Archives for May 2021

Get Hustling And You Can Protect Your Financial Future

May 6, 2021 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Are you looking for ways to secure your financial future so that you can ensure that you have lots of money when it’s finally time for you to retire? If that’s the case, then you definitely need to think about setting up a side hustle. The right side hustle will provide you with the extra cushion of cash that you require.

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Use Your Assets

First, you might want to consider how to use the assets that you own. For instance, you might already own a property. If that’s the case, then you could consider renting part of it out, profiting off a spare room in your home. You can do this, unless there is a clause in your mortgage contract that forbids you from doing this. If you are renting a property then things are a little more tricky, but you can usually get permission from a landlord if you are lucky.

Explore New Investments

Next, you should think about exploring the latest investment possibilities that are available on the market. We recommend that you think about something like crypto trading. The cryptocurrency exchange market has been heating up in recent years and providing fantastic opportunities for the average investor. If you take the right steps here, then you could easily earn a fortune. The best part is that cryptocurrencies can be cheap and cheerful. As such, you won’t have to worry about them cutting massively into your savings. There is also the chance to win big and when we say big, we definitely mean it.

Set Up A Side Business

You could also think about setting up a full side business. One of the easiest ways to make money with this idea would be by buying and then selling on Amazon. You can start by selling things that you already own but don’t want and never use. This could be the exercise equipment in your garage or the tech that has been stored in your draws. It’s entirely your choice what you want to use here. Once you have run out of items that you already own, you’ll need to buy new products at the right price to turn a profit.

Go Big With Green

Finally, you might want to think about going green at home. Investing in solar energy used to be an option that was largely unaffordable for the typical homeowner. However, things have now changed and solar panels will fit into the typical budget. You just need to make sure that you are getting the right numbers and sizes that will match the needs of your home and your family. It’s worth noting that as well as helping you save, solar panels can also make you money. If not now, then soon you will be able to sell back any energy that you don’t use to the grid.

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We hope this helps you understand a few of the best hustles that are definitely going to be worth exploring for you. If you make the right choices here, then you can guarantee your finances are healthy for years.

3 Security Best Practices for Organizations Managing a Remote Workforce

May 5, 2021 by Guest Post Leave a Comment

This article is originally posted on Nightfall.ai.

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In response to the threat posed by the coronavirus pandemic, an increasing number of companies are urging employees to work from home. Despite the severity of the disruption caused by COVID-19, employees and even companies may find a silver lining, as remote work can have a number of benefits, including increased employee satisfaction and productivity. Although it’s far too early to tell, these benefits may serve to motivate organizations to make a more permanent transition to remote work. As employers figure out the role remote work will play in their organization, special attention will need to be given to how employers will ensure the security of both their workforce and their business-critical data. Security teams can help organizations navigate this transition by putting established security best practices into place. Below are three practices worth considering.

1. Make security part of your organizational culture

Whether or not an organization’s workforce is remote, building a culture of security is integral to strengthening an organization’s security posture. This starts with outlining clear security goals informed by both business and regulatory obligations, as well as your organization’s commitment to stakeholders and any unique industry-related security threats. From there, security teams can develop data policies that inform stakeholders and employees of the processes and practices essential to an organization’s security. Beyond building a data policy, security teams will want to build understanding and support of these policies among employees. Like with your workplace conduct policies, this can be accomplished by including cybersecurity practices in your employee handbook and tying these practices to your organization’s overall vision and values. Cybersecurity training can also cement the types of security hygiene employees will need to exercise to successfully carry out their job.

2. Standardize the tools and processes your remote workforce will use

In our cloud security best practices post, we highlighted that consistency is one of the keys to cloud security. As remote work becomes normalized, this will only become more true. Improving your organization’s security posture will depend on your security team’s ability to create and enforce protocols for remote workers.

What are some of the considerations security teams will need to make?

Deciding between bring your own device (BYOD) schemes vs IT-issued equipment

One of the first considerations that’ll likely need to be made when adopting long-term remote work is whether employees will conduct their work on their own devices or company-owned machines. Each choice contains a tradeoff, but contrary to popular belief, BYOD programs don’t need to result in chaos and managing IT-issued devices doesn’t have to be taxing.

With regards to enterprise security, the major difference between BYOD schemes and arrangements where organizations have greater control over business equipment — like company owned personally enabled (COPE) and company owned business only (COBO) – is where a security team’s data visibility and policy enforcement capabilities may lie. For company owned devices, it’s far easier to install and manage security tools that provide insight at the network or endpoint level. While organizations using a BYOD scheme can mandate that employees authorize security management programs on their devices, enforcing compliance and ensuring proper installation of these programs might prove to be difficult. There still, however, exist security solutions perfectly suited for BYOD.

Besides cybersecurity, organizations and security teams will also need to concern themselves with the physical security of employee devices as well. What happens when a device is lost or stolen, for example? Organizations will need to understand what types of damage or misuse employees are responsible for preventing and outline these scenarios clearly in employee trainings and handbooks.

Managing an authorized list of resources and deciding how to secure them

Just as organizations will need to decide on the devices employees will use, they’ll also need to decide what resources employees can use, how access to these resources will be provisioned, and what types of security and authentication policies will be in place when employees access these resources. For instance, your company may choose to adopt Slack as a sanctioned SaaS productivity application and use a tool like Okta for provisioning access and enforcing multifactor authentication.

In an era of readily available SaaS tools, this type of sanctioned IT can be difficult to maintain, as data sprawl and shadow IT threaten organizations. Some of this tension can be addressed by outlining sanctioned IT resources during employee training or in other documentation. However, security teams should understand that managing IT resources is a give and take between security and productivity. Although shadow IT shouldn’t be unquestioningly embraced, security teams should be receptive to rather than dismissive of the root causes of shadow IT. This can be accomplished by having security teams create channels to quickly solicit feedback across the organization to determine and keep up with employee needs and pain points, and if possible, by having security teams work more closely with business leaders to assess departmental needs.

Determining which security tools you’ll provide to employees

Employee security hygiene is another critical aspect to secure remote work. Your organization may want to decide if implementing tools like password managers, encrypted chat programs, VPNs or other tools makes sense for your workforce. If you decide to make these available to your employees, you’ll need proper documentation and training to ensure that they make good use of them.

3. Properly enforce data policies across your workforce

For remote work, the vast majority of your workforce will likely be leveraging cloud tools to carry out their day-to-day tasks. In these environments, organizations will need to have the proper visibility to monitor the types of data being stored and transmitted. Data visibility will also be central to establishing the appropriate controls for your data.

The types of solutions your security team deploys will depend on the objectives of your information security program. For example, if your organization operates in a highly regulated space like health care or finance, a COBO device scheme combined with a mobile device management (MDM) solution might make sense as this will let you ensure devices are up to compliance standards. However, while something like a MDM or even a cloud access security broker (CASB) might provide you endpoint or network level visibility, your data policies may also require you to have visibility into cloud applications. Nightfall, for example, provides visibility and data policy automation at the application level, allowing businesses to enforce data policies regardless of what devices or networks their employees ultimately use. Understanding the security layers to which your policies should apply will allow you to make strategic use of the platforms best suited to protecting your data.

About Nightfall

Nightfall is the industry’s first cloud-native DLP platform that discovers, classifies, and protects data via machine learning. Nightfall is designed to work with popular SaaS applications like Slack & GitHub as well as IaaS platforms like AWS. You can schedule a demo with us below to see the Nightfall platform in action.

The Guide To Selling An Investment Property

May 5, 2021 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Investment properties are popular assets; a lot can be done with them, both in terms of long term, passive incomes and one time payoffs, and real estate is one of the most accessible investment types when you’ve got the capital for it.

However, there comes a time in every home owner’s life when they want to sell on. And when you’ve got an investment property to put on the market, the selling process is going to be a little different to what you might be used to. And that’s why we’ve put together the little guide below.

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Decide What You Want to Do Next

Before you sell, for mostly tax purposes, you need to decide why you’re selling and what you’re planning to do next. Because when you sell an investment property simply because you want to leverage the cash gained on another property, you won’t have to fork out as much for the government.

It’ll also help you in streamlining the selling process too. You’ll be able to find a price point much faster, as well as pick the most appropriate estate agent, such as Properties Miami, for your purposes.

Dealing with Capital Gains

You’re going to have to deal with taxes whenever you sell a property, but when you’ve got an investment property (sometimes known as a rental property) to sell on, you’ve got more taxes to deal with than ever before.

Because capital gains tax is there to tax the growth of the investment, and how much it’s appreciated since you first bought it. This tax only occurs when you finally sell, and only counts if you’ve owned for more than a year, so you won’t have to worry about it since the asset has left your hands.

So know the rates before you sell, and you may even be able to take ‘depreciation deductions’ on the property too, as homes naturally deteriorate as they age. However, taking this into account before the point of sale may push the tax bill up at a later stage.

Picking Your Moment

Now that you know why you’re selling, what you want to do next, and how you’re going to deal with any associated taxes, you need to pick your moment right. The current year, 2021, is currently standing as a good time to put a property on the market, with house prices high across the globe and selling periods faster than usual. However, times like these don’t last forever, and you need to be sure you’ve got time to cash in.

Maybe you should watch the market for a while. You might want to work out what it is people want in your area, or how your own finances will fare if you sell now or later. A decision like this is mostly up to personal preference, so above all else, make sure you’re comfortable to sell.

An investment property doesn’t have to be hard to sell, as long as you know what to expect.

Smart Tips For A Healthier Work-Life Balance

May 4, 2021 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

For those who have demanding careers, you may find it difficult to achieve a healthy work-life balance. If so, then you are most likely feeling burnt out, lacking social life, or often not having time to enjoy your hobbies. Whatever is causing you to prioritize work over living life, you may need to take a step back and utilize these smart tips for creating a healthier work-life balance.

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Schedule a big event

If your job is demanding and your family and friends appreciate how hard you work, you may not necessarily need to change how often or much you work. Instead, you may benefit from holding or attending big events from time to time.

For instance, you may be looking to celebrate Independence Day and decide to invite family and friends over. To make the event memorable and show you want to make an effort for everyone, you could treat everyone and make the occasion more fun with matching 4th of July t shirts. They will feel more involved and see that you do want to spend quality time with them. After all, quality is better than quantity and it is a step forward to a better work-life balance.

Work out your strengths

If you find yourself working late because of a lack of productivity or not being organized, then you may want to figure out your strengths. If one of your strengths is completing the hardest or longest tasks first thing in the morning, then this might be the answer to finishing work early.

You may end up leaving hard tasks until last because you want to put them off. But, this may be the sole reason for you working longer than you need to. Instead, always prioritize the hard tasks first and you will be able to finish them earlier each day. You will find yourself having more time for yourself, others, and hobbies, which is a much healthier work-life balance.

Switch off devices when you get home

With most industries going digital, it is so easy to get wrapped up in work emails when being at home. If you find yourself checking your emails when you are cooking dinner or having chill time with your loved ones, this is a sign that the device needs to be switched off at home.

If you work away from home, then work should be left at work. It can be more difficult for those who work at home. Either way, it is important and useful to turn off devices when you finish work. It will prevent you from checking emails or working too late. Emails and work can easily be accessible on your mobile, so turn off everything where you can access work. Especially if you have special plans or know that you need to spend quality time with yourself, family, friends, or on a hobby. You need downtime to create a healthier life in and out of work.

Tips To Get Your New Business Set Up For Success

May 4, 2021 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

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Being a new business owner is an exciting time in your life but also brings a lot of uncertainty and stress to your days. There’s a lot to do and think about as you launch your company and get used to the idea of being your own boss.

The following tips will help get your new business set up for success right from the start. Focus on these areas and it won’t be long before you’re on your way to increasing your sales and making a name for yourself in your industry. Remember to have fun with it and enjoy your newfound professional freedom and the opportunity to create something from scratch.

Set up Your Office Space

One tip to help ensure your business gets off on the right foot is to set up your office space. Choose a prime location where it’s easy for customers to find you. Make sure you have enough room to grow based on future needs and that you have all the right equipment in place. For instance, you’ll need phones, printers, computers, and a strong and fast wireless Internet connection. To ensure a smooth start you’ll want a fiber cable that’s small, lightweight, and will get the job done right to avoid disruptions.

Hire A Team of Skilled Employees

You may be a one-person show today but all of that will change as you open your doors to your new business. You’re going to need a team of skilled employees on your side who can help you reach your goals and come up with new and innovative products or services. Come up with a recruiting strategy so you can attract top talent and make sure each person you hire is a good fit for the position and company culture you’re building. Read through resumes and conduct interviews to help you narrow down your choices and determine who you should bring on board.

Implement A Marketing Strategy

If your new company is going to succeed then you’ll need a marketing strategy to help you get in front of your target audience at the right times. Come up with a mix of both online and offline tactics that you can implement and that will get people talking about your business and what you do. Create a website, launch a blog, engage on social media, and host various events throughout the year, for example. Produce messaging that’s clear, concise, and that’s to the point, and easy for your audience to digest and understand.

Manage Your Time Wisely

As a new business owner, there will be many people who are going to request your time and energy. You have to know where to give it and when to say no so you can focus on your most important initiatives. Manage your time wisely by practicing work-life balance and doing your best not to spread yourself too thin. Get your new business set up for success by making a list of business priorities and making sure you achieve each one before moving onto the next.