Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the infamous and highly illicit Silk Road online marketplace, was sentenced on May 29th, 2015 to life in prison without parole. In what has become one of the most profound case studies of crime, technology, and anonymity in our time, the world has learned firsthand the implications of information security. The digital realm isn’t Las Vegas – what happens there, stays there forever. Had Ulbricht avoided some simple mistakes, he’d likely still be a free man today. While the vast majority of people aren’t planning to become the next international cyber-criminal mastermind, the lessons of Silk Road’s demise and Ulbricht’s ultimate downfall should still be understood by anyone with a smartphone. Since becoming an off-the-grid luddite isn’t an option for most people, there are measures that can be taken to secure sensitive data and information. Knowing about these techniques is critical to being secure in the always vulnerable digital landscape, and a general overview of the Silk Road case can provide some valuable lessons. Anonymity One of the most significant elements of the success of Silk Road was the anonymity it afforded users. This wasn’t actually done through Silk Road however, but through an anonymizing TOR software that allowed access to the darknet platform. While TOR software has received somewhat of a negative stigma throughout the history of Silk Road, it’s important to note that anonymizing software like TOR isn’t inherently illegal or considered suspicious simply by its download or use. In fact, encryption technologies are actually recommended for use by most security experts for those who object to any form of known or unknown surveillance by outside entities. It’s incorrect to demonize these tools for their use in criminal activities. For example, anonymizing software promotes freedom of speech and access to the greater global web in countries where such rights aren’t permitted. Beyond anonymizing software like TOR, it’s important to secure devices as best as possible, including computers, smartphones, and tablets. These devices are known as ‘endpoints’, and are inherently vulnerable simply because of the data or information they contain. If your devices aren’t secured, or the data on your devices isn’t secured, you’ll be more susceptible to attackers or surveillance. Because the FBI captured Ross Ulbricht’s laptop after he had entered his password, they were able to secure the most compelling form of evidence possible against him. Once again, you probably aren’t going to be hunted down by the FBI, but securing your devices and local data is still imperative to prevent attacks from outsiders. This is something that all businesses need to keep in mind. Digital security these days is just as important if not more important than physical security. Nowadays all you usually need for physical security is a good set of security cameras from a place like Pro-Vigil. Digital security however has many different software solutions available, and depending on your situation you may need to look around quite a bit. Finally, similar to the Miranda Rights read to suspects or criminals before arrest, anything you say online can and will be used against you. Everything you do online is logged in an eternal archive, barring a global apocalypse or doomsday scenario. Consider it this way – if you wouldn’t be comfortable with your children seeing a certain piece of information someday, then don’t put it out into the ether. This includes conversations on forums, comments on popular sites like Reddit, emails, text messages, and especially anything to do with social media. If you’re doing anything criminal or controversial on these platforms or domains, it’s very likely to catch up with you at some point in time. There’s always a trail In relation to the Silk Road, before even creating the darknet marketplace, Ulbricht had posted on multiple forums for illicit drugs and bitcoin to ask other users various questions. Simply by browsing through these forums around the time of Silk Road’s appearance online, the FBI was able to name Ulbricht as one of their suspects. Beyond his posting history and his use of the same username on multiple sites, he had even posted his personal email address containing his name. Posting on forums won’t likely land you in prison for life, but you should still be wary of anything and everything you put out there. Personal information can be acquired by identity thieves, employers can use damaging pictures against you, and anything criminal is certainly admissible as evidence against you should you get in trouble with the law. Be discrete and be smart –develop different usernames for different websites, and use secondary emails for websites as well. While the original Silk Road marketplace no longer exists, the lessons from its rise and fall can provide valuable teaching moments for anyone online today. It’s important to understand how to keep yourself secure through anonymizing software, securing devices, and what information you choose to spread digitally. Take heed, and stay secure. About the Author: Lee Ying has over 10 years experience in the tech and security industry. He currently writes for various websites, if you would like to contact him you can find him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/lee-ying/9a/18b/238. Follow me on Twitter @LeeYing101 ...

Even though your business may be performing smoothly now, that does not mean that it does not have the risk of losing data later. This is why a data recovery plan is needed. In fact, it is required. If not, you may run the risk of your business going bankrupt. Via SingleHop ...

Would you like to grow your business? Of course you would, but doing so isn’t always easy, the bigger your business gets the harder it is to keep track of your customers, your costs, your logistics etc… Sometimes it is helpful to use technology to make your business more efficient and more effective so that you can grow without losing track of the bits that matter. And one such tool is CRM management. In this post we will look at a few of the things that are possible and how you can use CRM practically to make your business and your marketing more effective. What Is CRM Software? A good CRM solution keeps all of your important information in the same place. Specifically, your contacts, leads, customers and even purchase histories, along with past communications. One helpful thing that you can do is pull up any given customer and see their entire history with you. So if you get an email from them, you can quickly review what they bought from you 6 months ago and what other messages they have sent via email, telephone or even Twitter. Categorise Information: One big advantage of using CRM software is that you can set reminders so that you don’t have to think about them. A typical example is that you can set a reminder to email a particular lead or customer after a couple of weeks. You can even set up automatic emails based on criteria in your system. To take an example, imagine if you could set the system to follow up after a purchase and email a special offer to your customers… But: The particular offer would depend on what they purchased before The medium for contact (email, Twitter, Facebook) would depend on each customer’s preferences Stock & Inventory Management If you have a business which keeps stock then you may want to integrate your CRM with your stock managemen t system. Many CRM systems can track stock levels, but even if you already have a stock management system in place: You could set your CRM system to automatically contact suppliers when you run low on certain items of stock. You could use purchase history data to analyse which stock items are selling fastest so that you can better understand your stock levels and demand. Data Analysis This is arguably one of the most powerful uses for CRM – analysing sales data so that you can make better decisions. Here are some simple examples: By tracking customers you can work out their lifetime value much more accurately. When you base ROI on lifetime value instead of one-off sales value things like PPC suddenly become profitable. By linking your CRM to your finance system you can also track costs of sales more accurately, giving you more accurate profit figures and making that lifetime value even mo re accurate. By tracking all communications you can build a much clearer idea of how active your users are on social media and which platforms they prefer (hint: invest more time into those ones). About The Author: This guest post was written by Mike at Advantage Business Systems (Click here to learn more about that). Advantage are specialists at using MS Dynamics to help businesses, charities and social enterprises with their business management. ...

The presence of smartphones has changed the way people live their lives. Inevitably, it has changed the way people do business. In this inforgraphic, you’ll see how much a smartphone can have an impact on its owner. Via NQmbile ...

Hardware failure, hackers, viruses and other disasters are the worse enemy of a business, whether large or small, and a recovery plan is absolutely essential for the survival of any business. Though it may seem rather boring to plan ahead for data failures and such, it is always time well spent since data loss, whether sensitive or otherwise, could literally cripple any business. Digital data is now a part of everyone’s life, and this fact is not exclusive to online businesses anymore. The loss of such data would essentially mean loss of business and livelihood, without a proper data recovery plan the only hope is to start from scratch. Data loss can mean you can lose a client base, list of items in stock, prices, and much more important data like passwords and bank data. As you can see it is vital to back up your data, and here we will show you just how to do that with minimum fuss. First let’s create a data recovery plan as our first step. Creating a Plan Making a complete inventory of your business’s storage based hardware, which will save you valuable time in the future. Choosing an adequate data back up plan and a data recovery specialist like Easy Recovery will ensure your business enjoys the highest possible levels of data, you should do this as early as possible to ensure the solution is in place before any problems occur. Making sure the data recovery expert is reputable and finding out about the vendor’s expertise and certification (i.e. can they open a drive without voiding it’s warranty in case of recovery) will ensure you have peace of mind when leaving matters in their hands. Some online electronic vendors will offer free back-up service plans when purchasing storage m edia (i.e. hard drives) so it pays to enquire about such offers before making a purchase. Implement your data backup strategy as soon as possible so that everything is backed up should disaster strike. It is wise to keep the back-ups away from your in-house network and maintain them regularly, particularly if they contain data that changes regularly. Using Automated and Manual Solutions Backing up your own data manually is a great way to selectively choose what is important to your business, but at times the busy nature of a business does not make this the idea solution. While manual back up is great and cost effective, it is always too time consuming. Purchasing a back up program can save valuable time, though it can result in investing in more costly storage if you use it to perform automatic backups. More data backed up means more space needed in your drives or cloud storage, so manual backups are usually a m ore cost effective solution. Threats, Hackers and Viruses Lastly, though back up is important prevention is even more important. You should understand that malware, viruses and hackers are the first concerns you should have for your business’s online presence. Viruses are getting more sophisticated and some can completely encrypt your files without chance of recovery. Investing in powerful firewalls (i.e. hardware-based firewall solutions) and virus scanners can ensure your business’s peace of mind, and stop any unwanted scripts, viruses and malicious threats which could potentially spell disaster. Data recovery is not always possible in such cases, and this is where the implementation of your data backup plan becomes imporant, it is the only way you have of recovering files from certain viruses. As you can see, a combination of backing up your data, having a good firewall/anti virus and a solid data recovery specialist to fall back on can mean complete safety for your business. Never neglect any of these three aspects and your business will be sure to survive and potential data threats that come it’s way. These simple preventative measures will mean that your data will always be intact, and backing up everything will mean that you will not suffer any losses due to unpredictable events like hardware failure. About the Author: By Nick Davison Advanced Data Recovery provide personal and corporate data recovery solutions across London and the UK, please visit our website for more information. ...