in the right way. It may not be easy though but it is an absolute possibility. 

These here tips will show you how to turn your blog into a full-time profitable business if you diligently and consistently do what they suggest.

Establish a Content Strategy

In content marketing in which blogging is a foremost tool, content is king. First step is to build a content strategy based on user intent. If you are able to build a content strategy based on user intent, you'll be telling both searchers and search engines particularly Google that you care about providing value for readers on the internet. This is because getting more eyes on your content is hugely important and pivotal to creating a profitable blogging business. With time, if you consistently share highly valuable content with readers, it helps you to position yourself as an industry expert. Not only does this help build your reputation as a thought leader, but it also fosters trust with your target audience. The more people read and share your content, the more profitable your blog becomes.

Ensure Your Business is Legally Registered

Before you can turn a profit with your blogging business, there’s a need to make sure it's legal first. This is one legal way to ensure the protection of your content as a valuable intellectual property. Depending on which country you’re blogging from, be sure to comply with local laws and internet protocols/regulations in your blogging activities.

Create Strategic Workflows

All businesses thrive on efficient processes and consistency. Your business blog is no exception. If you create workable strategic workflows, they will help to support your business every day of the week to ensure consistency and efficiency. To do this, you can sit down to design a series of steps to follow diligently for every part of your business every day of the week. That helps to establish very clear processes anyone can easily follow in a predictable and imitable manner to ensure a timely and consistent publishing of your content to the benefit of your readers. Profitability derives from this consistency and reliability in the long term.

Establish an Affiliate Marketing Strategy on Your Blog

Yes, you need affiliate marketing on your blog if you want to make it profitable. This is because affiliate marketing is one of the most common ways to earn money blogging. It is simple to operate and to earn income. It simply entails promoting other peoples’ products/services by way of affiliate links on your blog and you earn commissions for sales made through these links. Anytime your blog readers click on the links you embed in your affiliate marketing articles and make a purchase, you get paid a commission by the product merchant as per agreed terms. Simple isn’t it?

Weave Your Products/Services into Your Content

Besides affiliate marketing, you can also integrate your own products/services offers into your blogging strategy. There is practically no limit to what you can do when it comes to how you weave in products/services in your blog content. You have a lot of room to maneuver when it comes to matters of promoting your own products/services through your blog content. Part of your marketing strategy then should be by deliberate planning to map out how your products/services will integrate into your content strategy. Through this strategy, you can sell outsourced products, you can dropship products, you can buy products wholesale and sell as retail, you can promote slash in prices and even new products in your inventory, you can sell digital products like eBooks, software apps, and online courses and lots more. All these activities help to generate unlimited income through your blog.

Take Advantage of Collaborations

Collaborations, guest posting, and running ads are three methods that can help to boost your blog profits if well handled. The main aim is to make your online presence strong enough to attract attention. Collaborations, guest posting and running ads help this process significantly. All of these options can help boost revenues for your business in very unique ways. Collaborating with successful brands helps you to build important business relationships and expand your audience reach. Guest posting helps you to build a reputation as an industry expert/thought leader and quality backlinks to your blog. This eventually raises your site's authority score with search engines particularly Google. Running ads if professionally handled can help put your blog in front of more people in a shorter span of time.

Be Serious with Cyber Security

With cyber crimes on the increase, you cannot afford not to secure your blogging business. Losing your blog content can be quite frustrating and awful. In extreme cases, your blog content can be wiped clean due to a cyber-security flare-up. If that happens, starting a new blog from the scratch is no mean fit considering the time and efforts you’ve invested on your blog to make it a profitable business. To avoid frustration and to continue on the path of profitability for your blog, it is essential to take cyber-security seriously. For effectiveness, your blog security should be all embracing. Ranging from providing users access to your blog to running virus protection software on it, you can take several measures to protect your blog from cyber-security threats. Experts recommend the use of 3-step verification for access, free access through VPNs, virus protection software installed and updated regularly and securing the services of a cyber-security expert to routinely conduct a health exam on your equipment, website, and all the online portals you use for your blogging business. Hopefully, all these can help to protect your blogging business and keep it on the path of profitability at all times.