02 Feb

Tips to Upsell and Cross-Sell: Easy Ways to Boost Revenue

Kindness is the key to approaching anyone, hence when it comes to the words ‘upsell’ and ‘cross-sell’ we imagine pushing people, trying to convince someone to purchase more than they intend.

Friendly communication

We will overview both upselling and cross-selling strategies, how they can help us to boost revenue in our business as while ignoring them we are missing a big opportunity to increase our revenue. However, before getting started we should define in short what is the difference between both, so we can completely understand their functionality.

Upselling: Persuade buying a product with a higher price than the customer has primarily selected.

Cross-Selling: Persuade getting an additional product to the primary order.

To accomplish any of those great opportunities, here are some tips that can help us. 

Commitment

People must engage in the well-being of the company and look for opportunities where the idea is not only to sell products just because, but to give solutions to customers’ needs.

Probing Question / Active Listening

This is one of the most assertive strategies: customers may already know about what they need/want, however, based on the probing question we are going to land to cover what they really need. They will also appreciate it if we are sincere in explaining why they will benefit from such a product. If we achieve that, we are not only boosting our revenue but also ensuring long-term customer relationships. And if we would like to see the employees’ well-being, we can do that because if we ensure long-term customers, we are bringing more revenue to the company, and we have the possibility to enlarge our team and have people motivated.

Use Customer’s Words Timely

When costumes have already expressed all that they require, we can use their own words in a straightforward way, so they won’t feel the pushing feeling you are trying to sell. Some examples of this could be “As you mention you would need to have….. Based on that, we can offer you…” or “You are missing to have……. So, we can help you to get this………” Those are simple phrases but if customers listen once again, they need it, or they are required to have it, this will put the sense of getting the product or service.

Be Opportune

To be opportune when offering a cross-sell or upsell will be much appreciated by customers. Normally this practice is used at the end of the purchase agreements, so in the middle of the conversation, we should say the benefits of the product or service, so customers understand why they should be paying more or add more products/services to their order. Also, there is a possibility that some customers do not need to be driven to this type of offer, when this happens it is better to neither offer a cross-sell nor upselling.

Come Natural

Nothing resists the power of love! Try to sound natural in the whole conversation with customers because if they feel you change the mood just when you are trying to cross-sell or upsell, for sure this customer will be rejecting your offer.

Personalize the Conversation

Personalised conversation

Provide your name, phone number, email if possible, or any contact information. Also, try to use the customer’s name and refer by the name in the entire conversation. Use Mr/Mrs. and the last name or ask the customer how they prefer to be called. Do not ask for all customer information at first, just the basics that will allow flowing the conversation. This will create a nice and positive environment required to cross-sell or upsell.

Also, it is imperative to stay with a company that does not push customers just because, but really meets their needs and expectations. SoftSys Hosting has been working for many years using the customer-first approach: this means offering clients what they need and always more.

If you need quality dedicated, VPS, or eCommerce hosting, SoftSys Hosting is here to provide you with the most extensive choice of reliable plans. Moreover, if you have some special queries on how to host your own projects, you can contact us at [email protected] or +1-862.214.2255 (x203) and we will guide you through available options. 

24 Dec

The Psychology of Price: How to Set Up Correct Pricing For Your Product?

How to set up correct pricing for your business and clients alike to stay profitable and not to lose customer loyalty?

The first thing to consider is to have a product knowledgeable person on board. Someone who really knows about the business and what is essential to succeed. In most cases, this person is the CEO or company’s owner as they are those who are responsible for overall profitability and performance. Or course, market, company goals, and competition have an impact on pricing and commercial policy.

Psychology of price is not an easy topic; however, it can drive us to understanding of how this overall process works. There are pricing techniques that help to set up prices to catch peoples’ attention also the are some basic rules that all the businesses should know about. Pricing techniques or basic rules both guide us to have remarkable results in the process. We will cover them, so you are not overwhelmed with all the existing techniques in the psychology of price.

Market Research

Market Research

Market research should go hand to hand with business, but in many cases, we do not pay the necessary attention to it. If we know who the competitors are, we will have a more clear idea of what we may face. Based on that, we will also know the audience we are pointing to and the feedback we’re going to receive.

Know Your Business

You should know all operational business costs as this is the basic when setting up prices. We should have this information always at hand because it is not going to be logical to sell something 30% below the cost price. Of course, businesses should and will use discounts to let people know about special deals and boost sales, though this will be just in a promotional case and should not heavily influence your business marginality.

Knowing Your Audience

Once the business is launched it should have an audience in mind, depending on this audience will be the prices and the goals the business must set. The most important thing is to stay realistic: businesses cannot wait for gross profits if they are just focusing on competitive prices. On the other hand, it is possible to have competitive prices, because you make a profit from mass sales and not of the individual product price.

Stay Aware of the Market Situation

The markets are changing every single second around the world: some products or services are lagging and if the company is not adapting to those changes the customer will jump away easily because the business will be out of date. This applied to all types of business. Clothes, electronics, services to name a few.

Set Up Basic Prices

Basic Prices

Softsys Hosting promotes our own strategy of prices and benefits for clients around the Globe. Fortunately, we’re using a client-first approach that allows us to offer premium quality cloud servers, dedicated hosting, managed VPS services and eCommerce hosting deals with reliable in-house 24/7 support at only the fraction of a price other provides will offer. Don’t take our word for it – just try our services and share your reviews. For special service queries you can contact us at [email protected] or +1-862.214.2255 (x203) and we will guide you through available opportunities to meet your requirements.

22 Dec

What Platform to Choose to Start Selling Online? Own Website, Marketplace or Social Media

When talking about sales, people become creative to sell, be it either service or product. The pandemic has changed the world and our lifestyle: some businesses have migrated to work remotely, others integrated automatic business processes, etc. In the end, everyone has one single goal – to drive more sales and profitability in the long run.

At present, we have many options to sell services or products: however, the question is which will be the best one for our business? We will take a look at the most common options and which one could be the most beneficial for our business.

Before talking about sources and mediums to sell, it is important to highlight that there are various types of businesses, and depending on that people can go with the option that better fits their needs. Nevertheless, this should be chosen as smartly as possible. As far as sales are concerned, the main channels that come to peoples’ minds are social media, marketplace, or own website, but what will be the one you need in your particular case? We will outline the main pros and cons of them so as you’ll be able to make your own conclusions.

Social Media

Social Medial Communication

Everybody has access to social media, for instance, this could seem easy, because people can post what they offer, even on the go. However, it is not easy to engage followers just because in order to build reputation, it is necessary to follow the process with marketing otherwise business will be just a fan page like any other around. If people like what the business sells, they will be expanding the word,  the branding grows to the word of mouth and this will help to let people know about your products and services. However, if people are not 100% happy with the products or services that you offer and/or the customer service is terrible, this will harm your social media reputation right away and affect sales negatively.

Marketplace

There are a few marketplace options around which have become extremely popular during recent years: this is the fast way to build an audience and drive sales without huge initial investments. Nevertheless, selling on the marketplace delivers more competitors as due to the low initial costs more and more businesses may enter them. Also, another issue when using the marketplace is that people rarely realize from whom exactly they are buying: they are just looking for something and make their choice depending on price, delivery options, and reviews. And the same as with social media, you need to get a positive reputation and reviews in order to stay afloat.

Own Website

Own Website

Compared to having a physical store, we can say that the website is cheaper for businesses that want to expand their business nationwide or around the world, no matter where they are located. Also, people can use different payment gateway options, so clients can purchase from the website without leaving a home or on the go. However, to be successful it must be user-friendly and catch people’s attention. Moreover, marketing expenses for running your own website will also be higher if compared to marketplace sales and social media (in general).

In conclusion, every option choice depends on the type of business you run, sales plans, and marketing budgets you have. Also, you can combine several of these sources to make your channels more diverse and not depend on a single option.

If you need quality dedicated, VPS, or eCommerce hosting, SoftSys Hosting is here to provide you with the most extensive choice of reliable plans. Moreover, if you have some special queries on how to host your own projects, you can contact us at [email protected] or +1-862.214.2255 (x203) and we will guide you through available options.

17 Nov

All The Ways to Accept Online Payments in 2022

The digital era is evolving – the same goes for services offered online as well. Today everything is in tough competition between companies: the way in which they offer their services, the type of payments they accept to promote their services/products, the way in which those services/products are accepted by people has become a challenge because the type of payments that companies accept has an impact on customer behavior. However, this evolution has shown us the diversity of online payment methods that exist so far. Let’s dive into the most popular and trending ways to accept payments in 2022.

Online payments

Credit Card Tokenization

Credit card tokenization that already exists is becoming more and more popular today. This works the way that instead of providing all card information to whoever the services or products are purchased from, you’re offering a token number that will replace the full card details so that people do not have to deal with the protection issues of any sensitive information. The use of credit cards for online purchases is very common, so, tokenization is an equivalent way the only difference is that this works by using a token number which is a number that will replace the card details, making it more secure. So this online payment method will not go out of the trend soon: it also allows you to set up automatic charges on credit cards depending on the recurrence of time that your clients choose.

Payment Gateways and Recurring Charges

This is an extremely popular method. There are a bunch of options for payment gateways, however, one of the most popular which is used worldwide is PayPal since this is a payment gateway that allows saving credits card information securely. As the years go by, this payment method has earned the trust of people in almost any country around the Globe. So, you may be asking, why credit card tokenization and payment gateways, and recurring charges are in a separate description? This is because the option of making payments directly with a credit card will be still the way it is right now, the only difference is that the service provider will send a token instead of the full CC details. On the other hand, a payment gateway stores the information of your credit card as is, though sends and receives payments on the virtual wallet by default.

Cryptocurrency Wallets

Cryptocurrency wallets

Undoubtedly this is where we are migrating to: this is one of the payment methods which is becoming more popular these days. Of course, it is not something that all the companies or most of the companies accept, but as everyone uses it, it will make more and more companies accept crypto.

Despite the diverse ways to make payments online now or in the future, one of the goals that companies do not have to lose is to focus on what will be the best and more secure for their customers. As one thing is that some online payments are becoming more popular, and the other – whether they’re convenient for company clients.

Undoubtedly this is where we are migrating to: this is one of the payment methods which is becoming more popular these days. Of course, it is not something that all the companies or most of the companies accept, but as everyone uses it, it will make more and more companies accept crypto.

Despite the diverse ways to make payments online now or in the future, one of the goals that companies do not have to lose is to focus on what will be the best and more secure for their customers. As one thing is that some online payments are becoming more popular, and the other – whether they’re convenient for company clients.

Softsys Hosting is responsible for offering a secure hosting environment for your business and clients. This means that even though there are many online payment options, Softsys Hosting uses all those that comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), so customers can be sure that their financial data is safe and protected. You can address any concerns you may have to our responsive support experts who are online 24/7 at [email protected] or +1-862 214 2255.

19 Oct

How to Make Your Business Stand Out from Competitors

There are some common slogans most businesses use to catch people’s attention, but not all of them are what the company’s culture preaches. Clients should know if this is the way the company works even before doing business with them. What is the approach the company uses, what are their values, and whether are they in harmony with its targeted audience?

The main objective for every single company is to gain profit, but is the company disposed to take care of the customers and the processes to make the business grow sustainably? These are some questions that we will answer below and that will be the best way to stand out from competitors.

1. Listen to customer needs and focus on pain points

The key to business success is to listen to what the customer needs are, and pay attention to details. By doing so, it will allow us to take ownership with responsibility and give a frame of reference if our company has the skills to take that specific request and how we can overcome any pains customers have.

2. Build a trustworthy company

Listening to customer needs is not enough to show that we care about people. Being honest is highly appreciated. Although honestly does not pay money by exchanging information honestly is the way to advertise your company culture from mouth-to-mouth. In the long run, people will recognize it, they will prefer to stay next to a company that does not put false hopes on them.

3. Customer service

Customer Service

This is something that every single business wants to provide and most of the businesses use this slogan as a competitive advantage, however, this is not enough just to say that. Once you interact with clients, they will realize the type of business you are in, and if they don’t feel you treat them with respect and kindness, they will move even if you provide the best of the product ever. Hence, correctly evaluate the quality of the customer service you offer.

4. Concentrate your attention on a specific niche

Even though during the growth process of our company we realized that there are some products that give more money than others, or even worse there are products that become hyping up and everybody wants them, we must take our strategic company’s vision as the main point. The company has to be known for having something word class. As a common quote says, we cannot mix pears with apples.

5. Create communication channels for your customers

Communication Channels

For example, the official business blog is a good way to build trust. People will know that your company is not all about selling a product, but also you care about providing useful information, so this will allow interacting with your audience, customers, and others interested in what you write and do.

6. Use clear term and condition policies

This is something not that common however really important because when something happens company is supported by those terms and conditions which most of the time people don’t read. Even though we cannot push them to read before getting our products/services, we can advise taking a look at them at least in general terms.

7. Set right expectations

We can’t offer to drive customers to Saturn if we can drive them to Mars only, that’s why your customers should have the right expectations on the products or services that your business offers.

8. Follow up

Follow up even if customer requests are not urgent.  You should show that your business cares about any issues your customers have and it is just a matter of time when their issue will be solved. Stay caring all the time.

9. Deploy promotion for the current customers

One of the biggest mistakes is to promote offers to acquire new customers only. In order to keep the current ones for the long term, we cannot leave aside those that already make us money. We need to keep them loyal and engaged in company processes all the time with the proper loyalty program and special offers.

SoftSys Hosting is one of a few hosting companies that use a customer-first approach. So if you wish to have a reliable platform for your online presence with responsive and caring 24/7 support, order any ecommerce, VPS, or dedicated hosting solutions and we’ll take your online business to the next level of performance.

15 Oct

The Most Common Entrepreneur Mistakes When Starting a Business

There are some common mistakes entrepreneurs make. Most of them make those mistakes because they want to follow the correct procedure and try to imitate others, or they just do not know how to do it the correct way and perform those mistakes without intention. Either way, we will focus on the most common ones so they can be handled in a better way, or at least you can have them in mind to avoid when starting out your new business venture.

1. Don’t be fearful of failing

Since we’re born, we have learned that fear is part of the process of our life, when we’ve just made our first steps, we fell, and we tried repeatedly until we knew how to do it properly. The same happens when we decide to start a business. We take some decisions that make us muddy and some others that drive us to the moon, so we succeed.

2. Streamline your ideas 

Due to the excitement we have when starting a business, we usually want to cover everything at once, however, it is important to prioritize main tasks to avoid overwhelming ourselves and having disappointment when something will go wrong.

3. Create a plan

Business Planning

You can start with short-term planning, medium-term planning, and long-term planning. This is important because this allows us to accomplish the work accurately and the actions being done in a particular sequence, avoiding costly mistakes.

4. Delegate in a timely manner

According to some research entrepreneur success vastly depends on how effectively you can delegate tasks to others. But this should be done only if you also participate in the process from the very beginning as some entrepreneurs start delegating before they even start or before they even have a clear idea about the plan. The main problem of delegating before having a clear idea about the plan is that others will handle the plan in the way they think should be and the idea or the main objective may fail.

5.  Finances and marketing must go hand to hand

Proper financial planning will help us to make a good decision about the money to spend and marketing – to forecast prospective financial gains. Even though those are 2 strategic keys, some decide to consider this after they start selling, but it is necessary to start building these from the beginning and avoid waste of money.

6. Clear reporting

To have a wide view about everything that is going on in the company, the reporting is essential even though some of those won’t be like we want them to be, however, those will help you to understand and know what are the goals we couldn’t accomplish or what are the ones we can and continue or improve working on them.

7. Be a listener

Taking a piece of wise advice is always the key to our success. It will contribute to the balance of the main objective and help in prioritizing tasks and resources. So not only manage and generate ideas but also listen to other team members, who are experts in their work.

8. Value people around

Despite we have great ideas or we know exactly how to handle business, it is fundamental to have empathetic people skills. Try to understand how it feels to be in your customer’s shoes as well. Having this in mind, you’ll be able to create a pleasant environment that will be transmitted to everybody involved in the process, so we will have happy employees and loyal clients.

9. Hire wisely

Hire people with a desire to learn to become long-term employees instead of hiring genius people who have attitude issues. What is not known could be learned, but attitude problems cannot be fixed.

10. Legal registration

This process not only guarantees that nobody will steal your name or idea but also helps you to have a good reputation on the market and protect your business from serious legal issues.

11. Stay tech-savvy

Tech Savvy

Nowadays it is quite common that everything we want is more or less bound with the Internet. And when people can easily find your business and reviews, this automatically builds trust in them. Build your positive business reputation, host websites and web apps in a reliable hosting space, and create brand awareness among your existing and prospective clients – this all in the complex will ensure your online success.

How can SoftSys Hosting help you when starting a business?

SoftSys Hosting offers a wide selection of web hosting plans at affordable prices including scalable cloud hosting, top-notch Windows and Linux VPS, and powerful dedicated servers. We use a customer-first approach, so you can address any questions you have when choosing a web hosting environment for your business to our responsive support experts who are online 24/7 at [email protected]  or +1-862.214.2255.

24 Sep

Keep Your Business In Business With Reliable Backup Services

Unexpected downtime and data loss costs your business valuable time and money. Whether you’re facing a phishing attack or ransomware or just an app you need suddenly crashes – having the backup of your data and systems ensures you can recover quickly and get back to work.

Lost data costs your business money

Any interruption to your business processes can be costly. In IT, we call it “downtime”. And downtime can be a big problem for small-to-medium businesses – closing off part or all of your operations and losing you money every minute that you’re down. In fact, once you consider direct business loss, lost productivity, and lost reputation, a single hour of downtime costs $84,650 on average.

Business Data Loss

There is good news though. With modern backup and recovery technology and processes, your business can avoid data loss arising from malware attacks, human error, and everything in between. And, if you do lose access to some of your business data you can recover it in a matter of minutes – keeping your business running without any interruption.

“545 hours of staff productivity are lost every year due to IT downtime”
Solutions Review

Protect anything that could go missing

From entire servers full of business data to that one PowerPoint deck you can’t afford to lose, your backup and recovery solution needs to be able to protect everything that’s important to your business and team. Because, inevitably, if one system is left unprotected it’s going to be that one that goes down. That’s why SoftSys Hosting offers backup and recovery capabilities that cover more than 20 different platforms – including physical, virtual, cloud, and mobile – no matter where the data rests, how large it gets, or how you choose to move or access it.

Endpoints

  • Windows PC
  • Mac

Physical

  • Windows Server
  • Windows Server Essentials
  • Linux

Applications

  • Microsoft Exchange
  • Microsoft SQL Server
  • Microsoft SharePoint
  • Microsoft Active Directory
  • Oracle Database

Cloud

  • Microsoft 365
  • Google Workspace
  • Azure
  • Amazon EC2

Mobile

  • iPhone
  • iPad
  • Android

Restore lost or compromised data in minutes

Your business relies on data safety, accessibility, and security to keep work flowing and growing. Our team is here to make sure that’s possible. With our backup and recovery services in place, data recovery can be completed in a matter of minutes – getting your team back to business almost in no time.

Continuous data protection

With continuous data protection in place, the data we recover for you will include recent changes, making it more accurate and valuable.

Built-in cybersecurity

And with built-in cybersecurity capabilities, we can ensure that your backup data is free of ransomware, malware, and viruses.

Integrated Cybersecurity Capabilities

Nowadays companies face new, sophisticated cyber threats every day. In fact, in 2020 there were 350,000 new malware threats discovered every day. Any of these threats could spell disaster for your business, particularly if you’re an SMB.

Integrated cybersecurity capabilities

That’s why our team included some essential cybersecurity defenses into our backup and recovery services. All backups are protected with advanced machine-learning threat detection capabilities, which are designed to detect and prevent ransomware, phishing attacks, and never-before-seen “zero-day” attacks from impacting your data, and your business.

Learn more & sign up for backup and recovery along with cyber protect services offered by SoftSys Hosting.

16 Dec

How To Stay Competitive In a Post-COVID World

We as a human species have evolved and found solutions to complex problems that we have faced throughout history. There are so many instances in history which disrupted the day to day life and eventually we, humans, have evolved, found solutions, and overcame such adversities.

Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic struck and disrupted life around the globe bringing down businesses and economies, we are adapting quickly to the changing paradigm of technology adaptation and implementation.

Let’s look at the top changes that can be adopted to stay competitive in a post-COVID world:

Supply and Deliverables

During COVID-19, the existing supply chain mechanisms across the globe got disrupted. There were industries that were completely disrupted during the pandemic. Outdated methods and poor data management had a primary impact on this.

Going forward, organizations are now adopting big data, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing to make the supply chain more robust. Processes that can be automated are being prioritized with the ability to control remotely such processes thus requiring none or minimum human presence and interaction.

Internet of Things (IoT) is gaining traction in the logistics industry for transport operations, managing assets, and vehicle tracking, among others. Many companies are coming up with ideas that use automated vehicles or drone technologies for delivery.

Remote Work

In a pre-COVID world, remote working was an alien concept to many organizations. Many companies were opposed to this type of working style only to accept it eventually when it was the only option remaining. Some of the concerns organizations had towards working remotely were related not only with a potential decrease in employee performance but also with keeping business data secure, while working remotely.

During the pandemic, however, many organizations have adopted the work-from-home policy for an extended period, even declaring to continue it after the outbreak’s impact mitigates.

For organizations that were already using the technology needed to make work from home successful, although perhaps not to its full potential, the adoption of this working style has been easy with minimum transition time. For others, there have been high cost and time implications as the entire process required restructuring and redesigning in a phased manner.

In a post-COVID-19 era, this trend is likely to continue with organizations investing a substantial amount in automating business critical processes and enabling remote working with more control with minimum interaction.

The use of digital technology has not only been confined to working, but virtual meetings, cloud technology, and work collaboration tools (including remote office tools such as Microsoft Office 365) as well have gained tremendous ground during the pandemic.

Digital Payments

These have been available for a long time but now they are becoming more important than ever. The use of digital payments has significantly increased over the past months. People are using them for everything from buying groceries to even making cross-border payments. Companies are implementing these methods to get client payments.

Digital Payments Worldwide Market Revenue
Source: Statista, 2020

With the fear that cash might carry the virus, the trend of digital payments is a notable feature of the post-COVID world. Even organizations, there were reluctant earlier to adapt to these methods are now finding it very helpful as it has completely eliminated the need for physical delivery of invoices, bank cheques, etc. Billables are delivered through an electronic medium in no time with the ability to make online payments / automatic reminders in case the service/product remains unpaid. This has greatly reduced human interaction.

With the change in consumer behavior and an increase in online shopping, contactless payments will continue to be on the growth trajectory. Internet availability, devices, and secure networks for safe transactions are being addressed for expanding this further.

E-Learning

The most notable effect of this pandemic is certainly in the education sector with children affected by school closures. The education sector has been quick to adopt digital technologies, whether be it online classes or using AR-VR for making learning more exciting. Although it is not a permanent alternative, since physical interaction is also an important part of child development in their early years, e-learning will be incorporated at certain levels to add value to the existing methodologies. Schools were already teaching through computerized modules, for example, 3D audiovisuals to have a better understanding. COVID-19 will only fast track the processes and schools will be the first ones to implement the latest technologies in the education sector in their curriculums.

Size of the Global E-Learning Market in 2019 and 2026, by Segment

Global E-Learning Market
Source: Statista, 2020

Many organizations are providing training modules to their employees online and working towards enhancing the learning experience. According to the stats, people have used e-learning modules extensively during this pandemic.

12 Nov

Hosting Infrastructure Required To Feel Confident During Holiday Traffic Splash

Imagine, hundreds of users are rushing to your website at the same time to purchase products which you actively marketed for this holiday. Your ads are now running, you are getting visitors more than you calculated or more than your server can handle. So what is going to happen with this sudden traffic spike?

Prepare for the Worst or If You Want Peace, Prepare for War

Online website performance

You should be always prepared for the worst (means best for your business) during this holiday shopping fest. Because the year 2020 proved to be one of the toughest years so far. But this might be the good opportunity for your online business because people will hesitate to go out in malls during this Covid-19 pandemic and you may expect getting more online traffic than ever before. In that case you should be prepared to avoid 2 major disasters. So how are you going to be prepared?

Check your Website Performance

You can check the current performance of your website easily with the online tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights. Open PageSpeed Insights, enter the URL of your website and hit the Analyze button. This test will show you result for both mobile and desktop versions of your website. And you will get the detailed audit of your website code and receive suggestions on how to optimize it. But still if you don’t have enough computing power to run your website easily during this traffic spike, you may get time-out errors and your customers will flow away without making any purchases.

Use Content Delivery Network (CDN)

The best way to cope with the traffic load on your website is not follow all traffic to your single web hosting server. CDN can do it very effectively by storing the cached content of your website on multiple CDN servers located around the globe. But you will have to implement CDN before the traffic starts hitting your website because it will be very difficult to implement the CDN once your website is under heavy traffic load.

Opt for the Scalable Hosting Solution

Scalable Hosting

The most straightforward way to deal with increased traffic is to upgrade your hosting account. For example, if you are using shared hosting you can go with VPS which will give you isolated resources like RAM, CPU and storage at a more affordable price if compare to dedicated solutions. You should contact your web hosting provider before your customers start contacting you. And if you are a Softsys Hosting client then you can directly get in touch with our support team and we will provide you the most suitable VPS plans or you can choose on your own from our extensive range of cloud-based Windows VPS, Linux VPS or Special eCommerce (nopCommerce, Magento) and CMS (WordPress, Joomla, Umbraco) hosting solutions.

09 Oct

Why Online Security Should Be One Of Your Primary Business Concerns?

One doesn’t need to be a rocket scientist in order to understand why cyber security is important for your business. We are living in a digital age and we are so much dependent on the tech devices that we carry everywhere we go. The sensitive data on these devices can make your business and ruin it also. So, the data is always vulnerable to some extent.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, cases of cybercrime increased up to 600%, and October is marked as Cyber Security Month hence this is the perfect time for online businesses to take steps forward securing their business data.

In this blog post, we will discuss the types of various cyber-attacks and show you some serious statistics which will surely make you think about the importance of cyber security for your business.

Malware Or Malicious Software

Malware is software that is specifically designed to harm data and devices. There are different types of malware including computer viruses, trojans, spyware, ransomware, adware, worms, etc.

The total malware infections have been on the rise for the last five years:

  • 2014 – 308.96 million
  • 2015 – 452.93 million
  • 2016 – 580.40 million
  • 2017 – 702.06 million
  • 2018 – 812.67 million
  • 92% of malware is delivered by email.
  • Mobile malware on the rise with the number of new malware variants for mobile increased by 54% in 2018.
  • Third-party app stores host 99.9% of discovered mobile malware.
  • More than 250,000 unique users were attacked by Trojan-Banker.AndroidOS.Asacub malware application.
  • 98% of mobile malware targets Android devices.
  • Over the last year, MacOS malware has increased by 165%.
  • Malware development rates for Windows decreased by 11.6% since reaching an all-time high in 2015.

Ransomware

Ransomware is another form of malicious software. Unlike malware, ransomware threatens you with harm and by first encrypting your data to preventing you to access your data.

Ransomware attacks are usually deployed via social engineering tactics. Once a user falls victim to the attack, their data is encrypted and the attacker then demands a ransom from the victim, with the promise to restore access to the data upon payment.

  • Ransomware attacks worldwide rose by 350% in 2018.
  • Ransomware attacks are estimated to cost $6 trillion annually by 2021.
  • 50% of a surveyed 582 information security professionals do not believe their organization is prepared to repel a ransomware attack.
  • 81% of cyber security experts believe there will be more ransomware attacks than ever in 2020.
  • Ransomware costs businesses more than $75 billion per year.
  • The average cost of a ransomware attack on businesses was $133,000.
  • Businesses lost around $8,500 per hour due to ransomware-induced downtime.
  • 25% of business executives would be willing to pay between $20,000 and $50,000 to regain access to encrypted data.

Social Engineering

Social engineering is the act of tricking someone into divulging information or taking action, usually through technology. The idea behind social engineering is to take advantage of a potential victim’s natural tendencies and emotional reactions.

  • 98% of cyber attacks rely on social engineering.
  • Recent data breach statistics found that 63% of successful attacks come from internal sources, either control, errors, or fraud.
  • 43% of the IT professionals said they had been targeted by social engineering schemes in the last year.
  • New employees are the most susceptible to socially engineered attacks, with 60% of IT professionals citing recent hires as being at high risk.

Phishing

One of the most common types of online fraud is known as phishing, a term that arose in the 1990s. Put simply, phishing is a deliberate attempt to obtain sensitive information like login credentials or credit card numbers by masquerading as someone trustworthy. Targeted emails, or spear phishing, are reported by businesses to be used in 91% of successful data breaches and 95% of all enterprise networks.

  • 56% of IT decision-makers say targeted phishing attacks are their top security threat.
  • 83% of global infosec respondents experienced phishing attacks in 2018, an increase from 76% in 2017.
  • Business email compromise (BEC) scams cost organizations $676 million in 2017.
  • CEO fraud is now a $12 billion scam.
  • 30% of phishing messages get opened by targeted users and 12% of those users click on the malicious attachment or link.
  • Only 3% of targeted users report malicious emails to management.   53% of IT and security professionals say they have experienced a targeted phishing attack in 2017.

How To Ensure The Security

Cyber security solutions

Since cyber security is a major threat to all the small and large companies around the globe, the companies are now hiring professional cyber security experts, ethical hackers to fight with it, but small businesses still can’t afford to do it.

So here are some basic points which will help small businesses to tighten the security of their data.

  • Ensure the security of your staff information like passwords and usernames.
  • Arrange a proper training session and educate your staff about the precautions that they should take while using the company’s devices.
  • Keep your computers up-to-date and always use paid anti-virus and encryption software for maximum security.
  • Keep updating the security on employee’s devices.
  • Change your computer passwords and every account that you use every 60 days and ensure that the changed password is stronger than the previous ones.
  • Do not allow everyone to have access to the company’s sensitive documents.
  • If you can’t hire them permanently, at least hire the cyber security professionals on the contract base for 2 to 3 months every year so they can assist your IT security.

If you have any cyber security related issues, Softsys Hosting can address major part of them. Just take a moment and contact us.