Whether your business is a massive multinational operation or you’re a humble “solopreneur,” you have now entered the era of the “digital-first” economy.
Daunting though it may be to prioritize your business’s online presence, there are five traits that will serve your customers well and lead to your success.
Flexibility: Be prepared to constantly advance your knowledge of new technologies and softwares and make changes to your systems when necessary.
Comfort With Outsourcing And Automating: Don’t be afraid to delegate tasks, such as fulfillment or marketing management, that keep you from the core work of your business.
Digital Communication Skills: This means not only having the right kinds of digital communication avenues (e-mail, website, social media, etc.) but also knowing how to optimize them to communicate clearly and consistently with your customers.
Understanding Customer Expectations: In a world where customers expect seamless interactions and quick results, make sure you each clearly understand one another’s needs.
Cyber Security: Even solopreneurs are at a greater risk for cyber-attacks. Make sure to protect sensitive data in a way that works best for your business model.
As we transition into a digital-first economy, the concept of “digital identity” meaning the set of attributes related to your identity that you make known online, should be at the forefront of national security talks.
But just how can people, companies, bots and things balance privacy and security in a way that keeps their sensitive information safe?
One way is by prioritizing relevant credentials rather than entire identities.
Say you’re making an account on a website that you need to be 18 to access.
Now, the site could provide you with a way to share your driver’s license and credit card information.
After all, that would ensure that you are the one using your digital identity on that site. However, if the site gets hacked, then the hackers have all that info about you, when all the site really needed in the first place was your age.
So, those relevant credentials, also referred to as “entitlements” (because they’re the pieces of information that entitle you to certain services), are the best starting point for a discussion about digital identity and national security.
If you want to protect your smartphone from being hacked, all you have to do is turn your phone off and back on again.
Does that sound overly simplistic and cliché? Probably.
Does it work? Absolutely.
The reason that simply turning your phone off and on again can thwart hackers is because, historically, hacking has been a game of persistence.
Keep at it for long enough, and a person’s security protocols will eventually give.
However, with smartphones, hackers have found that they don’t need to be persistent because most of us never shut off our devices.
Thus, hacking smartphones has become a much more attractive option for cybercriminals.
By simply turning your phone off and back on again regularly, you give cybercriminals far fewer opportunities to hack your device, and they’ll likely move on to try and hack a smartphone that stays on continually.
Considering how low-tech this solution is, there’s no reason that anyone with a smartphone shouldn’t be doing it.
