The modern landscape of business is one that is always evolving. Anyone who has ever been involved in the ever evolving business landscape knows this all too well. What works quite well one day and proves to be a core construct of the entire landscapers a whole can be entirely irrelevant on all foundations and next. For this reason, it is so important for professional individuals within the business landscape to form a strong and inherent understanding not only of a business at the time but how business is going to continue to flourish and evolve as time goes on.

What are the biggest evolutions in business to date is one that has come at quite a surprise to many individuals given the fact they built their foundations of longevity and success on traditional measures. However, as is the case with the rest of the world, the business landscape has evolved in recent years and especially in recent months. The result is that the business landscape that we see before us today is one that is definitively built on the core constructs that make and break our approach towards foundational longevity and success as well as a degree of heightened sensitivity and accountability to the masses.

Introducing and understanding ecommerce

Think of ecommerce, for instance. The rise of ecommerce is all about taking commerce solutions such as Gammastack online . And well this has been a motion that has been in process for a few years now, there is a lot to be said about the fact that it has well and truly been pushed to the forefront as a digital era has become more and more instrumental around the globe. Ecommerce solutions are far more effective and more popular than they have ever been before and a large part of the reason why is that modern consumers are definitively more interested in having these solutions rather than they are towards the traditional predecessors that have worked so well in years past.

Ecommerce solutions are more in demand than ever

Ecommerce solutions are all the rage today.  From Magento integrations to entirely shifting a business landscape online, there is a lot to be said about the fact that ecommerce solutions are designed and intended to strike a nerve with modern consumers in the best and brightest of ways. And then this way, ecommerce solutions are more beloved than they have ever been and they are more powerful than they have ever been. There is so much to be said about the fact that ecommerce is designed to realign with the way that modern consumers bank and process things and modern business is a realising this more and more all the time.

Why ecommerce solutions are here to stay

There is the undeniable fact that ecommerce solutions are not only here but they are here to stay. What year commerce has come into its own over the years, there is a lot to be said for the fact that recent years and especially recent months have pushed forward an all new approach towards ecommerce but it is designed and intended to function and thrive as the most solid basis for ecommerce going forward into the future and beyond. Ecommerce solutions have been tremendously successful up until this point and they continue to do so. This is likely just the start for ecommerce. We are going to see ecommerce continue to function, flourish, and thrive well into the future and beyond. The best is yet to come. 

An app for this, an app for that.  It seems in this day and age, there is an “app” for just about anything you want to do or accomplish.  We certainly live in an app-filled world. If previous decades were the age of infrastructure, we are now in the age of applications.

Applications are key to business processes and productivity today.  Most organizations run on top of an application stack that allows carrying out many key business functions.  Now, most organizations are leveraging the public cloud and cloud-based applications for even more powerful collaboration and technology-driven processes.  

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) environments like G Suite and Office 365 are extremely popular among organizations to host business collaboration, file sharing, email and other services.  Cloud SaaS environments today contain a large number of third-party apps that can easily be integrated into your environment. While there can be benefits to these third-party applications, let’s talk about the risks of third-party apps you didn’t know about.  

What are Third-Party Apps?

First of all, what are the third-party apps we are referring to when thinking about potential risks to your environment?  Third-party “apps” are readily available in both Google’s G Suite and Microsoft’s Office 365 environments. There are third-party apps available covering a wide range of functionality for your SaaS users.  

An example of available third-party application categories include:

• Remote video conference tools
• Business Tools
• Office applications
• Accounting & finance
• Administration & management
• ERP & Logistics
• HR & Legal
• Marketing & analytics
• Sales & CRM
• Creative tools
• Web development
• Task management 

The beauty of third-party apps in regards to cloud SaaS environments like G Suite or Office 365 is that if you have any gaps in the native cloud SaaS tools offered, you can most certainly find a third-party app that provides the functionality you need.  

Third-party apps augment the capabilities of SaaS environments with even more robust tooling, features, and capabilities.  These applications generally follow the same SaaS license model of a “per user” license. By means of the third-party apps offered in cloud SaaS marketplaces, your organization can have an “ala carte” style menu available to pick and choose the apps to satisfy the business functionality needed.  

Below is an example of the G Suite Marketplace where users have an almost unlimited selection of applications to chose from.  By default, users can search and install applications using their G Suite user accounts.  You can browse by application type, or applications can be found by searching for apps by name. 

In today’s mobile-driven world, third-party apps have become a staple of how we interact with services and data.  It has also become an extremely important part of the public cloud. Despite the functionality provided by robust third-party apps, they can bring risks to your organization.  How is this the case?

Risks of third-party apps you probably didn’t think about

Despite their numerous benefits, third-party apps can certainly bring risk to your organization data, compliance, and security.  Let’s take a look at the potential risks that are presented by the use of third-party apps in your cloud SaaS environment.

 

1. Malware including ransomware

2. Data-leak concerns

3. Compliance and regulatory violations

 

 

Often, these particular risks of third-party apps go unnoticed by organizations who are making use of cloud SaaS environments.  Let’s explore these further and see why and how your organization can give attention to these specific third-party app risks.

Malware including ransomware

There is arguably no greater risk to your business-critical data today than ransomware.  Ransomware insidiously and silently encrypts your data so that you can no longer access what is rightfully yours.  Once the encryption process has locked you out of your data, a ransom demand appears, demanding payment before access is restored.

While many have incorrectly assumed that ransomware is an on-premises problem only, this can lead to dangerous consequences for data stored in public cloud storage.  Many organizations today are migrating business-critical services like email and file storage to cloud SaaS environments. Without an understanding of the risks at play with third-party apps integrating with cloud SaaS, data can easily be affected.

Ransomware can easily propagate to cloud SaaS environments by means of file synchronization as well as malicious third-party apps and browser extensions that gain access to cloud data.  New ransomware variants affecting environments today are “cloud-aware” and are able to compromise cloud SaaS environments by means of these malicious applications.  

“Ransomcloud” attacks show how easily a malicious application granted permissions in cloud environments can totally compromise your data.  As demonstrated in the “ransomcloud” attack, an entire user’s mailbox is encrypted by granting permissions to a seemingly benign application that in all actuality is ransomware in disguise.  

This proof of concept demonstrates the dangers of third-party applications that are granted access to your cloud SaaS environments, either intentionally or by accident.  Ransomware attacks can propagate by means of a malicious application or even a browser plugin that has the permissions needed to start encrypting your data. How can malicious third-party apps and browser plugins obtain this level of access to your business-critical data stored in G Suite or Office 365 storage?

End users easily grant permissions

Risky or malicious third-party apps often gain easy access to cloud SaaS environments like G Suite or Office 365 by means of end user-granted permissions.  Public cloud vendors use an OAuth 2.0 token technology to allow end users to grant access to their data without the need for a password to do so. All the end user has to do is grant permissions to a permissions request coming from a third-party app.

All of us are guilty of blindly granting permissions to apps that request them during installation.  How many of us actually read the details of the permissions requested by third-party applications we install on our mobile devices?  Think about an end user with either a company-issued mobile device, or a personal device used to also access company data.

If an end user blindly accepts permissions while installing a risky third-party app and the end user’s phone is connected to your organization’s data, all business-critical or sensitive data the end user has access to is now at risk of compromise by a risky third-party app.

The same is true for browser extensions.  Third-party browser extensions can request the same types of permissions to cloud data as other third-party applications that are installed via mobile devices.  A recent study found that more than a third of all Google Chrome extensions ask users for permission to access and read all their data on any website.

When you think about the possible security implications of third-party apps installed on mobile devices as well as third-party browser extensions, it is imperative to have visibility to and the ability to block these dangers.  This requires controlling which applications are installed in your cloud SaaS environments.  

Data leak concerns

Aside from an all-out ransomware attack on your organization’s data, there is another scary cybersecurity concern that should get the attention of businesses everywhere – data leak.  Next, to ransomware data leak should be extremely concerning to your business.

With data leak, confidential or otherwise sensitive data is “leaked” outside the “walls” of your organization and disclosed to the outside world.  Many businesses deal with confidential data by its nature. You may think of Electronic Medical Records (EMR) information processed by hospitals and other healthcare organizations or financial data that is housed by banking institutions and other financial organizations.  There are many different sources of confidential and other sensitive data that you would never want to leak outside the realms of sanctioned use.

While you may have restrictions in place on who has access to sensitive types of data that exist inside cloud environments, what about the applications that have access to this data?  Think of a scenario with a seemingly legitimate widget application that is downloaded for use on an Android device. The end user who installs the Android widget application also has high-level access to sensitive and confidential data stored in your organization’s cloud SaaS environment.  

Even though the application requests extremely high-level device permissions such as the following, the user simply grants all permissions to the new widget app:

• Read your text messages (SMS or MMS)
• Full Network Access
• Read phone status and identity
• Modify or delete the contents of your device storage

The widget application now has a high level of access to both the network and storage of the device.  The seemingly legitimate third-party app is actually malicious in nature and starts reading and copying data synchronized with your cloud SaaS environment to a dark web repository defined by the attacker.  What can this cost your business?  

The cost of data breach can be significant as outlined by IBM’s “The Cost of a Data Breach Report 2019”.  According to the yearly report by IBM’s research team, in 2019, the cost of a data breach included the following eye-opening statistics:

• Average total cost of a data breach – $3.92 million
• Most expensive country – United States, $8.19 million
• Most expensive industry – Healthcare, $6.45 million
• Average size of a data breach – 25,575 records

Keep in mind these are average statistics and may cost your business even more according to the degree and effectiveness of cybersecurity responses you have in place.  It helps to underscore the tremendous responsibility of your organization when it comes to limiting the exposure of your data to third-party applications.  

Compliance and regulatory violations

There is another aspect for businesses today to consider when it comes to keeping data safe and out of the wrong hands – compliance and regulatory.  Compliance and regulatory frameworks are designed to protect customer and other sensitive data.  Compliance regulations provide a framework of standards that, when followed by organizations, helps to ensure the proper security and other fail safes are put in place to protect important types of data.  

Compliance and regulatory frameworks are a good thing for both your business as well as your customer information.  It serves to protect both from negative consequences of data breach. However, today’s compliance and regulatory frameworks can also levy huge fines if your organization is found in violation of or grossly negligent to the point where customer data is compromised.

A great example of this the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that went into effect May, 2018.  GDPR is not only a recommendation, it is required for those who “touch” data of any European citizen.  The fines and consequences for those organizations found in violation of GDPR guidelines can be tremendous.  

As noted here, fines can include:

“For especially severe violations, listed in Art. 83(5) GDPR, the fine framework can be up to 20 million euros, or in the case of an undertaking, up to 4 % of their total global turnover of the preceding fiscal year, whichever is higher. But even the catalogue of less severe violations in Art. 83(4) GDPR sets forth fines of up to 10 million euros, or, in the case of an undertaking, up to 2% of its entire global turnover of the preceding fiscal year, whichever is higher.”

Under the GDPR guidelines, it is extremely important that organizations take seriously their responsibility to provide data security.  The overall import of the GDPR data protection framework is data protection by design and by default.  A portion of the GDPR checklist helps to highlight this as organizations are expected to ensure the following:

• Take data protection into account at all times, from the moment you begin developing a product to each time you process data
• Encrypt, pseudonymize, or anonymize personal data wherever possible
• Create an internal security policy for your team members, and build awareness about data protection
• Know when to conduct a data protection impact assessment, and have a process in place to carry it out
• Have a process in place to notify the authorities and your data subjects in the event of a data breach

 

 

The walkthrough in the data leak example demonstrates how easy it is for a malicious third-party application that is granted permissions by an end user to access sensitive data.  It also demonstrates how easy it would be for an organization to be in violation of compliance regulations like GDPR when customer data is exposed without safeguards in place.  

Taking into consideration the threat and risks of malicious or “leaky” third-party applications and browser plugins must be part of the design when it comes to housing your business-critical data in cloud SaaS environments.  

Eliminate Third-Party App Risks

To effectively eliminate the risks of third-party apps to your business-critical and sensitive data, you need both visibility and control.  First of all, you need visibility to any potential risks in your organization.  Cloud SaaS data security can be challenging for organizations who are accustomed to on-premises environments and who lack the tooling needed to monitor data access properly in the cloud.

Controlling access to data can also be challenging without the right toolsets since data can be accessed from many different kinds of devices and networks.  How can your organization effectively monitor and manage data access and protect the environment from risky third-party applications accessing your cloud data?  

The sheer complexity of today’s environments spanning both on-premises and public cloud locations and the enormity of attack vectors require you use an automated approach to both detect and remediate threats effectively.

An ideal SaaS data protection platform should have an automated sentinel that guards your cloud SaaS environment 24x7x365. You can also utilise an API-based Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) that integrates to provide Google Apps Security or protect your Office 365 environment.  It provides you with the tools you need to have both the visibility and control over third-party applications in your environment.  

Protection against risky third-party apps as well as other cybersecurity threats to your business is critical.

Be sure to choose the best protection platform for your cloud environment.

More than ever, we are living in a time where we are accustomed to having practically everything that we could possibly ever want at our fingertips. And on top of that is the reality that we have so much customisation at our immediate disposal literally always. We are so used to it at this point, that we are far more comfortable, familiar, and even reliant on having all that connection and customisation there, than we would be in its absence now.

Practically every aspect of life as we know it has been fundamentally changed in the wake of widespread digitalisation and exceedingly rapid technological advancement, and the customisation of life as we know it in just about every way is no different – even, as it turns out, when it comes to vending machines (yes, really).

Introducing custom vending machines

One perhaps surprising product that has taken to the custom products and services trend like a duck to water is that of vending machines. The introduction of customised vending machines around the globe has come with many little challenges and rewards along the way, all of which play their own important role in the way that life continues to progress and unfold.

In the case of custom vending machines specifically, there is the awareness that having immediate and unfiltered access to not only basic food and drink supplies, but all kinds of products and services (including, but not limited to, makeup – think Kylie Cosmetics vending machines, hygiene and sanitary products, gift cards, and even experiences, is changing the way that we experience the world in so many ways.

The appeal of custom vending machines

Custom vending machines are appealing because they essentially provide us all with that instantaneous access that we all have grown to crave so much and so often, without having to necessarily go into a store to get it. Additionally, custom vending machines are fantastic because they give individuals access to all these products and services in exciting new ways.

Custom vending machines are all about embracing immediate consumerism in instantaneous ways for (sometimes unexpected) products and services. That is their power and the underlying reason that they continue to become more and more popular all the time.

The future for custom vending machines

Whether it is a custom vending machine that exclusively offers hand sanitizer dispenser and other hygiene products or a custom vending machine that provides access to gift cards (to name two examples among the many), the point is always the same: custom vending machines have essentially and successfully gone from strength to strength since they were first introduced.

And more to the point, there is no sign of this truth slowing down or becoming any less true in the near future (if ever). Custom vending machines are creative, fun, and they are just getting started. We can expect a whole lot more from the custom vending machine industry in the coming years and beyond, that is for sure.

Instagram is a widely used social media network. It’s popular among users from all walks of life. Today, Instagram has over 200 million users visiting a business profile per day. Over 25 million companies globally are using Instagram. In total, Instagram has more than 700 million active monthly users.

These users present a great opportunity for businesses to market their services and products to a more targeted audience. It’s therefore, not surprising to find many businesses creating accounts and trying to get more followers on Instagram. But, does creating a business account on Instagram help in increasing the selling rates via business promotion? Sure, however, businesses must follow contemporary trends in social networks in order to receive interest from Instagram users. For example, post a story with a shrug Emoji and a questionnaire.

Why a Business Account can Increase Sales Rate 

Creating an Instagram business account works in boosting sales but it depends on the overall quality of the account and the accompanying content. Essentially, having an Instagram page can help or harm your business. But, when used properly, Instagram can help a business increase sales.

The Power of Numbers 

When it comes to social media marketing, the number of followers, subscribers, and likes matter. As of June 2018, Instagram had hit 1billion active monthly users and 400 million daily active Instagram Story users. And, these numbers are growing every day. The social media platform has more than 1 million active monthly advertisers. More than 40 billion photos have been shared on Instagram.

Instagram users share around 95 million videos and photos every day. These are attractive numbers to any marketer. They are just mouth-watering. Where there are numbers there is a possibility of making sales. And just like with other platforms, what matters is how a marketer or product owner present their sales message to the audience. So, if the sales message is packaged and presented properly, it can help increase the sales of a business.

Boosting Brand Visibility 

More people are using mobile devices to access the internet than those using desktop computers. With more people using Smartphones to access the internet, it means they can access and share videos and photos. Instagram was initially meant to be a photo-sharing platform. So, if businesses can use their accounts to post relevant and quality content, they can increase boost their visibilities. Posting quality content via a business account can lead to more mentions of a brand. And, this can increase the interest people will have in a brand, which is a first step in the process of generating leads.

Improved Engagements 

Increased engagement is among the secrets to internet marketing success. And, Instagram is the best social media for engagements. Instagram provides an engagement rate of around 4.2 per follower. This is about 58 times the engagement delivered by Facebook.

As such, Instagram is the best place to start building a brand and boosting conversion. As long as business posts quality content, more users will like and share it. They will also leave comments. Such activities will boost engagement between the business and prospects.

Multi-Channel Marketing 

A major reason why Instagram works when it comes to promoting a business on social media is the fact that it allows brands to use videos, photos, and texts. And, once a business or brand has come up with videos or images for use on Instagram, it can use them on its website and other social media networks. If a business comes up with well-designed posts, it can reach a more targeted, wider audience. Thus, people that are not following a business on Instagram can still discover the brand and share its images.

Tips for Increasing Selling Rates with Instagram Business Account 

Many brands are competing with yours to increase their selling rates with Instagram. To beat your competitors, try the following tips.

Create a Good Business Profile 

If your business offers more solutions or does many things, it’s easy to be caught up trying to fit all the information in a profile. Nevertheless, it’s crucial to focus on the most important unique selling points of your business. You can also disclose the next big thing for your business. This can be a product launch, promotion, or event. Also, include a clickable link in the bio and make sure it’s working.

Use Instagram Features and Hashtags 

Try things like Instagram Stories to ensure your business stories are displayed at the top of the timelines of your followers prominently. And to increase the reach of your business posts, use hashtags. You can use general hashtags or campaign-specific hashtags. The most important thing is to ensure that every hashtag that you use is relevant.

Know Your Audience

Just like with any other marketing platform, it’s important to know the target audience when it comes to doing business on Instagram. For instance, a business should start by finding out what followers like. It’s easy to know this by finding out what they share. A business can also read comments of the audience to learn the best ways to improve its services and products.

Show Creativity 

When it comes to promoting a business on Instagram, focus on how you want to solve the problems the audiences are facing, not the product you are selling. The goal should be to show the audience how your product can add value to them. And, make sure that you look good when doing it.

Never forget that Instagram was meant to be a photo-sharing platform. Therefore, visual content is the most important asset when it comes to promoting a business, product, or service on Instagram.

If you run a service-oriented business, focus on showing prospects or customers the process of offering the service. For instance, you can share the mission of your mission and its culture. You can also share how-to guides or tips. If possible, upload short videos or photos. The best videos for Instagram are up to 1 minute long.

The Bottom Line 

Whether creating an Instagram account for business increases the selling rates for businesses depends on the account quality and the accompanying content. Overall, a business Instagram account works. Nevertheless, more effort should be put into the quality of the account and content.