The phone keeps ringing but there’s no-one on the line. At best, this is annoying. At worst, it sends the sweet woman at hotel reception into a panic four, even five times a day, because the phone that keeps ringing is no ordinary line: it's the Emergency line from the pool.
The beginnings of a psychological thriller you imagine, this ghostly ringing? Enter Alex Cross?
Enter this man, rather: Robert LaBerge, TELUS Telecommunications Technician II, responsible for customer solutions delivery in Ontario.
Photo: Robert LaBerge at his office in the GTA.
Although he and I have each been with the TELUS organization for eight years, chances are I wouldn’t know Robert or what makes up his work day through normal course of business. But this year, 3,000 team members participated in “customers first day,” an opportunity to experience what it means to be on the frontlines of customer service by job-shadowing some of the people who take care of our customers daily. In my case, I got lucky. I got Bob, who has been called to the hotel to fix the renegade pool phone before the receptionist has a stroke.
The maintenance chief meets us at the door of the 20-story commuter and tour hotel near Pearson Airport. We follow him down through the bowels of the building, passing a hum of cooks and housekeeping, laundry, garbage bins and deliveries, Bob clutching his magic toolkit and me happy I’m wearing flats, until we reach a locked grey door. Maintenance lets us in and leaves, closing the door behind him.
Inside it’s the temperature of a meat locker. The space is 6x3 at the most and the wall is a snarl of orange, gray, white, blue wires of all sizes. Later that day, it’ll be the same kind of room at a secure data centre across town, only ten-times the size. These are table stakes for Bob: Rooms with no windows, terminals and keyboards, industrial fans, dust and cold. He considers this for a minute, then smiles. “Some days, I could use a hoodie.”
How can a phone ring by itself, I ask. Bob’s at the computer, the tools are out, he’s back and forth testing, putting the pieces together. My teeth are banging by the time he’s done. There’s a long explanation for what happened and I’d share it if I actually understood it, but I don’t and neither would the customer, which is just fine with Bob.
“When people ask what I do, I say I 'change curly cords.' It’s a euphemism that helps because most people wouldn't understand. It’s too technical. What customers really want is a problem solved. They just want their phone to work.”
From installation and post installation, services repairs, day-to-day move/add/change activity, patching installations for enterprise customers, upgrading systems, testing proof of concepts in the office before installing, Bob is never bored. I spent most of the day mystified; he spent it solving puzzles, bringing 35 years of industry experience to the fore. “The satisfaction comes from solving a problem,” he says. “I think logically and look at things from many different angles. That’s one of the things I love about this. No two jobs are the same.”
A shout out to Bob for making me welcome and to his boss Rick Clifford, NBD - field support manager, Toronto-West, for doing the same.
On that note, all of us at TELUS Talks Business want to take the opportunity to wish the very best of the season to you and yours. This is our last post for 2011; we’ll return with fresh daily content on January 3. Until then, may December and the new year bring you peace, love, joy and hoodies in abundance.
Speaking of joy...have you seen the new TELUS You spot? Click here.
With so many mobile devices on the market that support various operating systems, it’s often tough to know which will be the best tool to support you and your team. In series of four posts, we are speaking with Canadian business leaders about how and why they chose not just their device, but also the operating system.
Over the years, the Canadian-created BlackBerry has become a staple for businesses across the globe. The RIM-built smartphones connect users to everything they need, but are also widely respected for their intuitive multitasking features that empower productivity both in and outside of the office. For David Carmichael, a Toronto-based management consultant, the functionality he sees with his BlackBerry smartphone means he’s not had to look to another device to conduct his business operations.
“I began using my BlackBerry when I worked as a consultant with the Ontario Government,” says Carmichael. “I have not done a lot of research into the functionality of other devices, but I am very happy with the BlackBerry. I think most business owners are interested in ensuring they can communicate with their staff and clients outside of work hours; so the BlackBerry’s email and phone functionality are perfect.”
BlackBerry smartphones are often the device of choice for corporate environments for a few reasons: they offer a high level of security with encryption; efficient data delivery with compression; and integration with a number of messaging platforms. The proprietary OS and unique BlackBerry Enterprise Server also allow management or IT departments centralized control over all company-issued devices, if they so choose.
For Carmichael specifically, his mind is at ease simply knowing his email goes anywhere he is – especially important for his line of work, which often involves a day calendar full of meetings. “At a client site, I may not be able to get my email using their computer system, so having the BlackBerry is great.”
And Carmichael is not alone in that assessment. In fact, according to a recent study conducted by Ipsos Reid, the BlackBerry is the top mobile smartphone brand in Canada.
“BlackBerry still dominates the battle of the smartphone brands in Canada,” says Mary Beth Barbour, Senior Vice-President of Ipsos Reid. “Even when you consider the brand of the operating system – rather than just the brand of the device – BlackBerry still captures the largest share.”
Other device selling features often touted by BlackBerry users are the smartphone’s sync functionality, which ensures your contacts, calendar and other organizational items are up-to-date both at the office and on the go, and BlackBerry Messenger, a “chat” function installed on all BlackBerrys that offers direct and immediate communication with inner circles, work groups and clients. BBM can also serve as a business continuity option in case of an emergency, as it rarely crash in times when wireless signals might.
Additionally, the new BlackBerry 6 OS allows for fast web browsing and universal search function, fuelling even more business productivity. Plus, with a wide assortment of free and paid apps in BlackBerry App World, designed specifically with the business user in mind, those who choose BlackBerry can do everything from coordinating a shipment and tracking billing, to managing travel and remote printing.
Although touchscreen-only models exist, most BlackBerry smartphones are designed with an easy-to-use QWERTY keyboard for fast and accurate typing – a feature Carmichael says is incredibly important – as well as intuitive, optical trackpads for screen and menu navigation. Carmichael says while he uses the BlackBerry camera from time to time, he’s fine with keeping his smartphone a smart phone.
“I have had lengthy discussions with other device users,” he says. “But frankly, I have not found any device that interests me enough to switch from my BlackBerry.”
TELUS offers a range of devices equipped with all the top operating systems, recognizing that there is no one-size-fits-all solution for every business.
Over the past year I've profiled 20 famous entrepreneurs here on TELUS Talks Business. For my last post of 2011 I was asked to do a year in review summary. I thought the best way to share all the knowledge from the successful entrepreneurs that I've profiled was to let them talk for themselves and reveal some of their top tips for entrepreneurs.
If you missed any of the posts you can click on the names of the entrepreneurs. I hope the quotes help inspire you to even greater success in 2012!
"The razor was looked upon as a joke by all my friends. A common greeting was, ‘Well, Gillette, how’s the razor?’ If I had been technically trained, I would have quit."
"There is no other article for individual use so universally known or widely distributed. In my travels, I have found it in the most northern town in Norway and in the heart of the Sahara Desert."
"The greatest feature of the business is the almost endless chain of blade consumption, each razor paying tribute to the company as long as the user lives."
"IKEA is not completely perfect. It irritates me to death to hear it said that IKEA is the best company in the world. We are going the right way to becoming it, for sure, but we are not there yet."
"Long-term success is never achieved on our own. The phrase ‘a self-made man’ is a myth – all along the way we need support."
"If someone had told me ‘Look, you’re going to start today and spend the next five years wasting your time trying to get this thing start’, I would have said I can’t do that. But you never think about what it’s going to take of you. Think: I’ve got it now."
"Whatever you do, don’t ever use a crutch, and don’t ever think of having an excuse for not having said, ‘Yeah, I did my best.’"
"It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."
"Destiny is a name often given in retrospect to choices that had dramatic consequences."
"Anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve. I was determined to try. I was determined to try because, frankly, my life was such a mess at this point, what – what was the worst that could happen? Everyone turn me down? Big deal."
"BET was a business opportunity waiting for someone to put it together."
"If there’s something I can do and I feel it should be done, I just want to do it. I just don’t want to leave it undone because I’ll sit back and say, why didn’t I do that? Why didn’t I start that business?"
"Anything that has to do with money, I want to be in that business."
"I intend to be the greatest golfer in the world, the finest film producer in Hollywood, the greatest pilot in the world, and the richest man in the world."
"I certainly would not ask somebody else to fly a plane if I were afraid to do it myself."
"The trouble with my life is that I do not think I am cut out to sit behind a desk."
"Failure is not to be feared. It is from failure that most growth comes; provided that one can recognize it, admit it, learn from it, rise about it, and try again."
"If you don't understand that you work for your mislabelled 'subordinates,' then you know nothing of leadership. You know only tyranny."
"Given the right circumstances, from no more than dreams, determination, and the liberty to try, quite ordinary people consistently do extraordinary things."
"Above all, we wish to avoid having a dissatisfied customer."
"We consider our customers a part of our organization, and we want them to feel free to make any criticism they see fit in regard to our merchandise or service.
"A customer is the most important person ever in this office – in person or by mail."
"You should pursue your passion. If you’re passionate about something and you work hard, then I think you will be successful."
"You have to really believe in what you’re doing, be passionate enough about it so that you will put in the hours and hard work that it takes to actually succeed there, and then you’ll be successful."
"I was raised with the notion that you can do pretty much do anything you want. I always kind of just went ahead and tried things."
"I’m extremely grateful that I discovered my passion. I love movies. I love to watch them, I love to make them."
"It’s hard work making movies…if you don’t really love it, then it ain’t worth it."
"I got the licensing rights because I figured they wouldn’t promote the film and if I got T-shirts and things out there with the name of the film on them it would help promote the movie."
"The most important decision is how to position your product."
"The psychiatrists say that everybody should have a hobby. The hobby I recommend is advertising."
"Raise your sights! Blaze new trails!! Compete with the immortals!!!"
What Do You Think?
What is your favourite inspirational quote? Do you have a favourite entrepreneur story? As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts if you leave a comment below!
Have a fantastic holiday break and see you in 2012!
As we continue to look back at the top biz tech trends in 2011, here we reexamine the growing role of video for your business -- for both B2C and B2B initiatives -- and how it relates to mobility, social media, telecommuting and SEO strategy, among other current trends. This post was originally published in the spring of 2011 here at Telus' Talking Business blog.
It could be argued video has become an incredibly important tool for your growing small-to-midsized business, whether it's providing streaming video for websites and social networks or using live video for real-time conferencing and collaboration between remote employees.
And as more of your customers rely on wireless devices like smartphones and tablets, video is no longer limited to computers, either.
"Video is indeed becoming more pervasive in the enterprise," says Phil Karcher, a researcher at Forrester Research. "Tools like online video platforms make it easy for marketers to embed video on their websites and syndicate content to their YouTube and Facebook pages."
However, there are a few challenges in keeping up with the Joneses -- from taxing network resources to privacy and security concerns. Is video really worth it for your business? Consider the following:
The value of video
Even though it takes some planning and careful execution, Forrester Research says your business can't afford not to embrace online video. Why, you ask? Video is 53 times more likely to appear on the first page of search results than text-related pages on the same topic.
Unlike television, radio and newspapers, online video also lives forever, is forever searchable and helps create a personal connection with the viewer, as it can generate discussion and debate between commenters. As opposed to other media, Internet video can also be viewed whenever, wherever -- whether the viewer uses a computer, a smartphone, a tablet, a portable media player or an Internet-connected television.
Video conference for productivity
Companies are also recognizing the added value of video conferencing, says John Bartlett, principal of NetForecast, a consulting firm that benchmarks, analyzes and helps improve performance of networked data, voice and video apps. "It's a better way to establish and enhance a relationship," says Bartlett. "Video enables the ability to read body language when communicating with a client and provides a more efficient way to collaborate with colleagues."
However, video conferencing presents a bigger issue for your network, says Karcher. "The major gating factor is the network's ability to handle two-way video, which is more sensitive than one-way streaming video," explains Karcher. "Desktop videoconferencing puts a lot of pressure on the network backbone, therefore companies that add more video to the network need to think about tools to manage bandwidth and assure reliable performance."
Choosing a network for your video needs
Depending on your company's needs, size and budget, you'll have to decide if a regular Ethernet connection can handle everything, or if you should invest in a dedicated enterprise-grade pipe to handle your business's video and other applications.
"Companies need to understand the impact on the network," explains Bartlett. "If Skype is acceptable to you, then your regular broadband connection might be fine. But an enterprise network, while more expensive, will give you more bandwidth and better-quality video".
Privacy and security concerns for video
Don't embrace video without a security strategy in place, cautions Bartlett. You'll need a secure firewall, and you must "consider tools or services for encrypting video calls so the man in the middle can't listen in," he says.
"You need to think of how it affects content management, compliance and security -- and you will need tools to search, secure, track and report on video too," adds Bartlett.
Readers, what's your take on this? Can you talk from experience and tell us how video has helped (or hindered) your business? Does it give you an edge over the competition? Any tips on reducing costs yet still maximizing video technology? Let us know what you think. If you like, follow me on Twitter: @marc_saltzman
In November, TELUS and the Rotman School of Management released their fourth annual study on Canadian IT Security Practices at a media event in Toronto. Myself, Michel Juneau-Katsuya, former Senior Intelligence Officer at CSIS, and Walid Hejazi, Professor of Business Economics at the Rotman School of Management sat down to talk about the current state of IT security in Canada and what impact new trends have on Canadian businesses. We discussed the new statistics in this year’s report, and shared our opinions on IT security best practices.
So, are you concerned about security breaches and want to ensure you’re proactively mitigating cyber threats? Maybe you are interested in knowing more about managing the use of social networking in our work spaces, since we all agree that this is a primary concern? Or, with an increasing number of employees accessing the corporate network with their personal smartphones, tablets and laptops, shouldn’t we all be clear in how to best implement and regulate this new ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD) trend?
Check out a video about the event for yourself to get the most up-to-date information on IT security you can put to use for your business!
And, as this year comes to an end and you start to prepare for 2012, take a look back at my blog post on the TELUS-Rotman study, as well as posts from Walid and Michel, before you re-asses your IT security posture. You will find some great information from the 2011 report, as well as personal anecdotes from our own experiences.
Finally, you can also view the full report with all the details on this year’s findings as we head into the New Year.
Rafael Etges is the director of TELUS Information Security Solutions.
About three months ago, a contact center professional – someone I respect – said the following thing during a conversation on social media and the contact center. I’m paraphrasing only slightly:
“Most contact center managers don’t really care about providing support via social media. They just want to know about posts and tweets that make their contact center look bad, and deal with those”.
My first thought was “Them’s fighting words!” Not that he was talking about me, but his statement is a gut shot that’s an indictment of the core tenet of contact centers and their role in providing service and support. And it calls into question the motivations and allegiances of contact center managers. That’s serious stuff.
Thick Skin
The following posts are the types of things the person in question was referring to:
- - Seems [company name removed] @Support don't like criticism - first RT #Fail - now @mentions not showing - can they get any worse? #FAIL
- - Your german customer warranty support company [company name removed] is a no-go!Not reading error desc., #fail during repair.#incompetent
- - [company name removed] Frustrated with your customer service!! Phone stops working after 1 day in Greece, no way to email quickly, chat no working. #fail
- - The Customer Service agent [company name removed] even could not tell me why the issue of fake activation of packages was there #FAIL #Disgusting
Nobody likes to be the target of a complaint, especially if it’s in a forum as visible and as near-permanent as the Internet. But having thick skin goes with the job description for contact center managers and agents. They, and support execs, expect some degree of venting, both during one-on-one interactions and through public channels such as Twitter.
But does this mean that the potential black eye from such posts is contact center managers’ top concern? That dealing with such messages and mitigating their impact is, when it comes down to it, what contact center managers really care about?
Prioritization and #fail
Successfully dealing with social media in the contact center is no easy task, of course. And the prospect of dealing with every potential support opportunity across the Social Web is, to say the least, overwhelming. Contact center budgets are seemingly always taxed, so dealing with the existing volume of incidents is enough of a challenge, let alone handling incidents that arise via social channels.
So you’d be crazy to even attempt trying to (1) find, and (2) respond to every possible tweet on Twitter, or comment on Facebook, YouTube, blogs, and communities across the Web.
Prioritization and filtering, therefore, are valid and essential tools. And they may be based on such things as:
hash tags (#fail, #suck, #problem, #support)
key words (company and product/model names and common misspellings)
sentiment
customer value (if the customer is identifiable)
influencer level (based, for example, on the number of Twitter followers or other social graph calculation)
But prioritization and filtering are done in order to help solve pressing problems and enhance the organization’s brand image. Making the contact center look better might be a positive side effect, but does any contact center manager really see it as the be-all-and-end-all?
Not the Contact Center Managers I Know
Both immediately after hearing that zinger and in the months that followed, I’ve thought about the contact center managers I know, and I’ve run through my mind the dozens and dozens of conversations we’ve had. I can’t come up with any instance, not even a single phrase, that would have substantiated the opening quote. Everyone I’ve interacted with, to a person, puts the needs of the customer and the organization above their own.
Even over the past few weeks, as I’ve had numerous meetings with contact center managers regarding an initiative here at RightNow Technologies, I’ve subtly poked at this. None of these managers gave any hint of a CYA or defensive mindset. To the contrary, they all emphasize the opportunities that social channels provide, not only to provide support and turn a complaint into something positive, but also as mechanisms for gathering insights into their own organization, for collecting ideas about improving processes, and for tapping into the early warning system inherent in the Twitterverse and Blogosphere. The examples they provide and the reports they show are all in line with this perspective.
So, after exploring whether the original statement might be based on some degree of truth, I’ve come to the conclusion that the person’s comment was misguided at best, and cynical at worst. Social media in the contact center is a challenge, for sure. But the contact center managers I know have priorities well beyond how good or bad their teams look on Twitter.
Maybe I caught him on a bad day.
Matthew Lees leads the Social Practice Group for RightNow Technologies (NASDAQ: RNOW) a U.S. software company that develops customer relationship management (CRM) software for enterprise organizations. It is incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in Bozeman, Montana. Before joining RightNow, he was a vice president and analyst with the Patricia Seybold Group, where he ran the group’s social media research and consulting practice. He has published over 50 research reports and trade magazine articles, and has presented his work at dozens of industry events.
Is driving energy efficiency and lower total cost of ownership within your data center infrastructure top of mind? Are you trying to determine how you manage and understand your growing needs, the benefits, risks, and how you’re going to support it? Do you manage your IT infrastructure in- house, through a third party or a mix? What are your data center options?
At this year’s DatacenterDynamics Conference in Toronto, I was a guest speaker on Next Generation Data Centres. For those of you that were too far away to attend, here’s what I told the audience:
Your main approach to data centres needs to focus on four fundamental drivers: efficiency, sustainability, reliability and security, not only across the data centre itself (mechanical, electrical & physical building) but the entire end-to-end delivery including WAN, IT infrastructure and applications. Security and privacy are crucial design elements and, done poorly, can create roadblocks to cloud adoption, but that’s a conversation for another day.
Efficiency, Sustainability, Reliability
The Next Generation Data Centres need to be:
Designed for efficiency
Efficient mechanical, electrical and IT, minimize overhead (structure, people) and streamline operations.
Designed for sustainability
Reduce or eliminate overhead where possible to maximize the IT output with the lowest inputs. Efficient cooling design that takes advantage of our climate; reduce building structures where they are not required and of course using hydroelectric generated power to minimize greenhouse gas emissions.
Designed for reliability
From the ground up to IT applications.
Designed for modularity
Allow you to add capacity to accommodate growth while taking advantage of technology evolution with each subsequent module.
In addition, I feel that data centres should be aware of your green footprint or you environmental impact in running the datacentre (i.e. no batteries).
In closing, here’s a checklist to keep top of mind when evaluating potential service providers for your Next Generation Data Centre:
• Are the four fundamental drivers - efficiency, sustainability, reliability and security - provided. • Is there an end-to-end delivery platform including Wide Area Network, IT Infrastructure & Applications • Is it designed around your network with an advanced foundation of security, privacy and reliability • Is there scalability? End to end service capabilities – cloud / network / device? And a platform for the growth?
For additional information watch "The revolving role of IT"
Lloyd Switzer is the senior vice president of network transformation for TELUS.
Throughout 2011, approximately 3,000 TELUS team members participated in customer first day, an opportunity to experience the “frontlines” for themselves, taking them from their day-to-day roles and job shadow a frontline team member to empower a customer first approach across the organization.
I had the opportunity to visit the Barrie call centre collections department shadowing client account manager John Hill. His training as an air traffic controller may be why John works through his calls with a sense of calmness that immediately puts his customers at ease.
John has been a client account manager for just over three years as an at home agent. “I’m really enjoying the balance that working from home offers,” said John. “With an ailing parent, it gives my family a level of comfort being close to home and allows me to get some personal things done during my breaks.”
Photo: John Hill, Client Account Manager, shown here at his TELUS office desk (thanks for coming into the office John!)
TELUS has implemented an at-home-agent program within many of their call centres across the country. “It’s important to ensure you also foster team engagement when your team is remote,” says Leigh Nettleship, team manager of the client account team. “We have a team meeting once per month where everyone comes into the office, to talk about work processes, but also get a chance to interact face-to-face. We also encourage our team members to participate and to work together as a team in office charity events, food drives, or other volunteering activities.”
“You need to have a personality to work from home and not feel isolated from the social factor of work as well as the self discipline to work on your own,” adds John. In fact, the at-home-agent program includes an application and rigorous interview process that ensures the agent is a right fit for the program.
My personal experience at the Barrie Call Centre enabled me to see first-hand how the customer first mindset directly impacts our clients.
A big thank you to John, Leigh and the Barrie call centre team for making me feel welcome!
Over the past year I have been sharing my blogs with you and I thought it would be great to look back over some of those thoughts and share some of the points in them. Ideas that have helped SMB’s grow their small business to the next level of success: how to network, where and why and how giving back can propel you into the limelight. They’re about how this helps your small business and you, and how your motivation can certainly be one of the keys to your success.
One of my blogs entitled, “Here we go A-Blogging” was a popular read and I think this is because once we have a small business we struggle to find ways to create more exposure, and credibility for our business. I have been writing blogs for several years now and this has been a fantastic way to gain a larger audience and certainly be noticed. I’ve encouraged people who blog to be authentic, let us into their lives, even a little bit; and this creates trust. Write about things that interest you, and that you are passionate about, and the readers will keep coming back for more. You will soon notice how Google likes to pick your blog posts and showcase them, which in turn leads to more people noticing you and what you do.
A particular favourite of mine is the blog post I wrote back in January of this year: Business Networking Lessons From The 19th Century. Networking plays an important part in growing your small business, and this post shares how people have been networking since the 18th Century, why and how they network and some of the benefits involved. Some SMB’s find networking confusing; some fear it and even give up, thinking that their clients will find them. They have no need to go out and about and become known by connecting with other SMB’s. I like the word “longevity”—it offers me a feeling of trust, and this blog post points out that people have been networking for hundreds of years now, so it must be a good thing to do!
I am a great believer in giving back to the community, and today more than ever the word community is a very powerful word and spans the globe, as the world has gotten smaller with the onset of social media opportunities. Giving back comes in many shapes and forms, and you may hear the word philanthropic now and then, but that word can sometimes confuse people. Philanthropy is not all about giving money, there are lots of other ways you can become a philanthropist and my blog post called “How Can Being a Small Business Philanthropist Help You” certainly gave people food for thought. Here is one of my reader’s comments that says it all:
“Linda continues to amaze me with her incredible energy and fortitude no matter what the challenge is. In the world of grassroots “Philanthropy” it doesn’t always require a huge bank account as long as one has the passion for helping others. Although money is the primary resource for most organizations, Linda continues to show her value in the giving of her advice, her skills, her depth of network and her ambassadorial role that she plays for the many causes that she supports.”
Last but not least another favourite blog post of mine is actually centred around the word ‘motivation’, a word that can often scare people and lead them to run away screaming “I don’t need to be motivated”. Our reasons for becoming a SMB vary, but first and foremost if we love what we do, if we are passionate about our work and helping others, and we are motivated (or find ways to help become motivated) we are the lucky ones. Motivated people definitely get things done. They do climb the ladder of success, and remember success has a different meaning to everyone. To me, success means being healthy, happy and having my family and friends around me. Take a look at this blog post: When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Motivated, and see what you think. Here is a favourite quote of mine
“Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.”
I want to say thank you to everyone at TELUS Talks Business for offering me this wonderful opportunity to share my blog posts with you in 2011 and also thank you, my readers for your comments and the support you offer by reading, sharing and talking about my blog. I look forward to 2012 with great excitement and hope to see you all in the New Year, Happy Holidays everyone!
Linda Ockwell-Jenner is the Social Sweetheart. She is President of Motivational Steps and Co-Founder of the Small Business Community Network (SBCN) based in Waterloo Region. Find out more about Linda at www.motivationalsteps.com and www.sbcncanada.org
We're looking back on 2011 and some of the most "liked," "tweeted" and commented tech-focused blog posts at Telus Talks Business.
One of my contributions that garnered a lot of traffic was on how to best protect your smartphone.
After all, today's mobile devices are like pocket computers, as they can perform many of the same tasks as your PC or Mac – including accessing email, browsing the web, playing media and getting work done – so protecting them and the potentially sensitive data that resides on it is critical.
Here are a few ideas to shielding your device – and thus, yourself -- from scams, viruses and identity theft with these following smartphone safety tips.
Back it up
The first line of defense is to back up your smartphone regularly in case it's lost, stolen or compromised. The easiest and least expensive way to do it is to connect the smartphone to a computer – via USB cable or wireless Bluetooth – and synchronize the data between the two devices. Should you need a new smartphone, all the info will be copied back onto the new device.
There are also many "cloud" services that can wirelessly back up your contacts and other information to a password-protected website.
Lock it out
Speaking of passwords, ensure you've set up a 4-digit PIN (personal identification number) to use your smartphone – and don't use 0000, 1111 or 1234 or any other numbers easy to guess. Sure, a PIN is a bit inconvenient, but you'll get used to it quickly and will be thankful if you can't find your mobile phone.
You could also draw a pattern to gain access to your smartphone, which is popular on many Android phones, or use facial recognition technology, though it's generally not as secure as a PIN or pattern. Some phones have a fingerprint scanner, too.
"Take it to the second and third level by using password protection on any applications that contain personal or confidential information," advises Chris Stier, managing director for NetQin Mobile, one of the world's leading mobile security providers with roughly 10 million registered users. For example, those who do mobile banking on their phone should create a password that's at least seven characters long and contains letters, numbers and symbols.
Software protection
"Threats like malware, hacking and spamming have always existed for traditional PCs, but a smartphone attack can be even more damaging," cautions Stier. "You likely have personal and business information stored on it, personal conversations and messages that can be recorded and your location can be also tracked."
As such, software to protect against malware (malicious software) is "critical" for a mobile device today, says Stier.
NetQin Mobile, for example, offers a free antivirus smartphone solution and a more robust "premium" option for $1 to $2 per month. The software works on Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Symbian devices (not Apple's iOS platform).
Remote control
If your smartphone is lost or stolen, there are free mapping tools to remotely track the GPS-enabled device on a computer, smartphone or tablet. Note: if your phone was stolen it's recommended to give this info to authorities rather than you trying to retrieve it.
These same tools, such as Apple's Find My iPhone and BlackBerry Protect, can also remotely wipe the smartphone clean, making it ring loudly (if, say, left under the cushions) or display a message on the screen (such as "Please call me").
You need to set up these tracking apps ahead of time, so be sure to do that before it's too late. Here are some tips to setting this all up.
Check your statement
Finally, it's recommended to check your monthly statement carefully for suspicious calls and SMS (text messaging) charges.
"Comb through your bill closely because you might find charges made without your consent," says Stief. "If you find any, contact your carrier immediately to dispute the charges and they'll identify the company or service for you."
Over the last ten years, I have talked to hundreds of CEOs of small and medium-sized businesses about what works and what doesn't in building a repeatable lead stream for their business and a marketing engine that delivers measurable business results. This series is about lessons learned and best practices. Today, we discuss a real life example.
A couple of posts ago, we talked about the work we were doing with business owners to help them develop a web presence that would deliver measurable results for their business. Today, we want to share one company's journey.
ET Group is a company that has been in the Toronto, Ontario market for more than 20 years selling audio/visual equipment to other businesses. About three years ago, new owners bought the business and began to transform the company.
Along the way, some tough decisions were made.
When you acquire a business, one of the things you are acquiring is the customer base, but there is always an opportunity to assess what you are selling and to whom and to determine your preferred business strategy. This created a great opportunity for ET Group to redo their web presence. The old website did not reflect the customers they wanted to serve and the solutions they wanted to sell.
Step 1: Define Your Ideal Customer
When we start our work with business owners, we ask them to fill out a customer scorecard that allows us to determine their best customers, their attributes and why selling to more people like them is good for the business. For ET Group, this exercise was extremely important because they had determined that their best customers were large enterprises that wanted more than just equipment. These customers also wanted to understand how to use technology to provide better collaboration opportunities for their employees. For ET Group, this meant repositioning how they sold their products and services.
Lesson 1: To attract your ideal customer, you need to let go of part of the business that just won't appeal to your ideal target customer.
After ET Group had made some tough decisions about their target customers and the people they wanted to serve, it made the work of understanding keywords and content much easier. In our last post, we talked about what a person sees when they do a search for audio/visual equipment in a search engine. There are lots of companies hawking products at the "lowest price" but this is not where ET Group wants to compete.
Step 2: Understand exactly what your ideal customer is searching for and how they search.
This is likely the most important thing you can do when building a web presence for your business and often the thing that most business owners get wrong. Not only do they not understand how people search for a product or service, they completely misunderstand how they buy the product or service.
Lesson 2: Mapping the buying process of your customer leads to a great website set up.
When you know exactly what your target audience needs to understand when they look for a solution, it makes it easier for you to decide what content to put on your website and what themes to push out in your web strategy.
Step 3: Figure out what you want a potential customer to do when they land on your website.
Too often companies selling complex business solutions use product information as the backbone of their website and any content that can be found about them online. ET group suffered from this trap on their old site and there was nothing a potential customer could do on their website other than struggle to understand ET Group's differentiation or pick up the phone and call them.
Lesson 3: Create tools or processes on your website that allows someone to do something or show interest without picking up the phone and calling your company.
There are many stages in the buying process and customers today want to educate themselves with many points of information online before they take a next step with a company. Allowing someone to download something, take a quiz, leave a comment or engage online in a way that tells us where they are in the buying process, allows us to understand how to nurture that relationship online: Right down to the pages they look at, the time they spend on the site, where they came from and what pages they left from.
ET Group launched their new website last week and for the company, their We Presence Journey is just beginning. Over the next six to eight weeks, here are the things that the ET Group sales and marketing team will be watching to see how their new strategy is engaging the marketplace:
The search engine rankings for their top 10 keywords.
Where people are coming from to visit the site (direct traffic versus referring traffic versus organic search).
The bounce rate of visitors (currently they are sitting at 50% and they would like to get this down to 35% which means a better match of keywords to visitors).
Length of time spent on the site and the content they are viewing. This gives an indication of how well they are painting a picture of what can be accomplished with their products or services.
Whether they are getting traffic to the site from other activities they are doing such as e-mail marketing or social media.
Of course the most important metric will be whether people download their new conversion tool, watch videos or leave comments on the site. Engagement is the most important activity in the short and long term that needs to be tracked and measured to determine if the web presence is working. Ultimately, the online strategy should engage past, current and future customers in a two-way dialogue.
We'll have more on ET Group and their Web Presence Journey. Stay tuned.
Marie Wiese is founder of Marketing CoPilot, and the author of the eBook, Why Marketing Fails... And What You Can Do About It! Marketing CoPilot provides outsourced marketing services to business owners that want to create a two-way dialogue with past, current and future customers using digital media. Marie is 20-year veteran of the B2B marketing world, past Chair of the York Technology Alliance in the greater Toronto region and a workshop leader at Regional Innovation Centres (RICs) in Ontario where she teaches early stage companies how to build online lead generation engines that deliver measurable business results.
In entrepreneur Stephen Jagger’s recent post for TELUS Talks Business, he said something very apt: “Change is the one constant in a business.” And I think this is something, no matter the size or scope of our business, we can all agree with.
Sure, major changes – whether internal or external – can be tremendously difficult to manage. But it’s the nature of the life of an entrepreneur, and it’s our duty to take the bull by the horns and manage accordingly.
There are two major types of change:
Internal changes are things like staff movement in and out of the company and policy changes. Interestingly, a recent study by Ipsos Reid on behalf of TELUS revealed that 20 per cent of Canadian small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) believe managing growth or the expansion of their business is the biggest internal impact that they face.
External changesare things that come at you from outside of the walls of your business. For example, over the last few years we’ve all been working within a volatile market. In this vein, 26 per cent of Canadian SMBs said the external change that would have the greatest impact on their businesses is the strength of the economy.
Canadian SMBs are slightly less likely to feel prepared to deal with external changes (73%) compared to internal changes (81%). The struggle, it seems, is all about control; it’s difficult to feel confident about that which we cannot regulate.
Because TELUS is in business of providing office and mobile communications solutions to more than 250,000 small and medium-sized businesses across Canada, we regularly talk about best practices for change management with our customers, partners and colleagues.
So if there’s one thing we can tell you it’s this: you’re not alone.
Check out this short chat I had with Tang Phoonchai, owner of the Vancouver-basedMaai Living Furniture.
1. What do you find more challenging, external or internal changes?
As a private business owner with no staff or partners, I find external changes to be much more challenging. The economy, of course, is a big example of that. Understandably, when things aren’t going well, my customers are much more careful about how they spend their money – but no matter the financial climate, I need to keep my business moving.
2. What do you think are the key attributes of a business leader who can respond well to change?
I believe that in order to be nimble, business leaders need to stay up to date with the latest technology and trends.A great example of that is social networking. To put it simply: your customers are online having conversations so you need to be right there with them. Also, chances are the challenges you face are also faced by someone else, so social media is a great space to keep your finger on the pulse of your industry and find resources and contacts that can help you react effectively to change.
Another quality of a strong business leader is flexibility: in my business especially, you need to be able to react and respond to changes quickly. No matter what, the most important quality is that you be passionate about your work: this will always be the key ingredient to success.
3. We found that 72 per cent of SMBs in Canada said they are not afraid of change; how do you feel about it?
That’s interesting, but it doesn’t surprise me because there is no reason to be afraid of change when you know it will happen anyway. My job as an entrepreneur is to ensure I’m prepared to guide the business back on the right path when I face external or internal change, the question I need to always ask myself is, do I have what I need to make that happen?
4. What advice can you offer to other SMBs with respect to managing change?
I think my story is a great lesson in change management. My shop is just two years old, and although I started off very local, I’ve grown to be servicing clients all over the globe. As a result, I’ve had to learn how to advertise more effectively, ship internationally – and I’ve had to do this quickly.
My advice to you, if you’re going to run your own business, it is simple: You have to be prepared to take on changes head on. Without this, you will not adapt and grow, and neither will your business.
For additional findings from the survey, please visit telus.com.
My name is Evan Carmichael and I believe that the fastest and most effective way to build a business is to model the strategies of people who have already done what you’re trying to do. I call it Modeling the Masters. My last post with over 35 comments was 3 Success Tips from Ted Turner.
Today we're going to look at how a young man who had never written an advertisement in his life started an advertising agency with only $6,000 to his name and went on to become one of the most sought after marketers in the world. This is the story of advertising legend David Ogilvy and the top 3 lessons that you can learn from his success.
Must Watch Video
"Don't bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals." - David Ogilvy
David Ogilvy (June 23, 1911–July 21, 1999) was the founder of Ogilvy & Mather and is known as the "Father of Advertising." He took the long road to success working as a hotel chef, a British Intelligence officer, and a traveling salesman selling kitchen stoves door to door. He had success in sales and thought he could help other companies improve their marketing efforts so he started his own advertising agency in 1949. He was 38 years old, had never written an advertisement in his life and only had $6,000 to his name, but he had a big dream and wanted to see it through.
Attracting clients was a challenge in the beginning but he focused on getting results for his clients and he firmly believed that the best way to get new clients was to do outstanding work for his existing clients. The few clients he was able to get loved his approach. They rewarded him with larger budgets and referrals to other potential accounts. After building up his business in New York he decided to merge with the London based agency Mather & Crowther in 1965. It gave his firm an international reach and the next year Ogilvy & Mather was the one of the first advertising agencies to go public.
His company was acquired in 1989 for $864 million after Ogilvy built up a reputation for being "the most sought-after wizard in the advertising industry" according to TIME magazine. He was elected to the U.S. Advertising Hall of Fame in 1977and was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame. His legacy continues to leave a mark on everyone in the advertising world and his story provides lessons in marketing that we can all learn from.
Action Item #1: Get Your Clients Results
Do you want more referrals for your business? Blow your current clients away with how great a job you do! Don't just exceed expectations. Go way above and beyond. Your customers are busy people. If you want them to talk about you then you need to give them a reason to. Referred clients spend more, buy more often, have a shorter sales cycle, and are way easier to work with. Referrals are the best way to attract more ideal clients so start offering so much extra value into what you do that they can't help but talk to everyone they know about you.
Ogilvy made getting results for his clients his firm's top priority. He realized that if he didn't deliver then he wouldn't get repeat business or client referrals. He didn't want ads that were too creative that people couldn't understand. He also didn't want well written ads that were boring and weren't going to be read. He focused instead on creating ads that would bring in dollars for his clients which is what he believed he was hired to do for his clients. When he believed that too many awards were being handed out in his industry for creativity, he created his own David Ogilvy Award to recognize the campaign that did the most to improve a client's sales or reputation. The award let everyone at his company know that they should focus primarily on making the cash register ring and not being the most creative.
According to Ogilvy: "In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create. We sell – or else. The recommendations we make should be the recommendations we would make if we owned their companies, without regard to our own short-term interest. This earns their respect, which is the greatest asset we can have. We exist to build the business of our clients.”
Action Item #2: Test, Test, Test
What you start off with is never what you end up with. Your products and services change, your marketing changes, and your business plan changes. The only way to figure out if something is going to work or not is to test. Don't wait until you have the perfect idea or perfect plan because they don't exist. Start sooner, get feedback from potential customers, and make changes and continue to test, test, test until you start getting the results that you're looking for.
Ogilvy liked to create campaigns that had a "big idea" attached to them. If you don't promote your business with a big idea then people will largely ignore you. He realized that in order for your big idea to work, you have to test it. Ogilvy believed in the importance of research so much that when he opened his company his official title was "Research Director." He tested everything about his campaigns until he honed in on the concepts that delivered the best results.
According to Ogilvy: “You aren’t advertising to a standing army; you are advertising to a moving parade. The most important word in the vocabulary of advertising is TEST. Test your promise. Test your media. Test your headlines and your illustrations. Test the size of your advertisements. Test your frequency. Test your level of expenditure. Test your commercials. Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving. If you pretest your product with consumers, and pretest your advertising, you will do well in the marketplace."
Action Item #3: Hire Great People
Read almost any famous entrepreneur profile and you'll see that hiring great people was one of the core strategies that helped propel their success. You need to figure out what you're really good at and where you add the most value to your business. Then hire amazing people to do everything else. Hire people who believe in what you're doing and who love doing the tasks that you need them to do so you can focus on building your business.
Ogilvy understood how important it is to have a great team of people working with you. He therefore spent a great deal of effort making sure they were given challenging opportunities, recognition for achievement, and as much responsibility as they could handle. He invested into hiring, training, and gave them impendence and flexibility. If an employee was battling a personal problem like illness or alcohol abuse, the company would make every effort to help them. In return, however, Ogilvy demanded the most from his people and had exceedingly high expectations of them.
According to Ogilvy: “If we hire people who are smaller than we are, we will become a company of dwarfs. If we hire people who are larger than we are, we’ll become a company of giants. Some of our people spend their entire working lives in Ogilvy & Mather. We try to make it a stimulating and happy experience. We put this first. We see no conflict between adherence to high professional standards in our work and human kindness in our dealings with each other. We treat our people as human beings. I believe in the Scottish proverb: ‘Hard work never killed a man.’ Men die of boredom, psychological conflict and disease. They do not die of hard work. Set exorbitant standards, and give your people hell when they don't live up to them. There is nothing so demoralizing as a boss who tolerates second rate work.”
True Story
In his ads, Ogilvy would often make the company logo twice the size – “a good thing to do because most advertisements are deficient in brand identification.” He would also show his client’s faces “because the public is more interested in personalities than in corporations.” Other Ogilvy techniques included studying and imitating graphics used by editors, since “it has been found that the less an advertisement looks like an advertisement, and the more it looks like an editorial, the more readers stop, look and read.” He would place photographs at the top of his ads, given that “people have a habit of scanning downwards,” and also learned that there is little value in saying something without illustrating it because “the viewer immediately forgets it.”
More Quotes
"The most important decision is how to position your product."
"The psychiatrists say that everybody should have a hobby. The hobby I recommend is advertising."
"Raise your sights! Blaze new trails!! Compete with the immortals!!!"
What Do You Think?
What do you do to get results for your clients? How do you test your marketing concepts? What part of David Ogilvy's message impacted you the most? As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts if you leave a comment below!
In November, we spoke to Tamara Wilson, director of operations for Sportality about why she picked her Android device. For her, it was important to find a mobile device that centered on professional usage and allowed for anytime, anywhere connectivity.
The Android OS market is gaining popularity among Canadians. According to a recent ComScore study, Android represents 25 per cent of the operating system market in Canada with Samsung as the top manufacturer.
With all of this excitement around Android, we wanted to give you the chance to give your business a gift this season and help you gear up for 2012. Today we’re launching a holiday twitter contest called, ‘All I want for my business is an Android’. From December 5th to 16th we will be giving away five 4G Samsung Galaxy S II X Android smartphones this holiday season (No purchase necessary. Read Contest Rules for complete details).
To enter for your chance to win, simply follow @TELUSbusiness and submit a tweet, telling us why your business could use an Android for the holidays with the hashtag #TELUSAndroid.
To learn more about the 4G Samsung Galaxy S II X Android smartphones, check out the review by MobileSyrup:
Good luck & we look forward to reading your tweets!
As we wind down the year, it's a fitting time for Telus Talks Business contributors to thank you for reading, sharing and commenting on our posts. We hope you've enjoyed clicking or tapping through our small business-focused content as much as we've had fun writing it.
It's also a good opportunity to look back at the top tech trends in 2011, be it tablets and smartphones, app proliferation, cloud computing, virtualization, 4G/LTE, voice control and the consumer-ization of IT, to name a few that come to mind.
One of the posts I received the most email on this year was on QR codes.
In case you missed my original post, I chatted about the growing phenomenon in Canada and elsewhere, the varied applications for it and what you need to get going.
Ah, QC codes. You see them everywhere: in newspapers, on real estate signs, at museums and on the back of business cards. You flash one before boarding an airplane and scan one when leaving a rock concert.
They're called QR Codes, or "Quick Response" codes, and they're everywhere. If you've spent any time shopping, traveling, socializing or even walking around town these days, you no doubt have seen these mysterious black and white dotted squares – and people scanning them with their smartphones.
Consider them a kind of 2D barcode that has a number of advantages over traditional (lined) barcodes: they can store a lot more information (more than 7,000 numeric characters versus 20); they can be scanned quickly from any angle; and they're designed for consumers and businesses alike.
OK, so what do they do?
Once a QR code is scanned, it can take you directly to a website, launch a related YouTube video, add a name to your contacts list or download a MP3 or other content to your phone.
For example, if you liked reading an article in your local newspaper, you might see a QR code at the end of the piece. When scanned, it opens up a website with more information on the subject in question (such as a full-length interview with the person profiled). In this capacity, QR codes bridge the gap between old media and the online world.
Or your airline can text you a QR code to your phone. Hold it up as a digital boarding pass so it can be scanned as you board the plane. No paper needed.
Walking by a restaurant? Scan the QR code in the window, and it opens up the establishment's menu, hours of operation and perhaps a video message from the owner.
If you're off to a musical, a QR code on the back of your ticket might download a track or two from the official soundtrack.
You get the idea.
There are countless applications for QR codes, all designed to make exchanging information easier than manually typing everything in – and it's much faster, too, as scanning just takes a second or two.
QR codes started in Japan almost two decades ago, and while they've been popular in Asia and parts of Europe for a few years now, they're beginning to catch on in North America now that smartphones are becoming more ubiquitous.
What do I need?
All you need to scan QR codes is a smartphone with a camera (almost all have one) and software that can interpret what the code means and act on it.
In some cases, a QR code reader will be preinstalled on the smartphone, but there are many free ones to download for your smartphone if it's not. For example, there's Barcode Scanner for Android, QR Reader for iPhone, QR Code Scanner Pro for BlackBerry and BeeTagg for Windows Phone 7 and Nokia smartphones. There's also Google Googles, ShopSavvy and QuickMark QR Code Reader.
Some QR code readers will be built into existing apps, too, such as Research in Motion's BlackBerry Messenger (BBM). If you want to add someone to your contact list, scanning their smartphone's QR code is much faster than manually typing in their PIN number.
The future
QR codes are rising in popularity in Canada and the U.S., and for companies, they're an inexpensive way to deliver additional information, media and contact information to customers (or potential customers).
There are many websites that let you create QR codes for free, such as the one here or you can watch videos on how to do it elsewhere.
Another technology is also gaining popularity called NFCs, or Near-Field Communications. Soon, you'll be able to swipe your smartphone on a sensor in order to open up a website, download media or make a secure payment while on the go. Because NFCs are a wireless technology, the advantage over QR codes is you don't need to open a QR app to scan a code with your camera – it's just a quick swipe.
Imagine leaving a movie theatre in the near future and you stop to look at a poster for an upcoming film you're interested in. You might be able to swipe your phone on the poster's frame and a high-definition trailer for the flick will download to your device.
Of course, there is more of an investment to be made as a wireless sensor, or terminal, is required by those who want to use NFCs to get their word out -- not to mention NFCs won't be possible on a newspaper page (QR codes makes more sense here). But expect to hear a lot more about NFCs in 2012 – especially when it comes to making payments on vending machines and at stores.
Everyone knows social networking websites like Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter are here to stay.
If anything, organizations that block employees from social networking sites via the corporate web browser for security reasons only invite a higher number of breaches.
The Telus/Rotman study found organizations that banned social networking activity in the last 12 months reported 10.3 security breaches, on average.
Conversely, organizations that did not block employee access to social networking websites reported in the last year an average 7.2 security breaches.
The reason is simple: blocked employees are encouraged to circumvent a security wall by using personal smartphones and tablets to access social networking websites.
Suddenly, staffers are using their own mobile devices to collect and transmit personal and professional data on channels that a company cannot monitor or control with detection technologies.
Here the security risks of spyware or malware don’t go away.
They simply migrate from the organization to the employee, with any eventual security breach exposing the organization to a loss of productivity and competitive edge, not to mention a violation of security policies and protocols.
“It’s critical to allow social networking in the workplace, but to do so in such a way that encourages and sustains security of internal and external information flows,” Rafael Etges, Telus director of security solutions, said following the press conference.
If employees understand the risks of security breaches, they will be better placed to avoid possible security breaches, he added.
Governance in the work place for social media
Easier said than done, of course.
The Telus/Rotman study revealed one in four organizations (25%) do not even have policies governing social networking in the workplace.
What¹s more, only a third of Canadian organizations undertake regular communication with employees on the use of social networking in the workplace.
And the vast majority of companies and government agencies, or 91%, communicate their policy on social networking as an arbitrary business decision.
The lesson of the Telus/Rotman study, however, is adopting a policy on social networking for productivity reasons is only one part of the business puzzle.
Security concerns must reach right up to the highest echelons of an organization.
Sure, common security breaches identified in the Telus/Rotman study like laptop or smartphone theft, phishing or pharming and unauthorized access to information by staffers, are routinely handed over to IT personnel to control.
And most companies appreciate that, no matter what technology they invest in for productivity, they need security experts to control and guide that technology.
But security expert Michel Juneau-Katsuya, a former operative with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, insisted security protocols and policies needs to be top of mind for senior executives, and part of their responsibilities, because they are the biggest offenders when it comes to allowing corporate information theft.
“The breaches come most often from top executives, the people who will try to do their business as fast as possible, and who will attempt to circumvent security measures to do so,” he warned.
The Telus/Rotman study is blunt: top executives, those in possession of the most sensitive company or government agency secrets, show the least regard for their own organization¹s security policies.
“The conflict between policy and actions makes the mission to educate users within organizations extremely difficult and creates skepticism among middle managers and front-line staff responsible for the management and processing of sensitive business data,” the study states.
Such carelessness is entirely avoidable, as on-the-go senior executives use their myriad mobile devices and social media to stay in touch with friends and family, for example.
“You lead by example. The executive is busy, he or she doesn’t have time.”
So they just violate a security protocol, and send a bad signal to staffers.
Dr. Walid Hejazi, professor of business economics at the Rotman School of Management, says the best advice is to explain the business case for accessing social networking websites with caution and awareness of security threats.
“You need to tell employees why we have the policies in place. You shouldn’t just say, you have to do it this way, and I violate the policy, but you have to follow it because I’m the boss,” Hejazi added.
Study: Employees embrace clear social media policies
Moreover, the Telus/Rotman study concluded social networking policies are favorably received by employees in 72% of cases if they are properly and consistently explained by management.
And even when staffers don’t embrace a social networking policy after the security risks and the business reasons are explained, only 5% of organizations report major non-compliance.
Another 9% of organizations report negative feedback, but few attempts to circumvent security protocols, while yet another 14% said some employees accepted and followed the social networking policies.
Again, in nearly three quarters of cases, most employees accepted the social networking policies of an organization because, as Hejazi puts it, most people want to do the right thing for their employer.
“The great majority of employees want to do well. They are not doing it to be malicious. They will not be the rogue employees. Most of the time they’re not intending to be malicious. Most of the time it’s a question of ignorance, and occasionally it amounts to borderline stupidity,” he said of social networking behavior generally in the workplace.
So the key is educating staffers on mobile computing security threats that they face.
“Out there are players that play with sophisticated tools and rules, and acting like we’re babes in the woods will not produce good results,” Hejazi concluded.
To hear more from Rafael Etges, co-author of the 2011 TELUS-Rotman Study on Canadian IT Security, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqWpT9mnXyE. Here, Etges joins Peter Macaulay, head of security of the Government of Ontario, and host Shane Schick, Editor-in-Chief of IT World Canada, to discuss trends in IT security in Canada. The discussion covers breaches and more personalized threats, mobile security, managing social networking in the workplace, and IT complexity.
Forget the cloak and dagger setting of the Cold War.
In the treacherous new world of corporate espionage where spies use distant computer networks to gather business intelligence, the scene of the crime may well be your mobile phone or laptop computer.
It all makes dollars and sense: Canadian companies connected to the Internet spend more on R&D than most foreign competitors.
So agents for foreign companies, and their sponsoring governments, are electronically mining social media on Canadian smartphones or tablets to steal valuable business secrets, rather than create their own intellectual property.
And all the while global hackers hide behind proxy computers and dispersed routers on the other side of the globe, and with the junk mail folder of your laptop computer or other mobile devices as their ultimate attack destination.
Sure, global hackers can attempt to defraud ordinary people by stealing their credit card data or other personal information.
But the way security expert Michel Juneau-Katsuya, a former operative with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, tells it, click on a hacker¹s email, download its contents, and you may well start a cascading series of events that could compromise an organization’s computer security system.
And the impact could be not only immeasurably costly to the victim organization, but immensely profitable for the cyber spy or hacker after they acquire key proprietary or confidential information to be sold onto competitors or on a global black market.
Here’s how it’s done
Juneau-Katsuya, now CEO of The Northgate Group, a security consulting firm, told a November Toronto media conference about a recent incident involving a Department of National Defence (DND) employee that sounded a lot like a plot from a Hollywood movie thriller.
Except it actually happened.
The email was innocent enough, and suitably bland.
“The National Defence employee returned to work on a Monday and received an email from a fellow employee whose name he didn’t recognize, but whose email address made it look like he was in his department,” Juneau-Katsuya recalled.
The author of the email said he¹d had a great weekend and his daughter had played in a soccer game against the daughter of the DND staffer.
“By the way, the email read, ‘could you send me this specific document,’” Juneau-Katsuya added.
It turns out the document was classified top secret, not to be sent electronically.
Sensing a honey-pot trap set by a hacker to exfiltrate or steal classified secrets, the DND employee flagged his superiors, who launched an investigation.
The email was of course bogus, but it also came from China.
Worse, the hacker constructed and sent his deceptive email from the comfort of his computer half-way round the world using photos the DND staffer posted on his Facebook account of daughter’s weekend soccer match.
Juneau-Katsuya, on hand to help unveil the fourth annual study on Canadian IT security by Telus and the Rotman School of Management, said the DND incident is instructive.
Security breaches in Canadian companies and government agencies are increasingly inside jobs that originate across national borders as mobile computer proliferates.
“You need to identify the threat of who is after you, who is after what in your company. And here you find the true vulnerability within your organization to better spend your IT security dollars,” Juneau-Katsuya said.
Photo: Security expert Michel Juneau-Katsuya (l), a former operative with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, joins Rafael Etges (c), Telus director of security solutions, and Walid Hejazi, professor of business economics at the Rotman School of Management, at the Toronto press event unveiling of the results of the 2011 TELUS-Rotman study on IT security in Canada.
Breaches down, risks up
The Telus/Rotman study, in offering a snapshot in how Canadians collect and convey personal and professional information in the workplace, should set off other alarms when it comes to social networking and mobile security.
The survey of 649 Canadian firms found the number of security breaches of corporate and government servers fell to an average 7.6 attacks a year in 2011, compared to 14.6 breaches in 2010.
That marks a reversal in the number of virtual attacks countrywide that after a spike following the 2008 financial crisis.
But the more worrying trend is cyber spies increasingly target average individuals in organizations and their data, and are using mobile technology to reach their victims.
“In the past two or three years, the introduction of tablets and smartphones in organizations has changed the dynamics around security technology and precautions,” Walid Hejazi, professor of business economics at the Rotman School of Management, told the roundtable discussion on Canada’s IT security landscape.
Yes, all good technology, smartphones and tablets, but ultimately undermining the ability of organizations to detect and control security breaches.
“We’re talking about any corporate data that was shared as a result of a mobile device or a laptop computer falling into the wrong hands, as well as global hackers accessing data without authorization from an employee working at home,” Hejazi explained.
Top threat: cyber spies
The Telus/Rotman study, first released in 2008, goes far beyond finger-pointing to help combat cyber spies and hackers as they have Canada in its cross-hairs.
Its forensic analysis instead identifies the top corporate and government security breaches in an age of global hacks, with an eye to steering bots, worms, spam away from a company’s computer servers as part of a strong cyber security system.
The latest Telus/Rotman study identifies the top threat to Canadian corporate and government security coming from cyber spies who use spyware and malware to take control of computer technology in an organization so they can harvest personal and professional data.
It’s insidious. An organization may not spot a security breach by a cyber intruder in time to stop it, nor be able to fully measure the cost to the company after it takes weeks or even months to repair the damage.
An example: a recruitment company builds up its base of resumes from which to fill vacant posts.
A competitor then hacks into the organization’s computer system, or steals an employee's laptop or mobile hardware device, and virtually exports those resumes to a remote computer from which they can never be retrieved.
Now the recruitment company’s competitive advantage is lost.
Another scenario has a hacker stealing key credit card information form a corporate database. The company then has to shut its computer system down to clean it.
The company also has to ring the credit card company to inform them of the security breach, which costs both in terms of dollars and lost reputation.
“That’s where we see the greatest number of breaches, where employees and their technology willingly or unwittingly become the window or the door that gives access to that information,” Hejazi explained.
And social networking promises to make that security challenge even larger.
Tomorrow: How companies that ban social networking in the workplace are inviting a higher number of security breaches.
To hear more from Rafael Etges, co-author of the 2011 TELUS-Rotman Study on Canadian IT Security, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqWpT9mnXyE. Here, Etges joins Peter Macaulay, head of security of the Government of Ontario, and host Shane Schick, Editor-in-Chief of IT World Canada, to discuss trends in IT security in Canada. The discussion covers breaches and more personalized threats, mobile security, managing social networking in the workplace, and IT complexity.
