The Changing Landscape  

The human impact on the environment is staggering – natural resources of our finite planet are being used up at an exponential rate. As the global economy transitions toward digitisation, automation, and environmentally sustainable industries, it demands more digital and green focused jobs, especially in the context of current climate challenges and the instability of the geopolitical landscape.   

The youth of today require digital skills and knowledge in managing our environment conscientiously, to navigate an expanding “eco-economy”. Skills without which will aggravate an already growing worldwide youth unemployment crisis, exacerbated by an interrupted workforce.  

The Solution: Education  

Productivity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation are by-products of education.  

The interconnected system of society and culture, the economy, and ecological life support are embedded in each other.   

Forward planning rooted in education is the key to unlocking real change. The domino effect of an educated body of youth will help to answer innumerable issues socially, environmentally, and beyond global economic growth.   

Find out how you can meet the demand for digital affluence and green conscientiousness through these programmes at 51±¬ÁĎ: 

• Safety and Environmental Management
• Media and Communications
• Digital Technology
• Engineering

Read more here:  

Insecure IoT Devices

With the advancement of various hardware and software technologies, there are more and more IoT devices, which leads to an insecure environment. As millions of devices are connected, it creates a larger attack surface, which increases the opportunities for attackers. Both software and hardware attacks are increasing day by day. A single vulnerability can harm the entire network and also harm the society. There are many open source tools available for hackers and attackers. Even though many Anti-Forensics tools and techniques are available which help the intruder to protect themselves from future investigations. Even though the use of Anti Forensic tools and techniques is illegal, we need to ensure that the strict laws against the use of forensic tools are followed.

Vulnerable IoT Devices

Imagine a situation where there is a vulnerability in software used by millions of smartphone users. There are a number of reasons for vulnerabilities in IOT devices that make them insecure. They can be software, hardware or network vulnerabilities. There are also some other reasons for vulnerability in IoT devices. Some of them are listed below: –

• Weak Password Protection
• Lack of Patch Management
• Insecure interfaces
• Poor IoT Device Management
• Lack of skilled personnel
• Hardware malfunctions
• Human ethical issues

Opportunities provided by Vulnerable Devices

These insecure devices allow cyber criminals to hijack (gain access to) the devices and launch further attacks on other systems. Example: After gaining access to a remote target system, the intruder next attempts to gather more network information, such as about other systems available on the network. To this end, the intruder may use the ‘nbtstat’ command to view the contents of the NetBIOS cache. In addition, the intruder can collect information about the network connections running to and from the victim system. To do this, the intruder can use the ‘netstat’ command. In this way, the intruder can hijack millions of devices through a single device and perform various attacks such as DoS and DDos attacks and also damage the entire network. There is no end to the malicious activities.

The more insecure devices, the more cyber-attacks.

Authored by.
Dr. Rama Bhatia Singh – 51±¬ÁĎ School of Engineering and Technology

How to Stand Out from the Crowd

Building an online proliferation for your brand takes a great deal of time and effort. However, it takes an astonishing short period of time, to ruin that reputation you’ve built up over the years. Unlike in the physical store where you can have the opportunity to interact with your customer face-to-face, the customer experience in the digital context is often measured by at least 4 main factors; 1) variety – your product offerings 2) efficiency – how fast you take to process and deliver your customers’ orders, 3) accuracy – if the right product is delivered and 4) security – how secure are your customers’ profile, including credit card details are being stored. Hence, it is increasingly important that your online customers are receiving a great experience, if not greater than the experience received at your physical stores.

Before drawing traffic to your e-store, companies face the uphill task of finding out what appeals to customers in the countries they are operating in, and also internationally. Choosing the right social media platforms is therefore imperative in ensuring you are “reaching out” to your customers.
As cited in The Peak Magazine, social media has played an even more crucial role for many luxury brands’ advertising campaigns. Closed-door events have turned into marketing extravanganzas since mobile gadgets are often a customer’s first point of contact. Shoppers make buying decisions on the move. The latest fashion trends are not followed just by readers flipping through advertisements in magazines, but dictated by the ardent fans of influencers or followers on Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat. As such, having a presence online and in social media has become imperative for the luxury brands.

eBay used to be one of the most popular shopping website about a decade ago. However, the emergence of Alibaba has impeded eBay of capturing the market share, through its various business innovations such as Taobao, Alipay and etc. Locally, Lazada has been highly successful and is said to be the biggest e-commerce platform in South-East Asia. It has tied up with several local and international brands ranging from groceries, clothing and accessories, to provide a one-stop shopping portal for consumers.

How to Build Online Loyalty

To ensure that these e-stores have a steady stream of customers, carrots such as loyalty points and free samples, especially for skincare products have been dangled to ensure that customers return for subsequent purchases.

With the raging competition in the digital arena, companies need to constantly think of strategies and innovate themselves, to stay relevant and appeal to their customers.