4 ways businesses use free wi-fi to better serve customers

March 3, 2014, 11:23 am

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Wi-Fi may be a given in some areas of our lives - like our offices and our homes - but savvy businesses are also adding free Wi-Fi access to make visiting their locations a better experience. They use it to offer discounts and product information to customers, help students and visitors work during their downtime or turn waiting time into productive time - and, maybe, an enticement to come back.

Here, four businesses explain why they offer free Wi-Fi and how their customers benefit from it.

Boston Ballet: Better Access for Students

Before the Boston Ballet added free Wi-Fi in three of its Boston locations, students, parents and guests who wanted to work or study while on campus had to hunt down the strongest signal on a wireless device and hope for the best.

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How to build a customer loyalty program

March 25, 2014, 2:30 pm

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When b.good opened its first restaurant 12 years ago, the company had invested so much in its actual location that it had little left over for marketing.

B.good, with the tagline "real.food.fast," now has 12 restaurants in Massachusetts, Maine and Connecticut, with locations in New Jersey and Rhode Island opening this spring. One way the restaurant spread its brand was through a customer loyalty system, which began with email newsletters and coupons but now includes an app and keycard program that serves 53,000 of b.good's favorite customers.

When b.good started, co-founder Jon Olinto says, the idea was to have a relationship with the people who provided everything for their restaurant: "The people who grow our vegetables, raise our beef, make our cheese, make our yogurt for our smoothies." This idea extended to the customer, which is how the b.good Family was formed.

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How tech can help cities reduce crime

April 10, 2014, 12:55 pm

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According to the FBI, Camden, N.J. is the most dangerous city in America with more than 75,000 residents.

That said, Camden has made strides in reducing crime by using a multi-faceted technological approach to policing through what's known as the Real Time Tactical Information Center, a $4.5 million endeavor. Since 2011, when the system was first implemented, violent crimes have dropped 30%, and non-violent crimes have dropped 38%. Aggravated assaults with a firearm are also down 61% in that same time period.

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4 ways to use square in your small business (or your global business)

April 23, 2014, 2:39 pm

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Square allows anyone, businesses or individuals, to accept credit cards as payments through a tablet or smart phone portal. The company, founded in 2009, now processes tens of billions of dollars in payments a year, according to Square spokeswoman Catherin Ferdon.

Here are four ways that Square is being used by businesses today, both large and small.

Accept Credit Cards Without Paying Credit Card Fees

Revolution Coffee Roasters started selling coffee - both bags of beans to brew and cups to drink - at farmers markets in the Philadelphia area in July, and the company used the Square reader to accept credit cards at those events.

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Why you need to load test your website

June 18, 2014, 9:45 pm

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If you want to make sure your company's website is ready for a large dose of visitors - right at launch, during a registration period, or just at times when you expect more traffic than usual - then proper load testing will make sure your site keeps operating smoothly.

Load testing is the practice of bombarding your website with traffic to make sure it will stay up and running at a time when a lot of visitors will be hitting the site. It's like a stress test. If your website fails, you can make adjustments to make sure that failure isn't public, or you can bulk up your servers to prepare for the next time you expect a shot of traffic.

[ Related: Software Testing Lessons Learned From Knight Capital ]

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How the target breach has affected small business data security

July 9, 2014, 10:04 pm

≫ Next: Technology leapfrogging: How the cloud, tablets and phablets advance tech adoption

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Small and medium-sized businesses may think they're immune to the kinds of attacks that wreaked havoc on Target last year, but they're susceptible to the same nefarious forces -- sometimes even more so, as they can lead hackers to a bigger prize.

Since the Target breach, other retailers have been affected, including Neiman Marcus, eBay and P.F. Chang's. But the Target breach was huge -- information on 40 million credit and debit cards was stolen, along with records of 70 million customers, including name, address, email address and phone number.

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Technology leapfrogging: How the cloud, tablets and phablets advance tech adoption

July 25, 2014, 4:25 pm

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There's something to be said for traditions. After all, they're proven entities that have worked for decades. But while that standard Sinatra song may still find an audience at the weekend cookout, the same can't be said for standard technologies.

Recent innovations have helped consumers and businesses skip the established standard and adopt something that fits what they need right now. The trend, often referred to as leapfrogging, is playing out everywhere, too from small businesses to retirement homes to developing countries.

Here are three examples of emerging technology helping various groups skip existing technology, along with an explanation of how it happened and a look at what it means for the future of that tech and that demographic.

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How to protect personal, corporate information when you travel

July 29, 2014, 4:18 pm

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Before flying from Rome to Philadelphia earlier this summer, I stopped in the hotel lobby to print my boarding pass. The hotel had one computer dedicated solely to this task. It was the only public computer available to guests. I could access only airline websites and input my name and confirmation number for the ticket. That was it.

I thought this was the hotel's way of trying to squeeze a few more Euros out of me -- but this setup may also stop fraud. It prevents someone from stealing whatever other information I could have typed into the computer, such as an email login and password.

In July, the U.S. Secret Service and Department of Homeland Security released an alert to the hospitality industry, warning it that business center computers had become a hacker target.

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How to identify soft skills in IT job candidates

August 20, 2014, 2:11 pm

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IT is out of the backroom and in the front office so it's time to hire candidates who match that new reality.

This presents a vexing problem for both recruiters and employers alike. In a recent survey, the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that employers look for candidates who are decisive, can solve problems, are good communicators and are analytical.

That need is the same for technology hires. Given how the role of IT has changed, employers see soft skills mattering more than ever.

"IT is no longer in the back room with the lights off writing code," says John Reed, senior executive director at Robert Half Technology, an international technology recruiting and staffing company. "IT is in the room with the business leaders when decisions are made."

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Today's security hacks are after more than bank info

September 16, 2014, 5:04 pm

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The beat goes on. In recent weeks, both JP Morgan Chase and Home Depot have been identified as the latest victims of large-scale cyberattacks.

JP Morgan Chase was among a handful of U.S. banks hit by hackers in a series of attacks in August. A few days later, Krebs on Security released details about a spring attack on Home Depot. The scope of the attack has not yet been determined, but it could be bigger than last year's Target breach. Oh, and investigators found another Healthcare.gov hack in July, too.

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PCI compliance under scrutiny following big data breaches

October 22, 2014, 8:55 am

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As details filter out about the Home Depot hack (and many, many more data breaches), you can't help but ask: How did this happen – especially when the company was supposed to adhere to specific safety regulations or else lose its capability to process credit card transactions?

According to The New York Times, Home Depot's flawed security system allowed customer information to be stolen for months, unnoticed. These flaws include using outdated Symantec antivirus software from 2007, not continuously monitoring the network for suspicious behavior, and performing vulnerability scans irregularly and at only a small number of stores.

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Watch out for these 3 holiday shopping scams

November 26, 2014, 6:38 am

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'Tis the season to be scamming.

It's no secret that Americans are about to spend a lot of money during this upcoming holiday shopping season. Holiday sales are expected to hit nearly $617 billion this year – this after consumers spent $2.29 billion on Cyber Monday alone in 2013.

That's a big pile of money and credit card numbers and passwords and logins for scammers to jump into, whether through point of sale hacks or phishing scams that go beyond just email.

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Is your security software sitting unused on the shelf?

March 3, 2015, 11:47 am

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When a company invests thousands of dollars in security software, you’d expected the product to be used to protect the company.

However, a recent study produced by Trustwave a security services company, shows that in 2014 almost a third of midsized companies bought software they barely or never even used.

"In the security business, we've known forever that there's this problem with security sitting on the shelf not being used," says Josh Shaul, vice president of product management for Trustwave. "Even though we knew that there was a problem in this department, the numbers that came back about the amount of security spend that's being underutilized was pretty eye popping."

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How tech protects victims by monitoring inmates

April 6, 2015, 9:12 am

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The Victim Information Notification Everyday (VINE) system grew from tragedy. In 1993, Mary Byron was killed by an ex-boyfriend after he was released from jail. She hadn't been notified that he had been released.

"Somebody promised her that they'd make a phone call, and that person let it slip," says Travis Ackert, manager of infrastructure services for Appriss, makers of VINE. "From that event, we identified that the ability to notify people when criminals were being released from jail could be handled by computers and automated to eliminate human mistakes from the situation."

VINE now automates the notification process when inmates are released. The system is used in 47 states and tracks more than two million inmates. It also lets petitioners track their restraining or protective orders and register to be notified of status changes.

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How to deploy tablets to your mobile workforce

July 1, 2015, 8:02 am

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When Wakefield Canada, the exclusive distributor for Castrol in Canada, set out to replace the tablets used by their sales team, it went right to the source to figure out what to buy: The people who would be using them in the field. 

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(Insider Story)

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How the tech industry is greening its data centers

August 19, 2015, 6:27 am

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Data centers don't just suck down energy. They guzzle it. According to the National Resources Defense Council, data centers are one of the largest and fastest growing consumers of electricity in the United States. In 2013, U.S. data centers used 91 billion kilowatt-hours of energy, enough to power New York City households twice. The NRDC expects that demand to grow to 140 billion kilowatt-hours by 2020.

While companies like Amazon have been a target of campaigns from nonprofits like Green America, the NRDC says that larger server farms operated by well-known Internet companies are paragons of ultra-efficiency.

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4 new cybercrime trends threaten your business

September 8, 2015, 10:49 am

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The more things change, the more things stay the same -- at least for hackers. That's one of the finding in Proofpoint's mid-year threat report on the attacks of choice for the first half of 2015. 

In addition to the return of an old friend, the cybersecurity company also found more targeted attacks towards businesses, heightened activity around social media and a shift in the volume and accuracy of the bad stuff that ends up in your inbox, looking to take your money. 

Click the attachment

They're baaaaaack – email attachments that infect a computer once clicked upon, that is. 

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Mobile device management has become alphabet soup

October 1, 2015, 5:39 pm

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Get a job and a company-issued cellphone and computer in exchange? Stop living in the past, man. Companies don’t necessarily operate this way anymore, especially as our work and personal lives become more and more intertwined. 

But BYOD isn't the only acronym in the game, especially since employees are pushing back. According to a recent survey conducted by Bitglass, 57 percent of employees – and 38 percent of IT professionals – do not participate in their company's BYOD program because they don't want employers to have visibility into their personal data and applications. 

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Should CIOs worry about the Internet of Hackable Things?

February 16, 2016, 3:43 am

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If 2015 was the year of the Internet of Things, 2016 could be the year of the hacked Internet of Things. That could mean a lot of headaches for CIOs, whether they're fans of these new devices themselves or will be dealing with employees connecting them at work and managing the potential security exposure that brings. 

"The issue to date is that devices are vulnerable just by the fact that they exist and can connect to the Internet," says Jerry Irvine, member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Cybersecurity Leadership Council and CIO of Prescient Solutions. "Anybody can get to a device if you don't secure them properly." 

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How long does it take to build a custom app?

February 22, 2016, 3:59 am

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Your company wants a custom app for that? 

It's possible – and not just if you're the CIO of a big bucks corporation. New advances in app-building technology have lowered the cost of making apps, and the time and knowledge to make, test and deploy them, too.

Much like how the power of website building used to be in the hands of only those who knew HTML but can now be built by anyone with a Squarespace or Wordpress account, new programs are letting non-developer employees to make apps with ease. 

"I couldn't write a line of code to save my life, but I can configure an app," says Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of research, enterprise applications, with Nucleus Research. App development can be a drag and drop process, which enables a business user to make the app themselves. 

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