FireEye, described as Silicon Valley's hottest security start-up, recently opened its R&D centre in Bangalore, India. Ashar Aziz founded FireEye, a network security company, in 2004 after his previous startup, Terraspring, a datacenter automation and virtualisation company, was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2002. Before Terraspring, Aziz spent twelve years at Sun as an engineer focused on networking and network security. At present, Aziz leads both the technical and business strategies of FireEye as CTO and Chief Strategy Officer. In 2012, FireEye went on to win the Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Award, the JPMorgan Chase Hall of Innovation Award and three Stevie Awards at the 2012 American Business Awards. Recently in India to launch its new R&D centre, Aziz spoke to BW Online's Poonam Kumar about how FireEye works and what he expects from the Bangalore R&D centre You have been termed as the hottest security start-up in the Silicon Valley. What makes you rock?What made us rock is we have provided the first truly effective solution against unknown attacks that works in real time across all major threat factors. And we have successfully deployed it in close to 30 per cent of the Fortune 500 companies. We have done this while being tried and tested against all acclaimed competitors and winning close to 100 per cent of these bake-offs. It’s a title we have earned professionally as opposed to a merely superficial title.How is FireEye different from other anti-viruses available in the market? The most fundamental difference between FireEye and other anti-viruses like Macafee or Symatec is that they work on something that is already known to the antivirus vendor or some signature has been developed. But the attacks are far more sophisticated today. The attacks are consistently evolving and therefore, solutions with signatures cannot recognise them and cannot block them. We detect and block new viruses in real time. As for the most fundamental differentiator from the products available in the market, we work across all the major attack factors and across all the stages of a virus's life cycle. We provide a very accurate solution in the face of an unknown attack which is a very hard thing to do.How did the idea come to you and did you have any problem getting funds for your start-up?I had sold my previous company (Terraspring) to Sun Microsystems in 2002. When I left Sun, I was thinking about how to spend the rest of my life. As an entrepreneur, my philosophy is to look for hard problems. I was studying the evolution of all cyber attacks and malicious code in particular and there was a lot of talk about how it could evolve in different directions. If that evolution were to take place, it was clear that the existing defences would fail and that we needed a better architecture to deal with these attacks. I began working on that architecture at my home, in my living room. I spent eight months doing that. After coming up with the design and architecture for what is now FireEye, I was looking for some investors. It was a very useful and interesting technology and it took some 2-3-years to get the product right. But once it was ready, the product took off very, very rapidly.Who were the initial investors?Promod Haq from Norwest Venture Partners and Gaurav Garg from Sequoia Capital were the initial investors. Over time, we acquired many other investors including Juniper Networks, JAFCO Ventures. We recently announced a $51-million investment round with Goldman Sachs, Silicon Valley Bank and many others. So, at the moment all these are our investors.Can you describe how FireEye works?We have products which are system level appliance product that deploy at the key gate of the network such as internet gateway, email gateway, file, server, inspections point. We run suspicious objects inside instrumented virtual execution environment which is a proprietary technology that FireEye has. It’s not just ordinary VM technology, nor is it ordinary sandboxing technology. It’s a proprietary virtual execution technology designed to look for malicious activity and to find malicious behaviours. And it can do that in real time. You can put us on the gateway with a gigabit of traffic. And we built to inspect that gigabit of traffic by using virtual execution engine at in our office methodology. The output is incredibly detailed and incredibly accurate. Which is why we have been as successful as we have been because we are not estimating the thousands of false alerts. We have confirmation technology of the attacks built into the product and the information is very rich and very actionable.How long did it take for the business to take off?It took two-and-half-to-three-years to get the first product, FireEye Malware Protection System (MPS) right. Once it was ready, we took off and now it is one of the fastest growing and successful companies in the world.What are your plans for the Indian market? What will be your working model for India?We will invest $50 million in our R&D activities in India in the next 4-5 years to develop cutting-edge cyber security solutions. During its initial phase, we will employ approximately 50 research and development specialists and plan to recruit 250 employees in the next five years.The working model will be to make sure that we will talk to the local business practices. And we find right partners to work with to take us into all the key areas of business for us. These areas are networking, cryptography, network security, and data center virtualization . These tend to be other geography as well as government, financial sector, high-tech, curriculum infrastructure, gas and energy, telcos and we are doing very well in these areas in US and we are hoping to do the same here in India.What is the purpose behind setting up R&D centre in India?The Bangalore office is an important milestone for FireEye's global expansion. We expect the new Bangalore office to play a key role in maintaining cutting-edge technology and innovation in the FireEye line of security products. The Bangalore facility will serve as a hub for the development and testing of new FireEye products. We welcome Sridhar to the FireEye executive team. His extensive experience in building sophisticated product development teams in the US and India is an important addition. We already have first 50-100 accounts here.Do you develop applications for individuals or only for corporate only?As of now, we make products for enterprises only. And we have no such plans to target individuals. In future, we will come up with such products for individuals also. But as of now we don’t have such plans.How many startups have you launched? This is my second start-up. I guess, it qualifies me as a serial entrepreneur.What are your plans for the future?My future plan is to make sure FireEye’s architecture saves gateways from cyber attacks in the world. poonam(dot)kumar(at)abp(dot)in, poonam(dot)bw(at)gmail(dot)com
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The traditional system of ‘setting passwords that are easily remembered’ is being challenged in the recent days. While naïve employees would set predictable passwords, it is likely that the same would be exposed to threats from brute force attacks, keyloggers, socially engineered cons, and just breaking in and outright stealing them from a database. Passwords are only as effective as the security of the organisation storing them. Incidents of password breaches indicate that most internet users do not use strong passwords. Most find long, combinations of numbers,letters and symbols challenging and “password” is often the most common password among those stolen. While some aware employees might go for the longest, most cryptic password possible, someone breaking and stealing it from the organisation due to a data breach just makes the whole exercise futile. According to the November 2012, Symantec Intelligence Report, security breaches where user information becomes publically exposed or stolen — are a serious issue for an organisation. The exposure of customer data such as a password can lead to a loss of confidence in the organisation by its users. Even worse, the organisation could find themselves in violation of data privacy laws or on the receiving end of a lawsuit by its users. Moreover, in the workplace, users are likely to utilise the same password to access any number of personal and business resources. In fact, businesses can lose millions of dollars if just one employee’s account is compromised, leading to the loss of sensitive corporate data.Strong Authentication Is The Key To Keep Employee Data Secure Strong authentication is key to keep employee accounts and information secure, Strong authentication practices have been around for some years now; security tokens that generate one-time passwords on a small, portable device are a case in point. In such cases, even though a malicious user gains access to a machine, the risks of information theft are relatively lower. But with the advent of mobile workforces and remote workplaces, organisations are finding it tough to manage each employee carrying a token.Other Authentication AlternativesKnowledge-based systems: One of the most commonly used strong authentication alternatives is the use of knowledge-based systems. Banks use this method very commonly. In addition to the password, a user is asked a question based on prior knowledge. While, this is better than a password alone, there are certainly some shortcomings. One of the biggest shortcomings is related to the growth of social media. Large amounts of personal data is available on social networking platforms making it easy for social engineering attackers to guess the answer of a question such as the name of one’s pet. This then limits the value of knowledge-based authentication. Risk-based authentication: The risk-based method analyses user behaviour to determine the proper amount of security to apply depending on the current situation. For example, it will analyse the user’s location and the device being used to attempt logging in. When it’s the user’s workstation in office premises, and one is accessing relatively insignificant information, this would be considered a “low-risk” situation and little or no additional security is required. But if the user is requesting access on an unknown device from an IP address in another country, or trying to access financials or intellectual property, that will send up red flags, depending on the parameters enabled in the system. The user can then be required to perform additional authentication measures, in addition to entering a password, in order to be granted access.Public Key Infrastructure (PKI): PKI refers to the technology, infrastructure, and practices that support the implementation and operation of a certificate-based public key cryptographic system. The system uses a pair of mathematically related keys, called a private key and a public key, to encrypt and decrypt confidential information and to generate and verify digital signatures. (Digital signatures are used to sign transactions or to authenticate users or machines prior to granting access to resources.)The main function of PKI is to distribute public keys accurately and reliably to users and applications that need them. The process employs digital certificates which are issued to users or applications by an enterprise certificate.Apart from these methods, there are a few other promising methods of strong authentication on the horizon that are making their way into the real world. “Somewhat continuous” authentication not only looks at behaviour while logging in, but during the session itself to make sure you remain the person in control, which is useful in cases of highly sensitive information in the world of espionage. And other biometric-based methods are in development to further ensure user identity.Some of the methods, organisations can use to solve the problem of passwords:Educate employees on information protection policies and procedures, then hold them accountableImplement two factor authenticationIntegrate information protection practices into businesses processesAssess risks by identifying and classifying confidential informationDeploy data loss prevention technologies which enable policy compliance and enforcementImplement an integrated security solution that includes reputation-based security, proactive threat protection, firewall and intrusion prevention in order to keep malware off endpointsEstablish automated policy compliance solution to detect and remediate areas of non-compliance immediatelyProactively encrypt laptops to minimise consequences of a lost deviceConclusionSimple password protection may be history soon. Moving to a world where alternative authentication systems are the norm won’t be immediate. For the time being attackers are likely to attempt entering networks with legitimate, albeit compromised, access credentials. Businesses cannot afford to take chances and must soon evaluate an authentication method that will work best for them. (Prakashkumar, is Senior Director, Development, Symantec)
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If Google Chrome chants that ‘the web is what you make of it’, Opera Software seems to have taken upon the task of giving you exactly (and only) what you want from it. With the aim of customising mobile internet services on a qualitative and quantitative basis, the company has created the Opera Web Pass; a product that follows a pay per use model of subscribing to the internet that offers time- or site-specific data to their users. Sunil Kamath, Vice President for South Asia at Opera Software reveals that the ideology behind the Web Pass is to introduce customisation in mobile internet browsing while making it more accessible. “If you look at the market in India and around us, which share a similar ecosystem, the number of feature phone users as well as smartphone users is increasing. There is a huge surge in the mobile internet vertical business and people are accessing the web more frequently than ever before. However, there is a large segment of population in the market today who are not able to afford an internet service on the phone, because the way internet is sold is very mechanical and technical,” he says. The primary intent of the Web Pass is to lower the anti barrier for consumers on the one side and make the experience user friendly on the other. It is no surprise that the Web Pass has been launched on their flagship product, the Opera Mini, mobile browser. Of the 237 million users of Opera mobile browsers, 215 million use Opera Mini, worldwide, with India being the largest market (in terms of volume and growth). In India, Opera has partnerships with Airtel, Vodafone, Idea Cellular and Tata Docomo. Opera Mini works seamlessly across all platforms from Java to Android and iOS. “. We are available across app stores, devices and original equipment manufacturers (OEM)s are preloading opera mini as the default browser on their feature phones — Samsung Star 3, Samsung Star 3 Duos and Champ Deluxe Duos — before shipping them out. Kamath explains that currently on the Opera Mini homepage, which has graphic tiles or tabs such as speed dial, one of the properties will be replaced by a tile that reads Web Pass. “The moment you click on the page it will have all passes listed with a short description of what it is for the end user. The user can click on the pass he wants and from that moment on the pass is activated. It becomes part of the user’s browsing behaviour,” he says. Personalised Browsing The fact is that most users wouldn’t know how many megabytes of data they are consuming, in a day for instance; their awareness is limited to the broad figures (from which once can derive an approximate estimation)provided by the telecom service provider with regard to how much data can still be purchased within the plan period. On the contrary, if they were asked about which websites they browse, one could gauge their browsing behaviour, which is the essential focus in developing the Web Pass; creating content packages in a manner that the consumer understands what he wants to buy. “From an end user’s perspective, instead of buying unlimited data or 2GB data for a fixed amount, (s)he can choose to buy Facebook for one hour and pay Rs 5 or 10 (depending on how the telecom operator’s pricing strategy),” Kamath informs. Alternatively, one could also decide to purchase a sports pack around the IPL, for example: a package such as this would include to six major cricket sites, and a subscription based tariff plan could be generated on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. “In the backend we make sure that those sites are not charged per kilobytes but are free for the end user for a fixed period of time. The moment the user’s pass expires, he will be greeted with a renewal option on the homepage of his/her Opera Mini browser. Similarly there could be data packages around news or entertainment websites, so on and so forth depending on the creativity and pricing strategy of the telecom provider, Kamath feels. One can imagine them drawing inspiration from DTH providers who have considerable expertise in successfully rolling out different content packages for different target demographics. Last week, Bharti Airtel became the first telecom operator to launch the Opera Web Pass in the Indian market. The advantage with this product is that it offers an easy enough solution for people have subscriptions to (2G/3G) data packet connections from Airtel, for instance, as well as those who don’t. The Opera Web Pass was previously launched in Malaysia in November last year. “(The Web Pass) is in the interest of the operators to grow their ARPU (average revenue per user), and that is the value proposition. There could be an incremental revenue upside from the operator’s perspective plus it puts him in a position to develop a better price and product proposition for his customer,” Kamath reasons. The Web Pass is the result of an integration of the advertising engine within Opera and the Opera Mini platform, which effectively means that Opera is able to target consumers within the Browser framework, keeping a track of what previous web passes a user has purchased, and thereby making purchase related suggestions. Screening Possibilities While technology continues to form the DNA of the 18 year old Norwegian software company, Opera, Kamath claims, is expanding its horizons and owing to some of the significant acquisitions made in the last 12-18 month period, the company have a distinct advantage over other players in the market. “We acquired an app store called Handster, in the US, recently and now the Opera mobile store is the 5th largest in the world. We also acquired two agencies in the US and the UK which get advertisers on board, we create campaigns and coupled with Ad marvel (an ad servicing platform acquired in 2010), we have the complete eco system in our control; we have the advertisers on one side, we have the serving platform (through Ad Marvel) and we have Opera Mini and other third party publishers as the publishing network,” Kamath elaborates. With all of that in place, Opera is concentrating on consolidating its position as a consumer organisation where they the company has significantly large verticals of business on desktop, an devices (Kamath defines the category as any UI which is not a mobile, tablet or desktop) such as set top boxes, gaming consoles, DTH, car browsers in developed markets such as US and EU. With regard to the television domain, Kamath says that “If you go to a local electronic shop today and ask for a Sony Bravia (launched in September 2012) which comes with an opera TV store, Opera branded TV store browser. Opera is in n the process of signing local app developers who would be interested in interacting with TV consumers at present. The company has been present in the TV space for about 8 years. “We have an Opera web based software development kit (SDK), which is supplied to OEMs across the world, who take our SDK and build their applications or EPG (electronic programme guide)on top of it to make it a full browser experience for the users,” states Kamath. When it comes to the desktop market in India, Kamath says that while Opera can’t compete with “deep pocket players” dominating the market in India, the company is seeking an alternative distribution channels to increase desktop penetration. Despite the extent of their B2B business, mobile is the biggest growth driver and continues to be on top of the company’s priority list. The Opera mobile app store showcases 10,000 developers and 80,000 apps at the moment. “We get a significant amount of traffic on our app store since we are a cross operator, cross device, crossover store. We are not limited to a particular device, or operating system. Since we are a global organisation with presence in many countries, we have a good mix of apps coming from all over the world” says Kamath while claiming that Opera Mini users browse the web 10 x times more than those who use other browsers. There are more than 13 million unique users in India every month consuming from the opera mobile store and half a million downloads, which Kamath considers favourable statistics.. In terms of market size, after India the largest markets for Opera Mini are Indonesia, Russia, Nigeria and Mexico. Yet, “we are not shying away from the developed markets,” maintains Kamath. “With developed markets the focus is not on cost saving, compression of data but to do with the browser experience, high end devices, not feature or smart feature phone market. While price sensitive, emerging markets are good for advertising as a business as well,” he says, emphasising on the importance of both.
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The year has started with a bumper crop of online frauds, cons, ID thefts, and check stealing this year. Some of them can steal your returns, others cost you your life savings or money you have not even begun to earn. Valentine's Day Spam: Valentine's Day represents one of the big shopping periods of the year. Online shoppers will be seen expressing their love this week as both online retailers and spammers continue to take steps to attract and convert shoppers. This year, Symantec has observed that Valentine's Day spam messages offer unbelievable discounts on jewellery, dinning opportunities, and expensive gifts to shoppers. The top word combinations used in spam messages includes: Find-Your-Valentine; eCards-for-Valentine; Valentine's-Day-Flowers. The e-card spam message arrives with a malicious attachment called ValentineCard4you.zip. After opening the attachment, malware is downloaded on to the user's computer. The attachment has been detected as Backdoor.Trojan whose primary functionality is to enable a remote attacker to have access to or send commands to a compromised computer. Income Tax Filing Return: Phishing emails boasting of tax refunds were sent to users in an attempt to entice citizens to enter their credentials on a bogus website. Recently, new attacks have been observed in which the phishing website states that taxes can be paid online. As the fiscal year in India draws to an end, more people are rushing to pay taxes before the deadline. The phishing website has mimicked the legitimate one in order to steal customers' sensitive information. However, the phishing page is not SSL encrypted-the legitimate page is.Increased Phishing On Indian Brands: In the month of January, the number of phishing URLs associated to Indian brands accounted for 0.15 per cent of the global phishing statistics which were all in the banking sector. Mumbai tops the list of cities that hosted phishing sites in India of non-Indian brands followed by New Delhi. Hyderabad and Aurangabad were on the 3rd and 4th place respectively. "The sheer volume of public involvement in topical events makes them rewarding opportunities for cyber criminals. Spammers find new ways to get unsuspecting users to download malicious content, buy fake products, open attachments and fall for event driven scams," says Abhijit Limaye, Director, Development, Security Response at Symantec while advising users to be cautious when handling unsolicited discount offers or suspicious emails or URLs that seek personal information.
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Reliance Communications, India’s fully integrated telecommunications service provider, has signed an agreement with Ericsson for $1 billion to operate and manage the wireline and wireless networks for Northern and Western states of India. Ericsson will manage the day to day operations across wireline and wireless networks and will take over responsibility for field maintenance, network operations and operational planning of Reliance Communications 2G, CDMA and 3G mobile networks. This agreement is aimed to meet the fast evolving customer demand for communications applications and services in one of the world’s most dynamic telecom markets. Reliance Communications will benefit from Ericsson’s proven world-class processes, methods and tools and the partnership will allow Reliance Communications to free up resources to focus on user experience, as well as improving innovation power, agility and speed across the specified geographies. Reliance Communications’ infrastructure covers 24,000 towns and 600,000 villages in India to which it offers converged services including voice, data and video. A New Social Platform bringing Opinions Every MomentAmericos Technologies, an IT services company in the business of web & mobile application design and development announces the launch of ‘Hammer’ - a new medium through which people can share ideas and generate opinion- instantly. It is a place where you get opinions at a moment’s notice. Hammer connects people of all ages and walks of life across the world at a moment’s notice to spur communication that is pure, honest and unbiased on any subject. It encourages pushing the boundaries further, widening the sphere and stretching imagination to define new possibilities. This web & mobile based application sets a new landmark in collaborative interaction and boosts user’s online social network like never before. Hammer is one of many initiatives by its founders to rein in technology towards a meaningful purpose. Through such endeavours, Americos Technologies steadily aspires to become an industry leader in the field of web and mobile applications in the future. This revolutionary application will be soon available on iPhone and Android platform.ASUS launches VivoBook S550CMASUS, a global leader in the new digital era has announced the launch of VivoBook S550CM. Keeping it sleek and elegant, it encompasses Hairline-spun textured metal surfaces allow ASUS VivoBook S550 to elegantly stand out from the crowd. With its Ultrabook form factor, it still packs full features in a slender build, matching the dynamic nature of new high-portability and intuitive computing. The slim design is easy to carry while showcasing premium chic and feel. Exclusive ASUS Super Hybrid Engine II technology offers smartphone-like 2-second instant on from sleep or hibernate modes. Its energy-conserving design goes into standby for up to two weeks. Open files and tasks are kept safe in memory, plus should the battery drop below 5 per cent charge while they’re away, data gets automatically backed up. The valuable content is always secure and within reach. ASUS VivoBook S550 features a 3rd generation Intel Core processor and NVIDIA GeForce GT 635M graphics with DirectX 11 compatibility to provide great computing power. With up to 4GB of dedicated DDR3 video memory, the discrete graphics processor accelerates S550 performance, making everything smoother and more fluid while enhancing video quality so movies look great and allowing sleek enjoyment of the latest games. Bombay Bullion Association Inaugurates 'Bombay Bullion Assay CentreBombay Bullion Association has inaugurated its new Assay centre at Zaveri Bazar office. The Bombay Bullion Assay Centre will be a completely secured in house assaying facility wherein the tendered precious metal samples will be analysed in a totally neutral atmosphere in one of the best equipped laboratory. While the association has consistently provided a neutral assaying of precious metals, this new initiative will ensure accurate evaluation of transactions and thereby sustain their credibility. Alten Inks Partnership With Maini GroupAlten Group, a European leader in engineering and technology consulting, has been announced a partnereship with Maini group, design and manufacturing entities, to offer specialised system engineering and design-to-manufacturing services to global Aerospace and Defense (A&D) equipment manufacturers. Alten and Maini will combine their expertise in design, manufacturing and technical support to offer complete design-to-manufacturing and customer support services to Aerospace and Defense equipment manufacturers. Customers can benefit from Alten’s specialised system design and engineering expertise, and Maini’s experience in precision manufacturing, engineering and robust supply chain ecosystem.
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An internal memo at Yahoo Inc introducing a ban on working from home has sparked a debate on whether remote working leads to greater productivity and job satisfaction or kills creativity and is just a chance to slack off.Working remotely has become commonplace due to technology and has been welcomed particularly by people with young families or those facing long and expensive commutes.Statistics from the US Bureau of Labor show nearly 25 per cent of full-time workers did some work at home in 2010.A survey by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) found 59 per cent of UK companies in 2011 offered some kind of teleworking, a jump from 13 per cent in 2006, with small companies leading the trend to help cut office costs.But Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer has ruled that staff can no longer work from home from June this year, as outlined in the widely leaked internal memo which appeared on newspaper websites and online forums on Tuesday."Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussion, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings. Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home," said the memo attributed to Yahoo human resources head Jacqueline Reses.Asked about the memo, a Yahoo spokesman said the company does not comment on internal matters.Mayer, 37, who returned to work two weeks after the birth of her first child last year, was brought to Yahoo from Google to revive the company's diminishing fortunes.Her decision to clamp down on remote working met a wall of criticism from proponents of a flexible workplace to improve the work-life balance, boost motivation, and keep women at work."It's incredibly disappointing," said Jennifer Owens, spokeswoman for website Working Mother, adding most women were delighted when a pregnant Mayer took over the helm of Yahoo."Her plan ... is to lead her workforce back to the last century by banning work-from-home policies across the company."Step BackwardsRichard Branson, head of Virgin Group, said the move by Yahoo! undermined the trust that staff would get their work done wherever, without supervision, as working is no longer 9-5."This seems a backwards step in an age when remote working is easier and more effective than ever," Branson wrote in a blog on the Virgin website."If you provide the right technology to keep in touch, maintain regular communication and get the right balance between remote and office working, people will be motivated to work responsibly, quickly and with high quality."Britain's BT Group, one of the first UK companies to adopt teleworking, said about 69,000 of its 89,000 staff were equipped to work flexibly of which about 9,400 are home workers.The company said this led to benefits like accommodation savings, increased productivity and reduced sick absence, adding 99 per cent of women returned to BT after maternity leave."Our flexible working policies can also achieve a better balance between work and family commitments, which can be especially important for those with young families or caring responsibilities," a BT spokesman said.Flexible working was cited in a careerbuilder.com survey released last month as one of the most important factors in job satisfaction and staying with a company.The Harris Interactive survey of 3,900 U.S. workers between November 1 and 30 last year found 59 per cent said flexible schedules were important and 33 per cent cited the ability to work from home over having an office or a company car.Guy Bailey, CBI's head of employee relations, said flexibility can be a real win-win for companies and their staff, acting as a recruitment and retention tool for businesses and letting staff balance their working and home lives."However, it needs to work for both parties, so home-working arrangements will understandably vary from company to company," he told Reuters.A 2011 survey of 1,500 workers in 15 European nations commissioned by Microsoft Corp found only 52 per cent of people trust colleagues to work productively away from the office.This was reflected in comments by some former employees of Yahoo who backed Mayer, saying she was making the right call because many employees were abusing the system.Several unnamed ex-employees told the website Business Insider that Yahoo's large remote workforce led to "people slacking off like crazy, not being available, and spending a lot of time on non-Yahoo projects."(Reuters)
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Indian shopping is finally moving online, and the trend is here to stay. So proves a report on the online shopping trends revealed by Google India on 28 January, by combining consumer interest observed on Google search and online research conducted by TNS. The study also shows that the existent users are satisfied with their online experience, with 90 per cent online shoppers claiming that they plan to buy more products online. As per the study, there was a 128 per cent growth in consumer interest in 2012. Rajan Anandan, VP & Managing Director of Google India, said: “With approximately 8 million Indians shopping online in 2012, online shopping industry in India is growing rapidly and will continue to see exponential growth.”The report was compiled by combining data from Google Trends and online research conducted by TNS Australia with a sample size of 800 respondents on behalf of Google India in November 2012.The apparel and accessories category has risen to the top by becoming second largest product category in terms of consumer interest in the country with 30 per cent of total market interest, after electronics which holds 34 per cent of the market. The report showed that in terms of product categories, this is the one to watch out for, since it is expected to overtake electronics in 2013.In terms of the top product categories ever purchased online, apparels and accessories was the top category with 84 per cent, followed by electronics at 71 per cent. The frequency of purchase was higher for categories like apparels and accessories at 34 per cent and beauty and personal care at 33 per cent, making it more profitable because of repeat purchase. Other categories that Indians searched for online in 2012 were Books, Beauty & Personal Care, Home and furnishing, Baby products and Healthcare. Home & furnishing and healthcare saw their growth double, and were the fastest growing categories in terms of query volume on Google search.Says Anandan, “We expect the growth to come from outside of top 8 metros as was evident in our recently concluded “Great Online Shopping Festival” which saw over 51 % of traffic from non-metros.” Non-metros seem to be fuelling the growth of online, with states like UP, West Bengal, Punjab, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Jharkhand showing considerable online activity.As mentioned by Anandan, the tremendous growth of online shopping in small towns and cities is not counter intuitive, since these areas do not always have access to regularly updated stock as compared to metros. The online portal provides these unavailable products to their doorsteps, often at discounted prices.The report found a correlation between online ticketing and online shopping, with online ticket buyers being more comfortable with the online portal for transactions, thereby having a tendency to shop online. Besides having a higher average amount spent on their first product purchased of INR 2347, as compared to INR 1626 for other internet shoppers, online ticket buyers are more comfortable with the use of debit and credit cards, as opposed to cash on delivery.
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Britain and India are expected to agree to set up a joint task force to fight cyber crime on 19 February' 2013, a move London hopes will help it safeguard the personal banking and mobile phone data of millions of Britons, much of which is stored on Indian servers. The agreement is expected to be sealed at a meeting between British Prime Minister David Cameron and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in New Delhi, one of the highlights of Cameron's three-day trade and investment trip to India. "The two leaders are expected to agree a substantial strengthening of practical co-operation between British and Indian authorities to increase the security of British and Indian computer networks and to help defend them against cyber attacks by terrorists, criminals and hostile states," Cameron's office said in a statement. It said India was set to have one of the biggest online populations by 2015 with an expected 300 million users - larger than the United States and up from the 137 million users already in India today. Cameron told reporters: "I think why we're forging these partnerships with other countries - including trusted partners like India - is twofold. "One is, other countries securing their data is effectively helping us secure our data. Secondly, I think this is an area where Britain has some real competitive and technology advantages." (Reuters)
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As emerging and mid-market companies around the globe look to grow and develop innovative strategies to outperform competition, they actively seek opportunities to transform from a people-driven organisation to a process-centric market leader. As these businesses and entrepreneurs evolve, they continually look at ways to leverage standardised and automated business processes, and best in class technologies with zero capital outlay in technology, process or people.With the fast paced adoption of cloud taking place we are seeing over 5,000 large enterprises and over 10 million SMBs ready to consume IT, the $30-billion-plus domestic IT market is expected to grow between 15-18 per cent in 2013 as per Zinnov report. A fast maturing cloud market with many new entrants has grown in the region at $535 million in 2011 with over 70 per cent growth registered in 2012 and almost 50 per cent growth forecast for the next three years, (as per IDC report on India Cloud Market Overview, 2011-2016).Business priorities have changed in the recent economic times and are influencing the way cloud is being looked upon as a strategic tool to grow faster. Entrepreneurs and businesses are looking at focusing more on their core business functions and imperatives, whatever drives their competitive edge in the market. They seek to outsource all their critical non-core business functions such as finance, accounts, HR, legal, and IT to providers that can offer better quality, faster turnarounds and elastic scale up or down charge models. As we look at the worldwide trend in cloud adoption, fast growing SMEs in developed and developing countries will be the first to move their business critical applications and business processes to the cloud. These SMEs are more open to significant transformational changes than their larger counterparts, as typically these critical non-core business functions are challenging to manage due to rapid growth, and also challenges associated with change management related to technology, process and people. While still the adoption of cloud by SMEs is limited to basic services, mainly due to unavailability of end-to-end vertically integrated stack of services, we are now witnessing a rise in demand by such emerging companies. Typically the second generation leadership is willing to adopt new disruptive technologies and business management services. Therefore, the potential is huge for SMEs to scale up fast by adopting unique solutions which will transform them into a process-centric organisation and over time a market leader. The adoption of cloud-based productivity suites among emerging and mid-sized companies is directly dependent on bringing down the TCO (total cost of ownership) and increasing ease of use. The number of cloud services is expected to double over the next five years, and the number of small business using at least one cloud service will triple during that same period.The most commonly used cloud services by SMEs are email, instant messaging, and backup, but with the rising competition in the industries it has become all the more important for entrepreneurs to have a well-established cloud partner for their business, right in place from the beginning. There is a rising need to bridge this gap that can fill the time, mobility benefit and cost for enterprises. Now we are witnessing new forms of cloud platforms which are specifically focused on SMEs such as the Business Function as a Service (BFaaS©), which gives users on demand, pay as you go service delivery experience that businesses can leverage to outsource end-to-end and all their critical but non-core business functions such as F&A, HR, Legal and IT. The key items for consideration by both IT and business decision makers to opt for such services framework include:Personal attention to manage not requiredNo upfront capital outlaysControl and ComplianceNo vendor lock-insFlexibility & Rapid implementationMobility of workforceServices like BFaaS© are bringing a fundamental shift from the traditional BPO time, material and resource management type engagement to an objective outcome and result oriented model. The famous saying “What worked for you yesterday may not work tomorrow” is most apt in today’s cloud scenario. It is time that the emerging and mid-sized companies begin to adopt the change for a positive orientation and think big, start small and scale up fast.(The author, Vikram Dham is CEO & Co-founder Emkor Solutions Limited)
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The burgeoning internet adoption and web browsing on mobile devices, businesses have opened up new opportunities to tap new markets with online sales and account-based services. However, hackers, spammers, phishing scams, virus threats, spyware threats and even cyber-terrorists, lurk on the Internet in search of easy victims. As customers increasingly choose to shop, share, bank, and view accounts online, concerns about identity theft and fraud still keep many website visitors from completing, or starting, their transactions online. There is a dire need to be reassured that the confidential information that they share will be protected from malicious activity.Apprehensions Of The Online UserAt the same time, experts predicting that online banking, and other accounts, will grow to become the primary customer touch-point over the next decade. One factor that hampers the uptake of online transactions continues to be the reluctance to conduct transactions due to concerns about protecting confidential information. Although research has proved that identity theft occurs more often in an offline world than online, many Internet users are nonetheless extremely wary of identity theft.The apprehension of an online user is easy to understand with the following behavioural patterns:• Abandoned shopping carts add up to lost sales and missed revenue.• Click-through tracking shows that potential customers reach enrollment forms, but do not complete them.• Search analytics and alerts show how brands and company names are hijacked to lure customers away from legitimate sites.The Evolved Phishing ScamWith scams on the internet becoming more advanced and sophisticated, trust which is the most important aspect of the online business ecosystem is eroded. Emails and websites are getting more legitimate in appearance to trick visitors into sharing confidential information. SSL stripping, a type of man-in-the-middle attack, redirects users to “secure” websites that are fake (i.e., some security measures have been taken, and are displayed, but the website is not really the one the visitor believes they are visiting). These types of attacks often target webmail applications, secure sites, and intranets. In the month of April this year, phishing on Indian brands was 0.22 per cent of the global phishing statistics which increased to 0.33 per cent in six the month of September. Also it is interesting to note that in May 2012, all phishing attacks on Indian brands targeted the banking sector - with 1 in 4 using a .IN domain.The Answer To Confident Online Transactions – Extended ValidationTo help prevent phishing attacks from being successful and to build customer trust, online businesses also need a way to show customers that they are engaging in legitimate business. Extended Validation (EV) SSL Certificates are the answer, offering the highest level of authentication available with an SSL Certificate and providing tangible proof to online users that the site is indeed legitimate. Most users often check visual indications that a website is using SSL – the closed padlock and “https” in the URL are examples. Fraudsters have found a way around this and abused this trust by taking advantage of lax validation policies used by some Certification Authorities (CAs), and purchased SSL certificates for fake domains. They have used these SSL certificates to create “secure” sites from which to launch phishing and man-in-the-middle attacks, thereby undermining overall consumer confidence. EV SSL certificates provide an extra layer of protection for consumers and website owners by requiring that applicants follow a strict issuance and management process, as defined by the CA/Browser Forum, prior to being issued an EV SSL certificate. Support for EV SSL has become a standard security feature in mainstream Web browsers such as Internet Explorer and Firefox, and on mobile devices on various platforms. These browsers recognize EV-secured websites and show the presence of EV in a visually distinctive way so that users can easily see that the website can be trusted.The Value Of EV SSL – The Relevance Of The ‘Green Bar’With the increase of EV SSL, the green address bar is becoming a “must have” for a wide range of industries doing business online. The ability to track impressions, clicks, and interactions make it possible to measure the return on investment in EV SSL and quantify the value of better security to any company’s bottom line. A prerequisite to convert shoppers into buyers and visitors to members requires a high degree of trust and confidence in a given website. Also, for companies that must comply with regulatory standards related to securing personally identifiable information, EV SSL certificates help reduce risk of non-compliance and communicate the implementation of rigorous protection measures against well-known threats. By using EV SSL and educating customers to look for the green bar, companies mitigate the risk of mid-stream interception and demonstrate efficacy of security measures.With the inevitable growth of online services and sales becoming key drivers of growth for businesses of all sizes across a wide range of industries, certificates with EV are a proven tool that makes it easy for online users to feel confident about sharing their personal information. They are a “must have” for businesses that want to maximize their online growth potential. Also, in and online world where fraud and scams are common, the rigorous authentication process behind EV SSL can enable a reputable online business to stand out from the rest.(The author is Director, Website Security Solutions, Symantec India)
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