In a rapidly evolving digital landscape, effective communication and collaboration are vital components of any successful business. Google Workspace, formerly known as G Suite, offers a suite of tools designed to enhance productivity and streamline communication. In this blog, we’ll explore the significance of Google Workspace emails and why they are essential for businesses of all sizes.

1. Seamless Integration

Google Workspace emails are not just standalone email accounts; they seamlessly integrate with a wide range of productivity tools, including Google Drive, Google Calendar, Google Meet, Google Docs, and more. This integration fosters collaboration by allowing users to access and share documents, schedule meetings, and conduct video conferences directly from their email interface. This unified experience enhances efficiency and reduces the need to switch between different applications.

2. Cloud-Based Accessibility

Google Workspace email services are hosted in the cloud, which means users can access their emails, calendar, and documents from anywhere with an internet connection. Whether you’re in the office, at home, or on the go, your email and work-related data are always at your fingertips. This level of accessibility promotes remote work, flexibility, and uninterrupted communication.

3. Scalability

Google Workspace offers scalability that accommodates businesses of all sizes. Whether you’re a small startup or a large enterprise, you can easily add or remove user licenses as your organization grows or changes. This flexibility ensures that your email and collaboration tools can adapt to your evolving needs without requiring substantial investments in infrastructure.

4. Enhanced Security

Email security is a top priority for businesses, and Google Workspace takes this seriously. It provides robust security features, including advanced threat protection, spam filters, and data loss prevention tools. Google’s infrastructure is designed with security in mind, and regular updates and patches are applied automatically to protect against emerging threats. Additionally, two-factor authentication (2FA) adds an extra layer of security to user accounts.

5. Collaboration and Real-Time Editing

Google Workspace’s suite of tools promotes real-time collaboration. With Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, multiple users can work on the same document simultaneously, making edits and suggestions in real-time. This collaborative environment enhances teamwork, reduces version control issues, and speeds up project completion.

6. Cost-Efficiency

Google Workspace operates on a subscription-based model, which can be more cost-effective than managing on-premises email servers and software. It eliminates the need for costly hardware and software maintenance, as Google takes care of infrastructure management, updates, and maintenance tasks. This cost predictability allows businesses to allocate resources more efficiently.

7. Reliable Uptime

Google boasts a high level of uptime for its services. With redundant data centers and a robust infrastructure, Google Workspace offers reliability that ensures minimal disruptions to your email and collaboration tools. This high availability keeps your business running smoothly and minimizes downtime-related losses.

8. Centralized Management

Google Workspace provides centralized management through an admin console, allowing IT administrators to manage user accounts, security settings, and device policies from a single interface. This simplifies the management of user access and security, ensuring that your organization’s data remains secure.

In conclusion, Google Workspace emails are an indispensable tool for modern businesses. Their seamless integration, cloud-based accessibility, scalability, enhanced security, collaboration features, cost-efficiency, reliability, and centralized management make them an essential component of any organization’s digital toolkit. By adopting Google Workspace, businesses can empower their teams to communicate and collaborate more effectively, ultimately driving productivity and success in today’s fast-paced business environment. If you haven’t already, consider making the switch to Google Workspace and unlock the full potential of your email and collaboration tools.

In today’s digital age, communication lies at the heart of every successful business. Whether you’re a small startup or a multinational corporation, effective communication is essential for collaboration, decision-making, and customer interaction. Microsoft Office 365, particularly its email services, plays a pivotal role in ensuring seamless and efficient communication within organizations. In this blog, we’ll explore why Office 365 emails are crucial for businesses of all sizes.

1. Accessibility Anytime, Anywhere

One of the key advantages of Office 365 emails is their cloud-based nature. Unlike traditional email systems that rely on on-premises servers, Office 365 emails are hosted in the cloud. This means you can access your emails, calendar, and contacts from anywhere with an internet connection. Whether you’re at the office, working from home, traveling, or on a mobile device, you can stay connected and productive.

2. Scalability

Office 365 offers scalability that can accommodate businesses of all sizes. Whether your company has ten employees or thousands, Office 365 can be tailored to your needs. You can easily add or remove user licenses, storage space, and services as your organization grows or evolves. This scalability ensures that your email infrastructure can grow with your business without the need for significant capital investments.

3. Security and Compliance

Email security is a paramount concern for any organization. Office 365 incorporates robust security features to protect your emails and data. It includes advanced threat protection, encryption, and data loss prevention tools to safeguard against cyber threats and unauthorized access. Moreover, Office 365 assists in compliance with industry regulations, helping you meet legal and industry-specific requirements related to data protection and privacy.

4. Collaborative Tools Integration

Office 365 is more than just email; it’s a comprehensive suite of productivity tools. With services like Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive seamlessly integrated with your email, collaboration becomes effortless. You can share files, conduct virtual meetings, and work on documents in real-time, fostering teamwork and boosting productivity.

5. Reliability and Uptime

Downtime can be disastrous for business operations. Office 365 boasts a high level of reliability and uptime, with Microsoft managing the infrastructure and ensuring constant availability. This means you can trust that your emails will be accessible when you need them, minimizing disruptions and ensuring business continuity.

6. Cost-Efficiency

Office 365 operates on a subscription-based model, which can be more cost-effective than traditional email systems with upfront hardware and software costs. You pay only for what you use on a per-user basis, making it easier to manage your IT budget. Plus, you eliminate the need for on-premises hardware maintenance and reduce energy costs.

7. Automatic Updates and Maintenance

Microsoft takes care of all the updates and maintenance tasks, ensuring that your email system is up to date with the latest features and security patches. This not only saves your IT team valuable time but also keeps your email infrastructure secure and efficient.

In conclusion, Microsoft Office 365 emails are not just a convenience; they are a strategic necessity for businesses in today’s fast-paced, digital world. Their accessibility, scalability, security, collaboration capabilities, and cost-efficiency make them a valuable asset to any organization. By adopting Office 365, businesses can streamline their communication, boost productivity, and stay ahead in an increasingly competitive landscape. If you haven’t already, it’s time to consider making the switch to Office 365 and harnessing the power of modern email communication.

Crafting Digital Success: The Art of Website Design Services In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, a strong online presence is essential for businesses to thrive. Your website is often the first point of contact with potential customers, making it a critical asset for success. At Webzworld, we understand the importance of making a lasting impression in the virtual world. Join us as we explore the world of website design services and discover how our expertise can elevate your online presence.

The Power of a Well-Designed Website:

Your website is your digital storefront, your 24/7 sales representative, and the face of your brand online. Here’s why investing in a well-designed website is crucial:

1. First Impressions Matter: A visually appealing website immediately grabs the attention of visitors and creates a positive impression.

2. User Experience is Key: An intuitive, user-friendly design enhances the overall experience, leading to longer visits and increased engagement.

3. Credibility and Trust: A professional website design establishes trust and credibility, encouraging visitors to explore your products or services.

4. Search Engine Visibility: Search engines prefer well-structured websites, which can lead to higher search rankings and increased organic traffic.

Our Website Design Process:

At Webzworld, we take a comprehensive and collaborative approach to website design. Here’s a glimpse into our process:

1. Consultation: We start by understanding your business goals, target audience, and unique selling points to tailor our services accordingly.

2. Design Concept: Our talented designers create custom design concepts that align with your brand identity, ensuring your website stands out from the crowd.

3. Development: Our skilled developers bring these concepts to life using the latest web technologies to create a functional and responsive website.

4. Testing: Rigorous testing ensures that your website functions seamlessly across various devices and browsers, guaranteeing a positive user experience.

5. Launch: Once everything is perfected, we launch your website, making it accessible to your audience.

Our Comprehensive Services:

1. Custom Website Design: We believe in delivering unique solutions for every client, ensuring your website is tailored to your brand and objectives.

2. E-commerce Solutions: Our expertise extends to creating engaging and efficient e-commerce websites, designed to boost sales and customer satisfaction.

3. Responsive Design: With mobile devices dominating web traffic, we prioritize responsive design to ensure your website looks and works flawlessly on all screens.

4. Content Management Systems (CMS): We offer seamless CMS integration, enabling you to easily manage and update your website’s content.

5. SEO Optimization: Our team specializes in optimizing websites for search engines, increasing your visibility and driving organic traffic.

Website Maintenance: Beyond launch, we provide ongoing support and maintenance to keep your website current, secure, and performing at its best.

Conclusion:

In today’s digital era, a well-designed website is a non-negotiable asset for businesses of all sizes. At Webzworld, we are passionate about crafting websites that not only impress but also deliver results. Whether you’re looking to establish your online presence, revamp your existing site, or venture into e-commerce, our website design services are your gateway to digital success. Dive into the world of excellence with Webzworld, and let’s make your online dreams a reality.

Email is an integral part of our daily lives, whether it’s for work, personal communication, or staying informed. For many, Gmail is the go-to platform for managing emails efficiently. However, to truly master your email and make the most of Gmail’s features, it’s essential to know some tips and tricks. In this blog, we’ll explore valuable Gmail tips that can help you optimize your inbox, boost productivity, and stay organized.

1. Organize with Labels and Filters

Gmail allows you to create labels and filters to categorize and organize your emails automatically. Labels work like folders, but an email can have multiple labels, making it easier to find and sort messages. Filters let you automate actions like archiving, labeling, or forwarding emails based on criteria you set.

2. Use Keyboard Shortcuts

Gmail offers a variety of keyboard shortcuts that can significantly speed up your email management. For example, by pressing ‘C,’ you can compose a new email, and ‘R’ allows you to reply to the selected message. To see a list of available shortcuts, press ‘Shift’ + ‘/’ while in Gmail.

3. Enable Priority Inbox

Priority Inbox automatically categorizes your emails into three sections: Important and Unread, Starred, and Everything Else. This feature helps you focus on the most crucial messages first, making your inbox less overwhelming.

4. Undo Send

Ever hit the send button only to realize you made a mistake? Gmail’s “Undo Send” feature comes to the rescue. You can set a delay (e.g., 10 seconds) during which you can undo sending an email and make any necessary corrections.

5. Schedule Emails

If you want to send an email later, you can use Gmail’s email scheduling feature. Click the arrow next to the “Send” button and choose a specific date and time for delivery.

6. Customize Swipe Actions (Mobile)

On the Gmail mobile app, you can customize swipe actions to perform various actions like archiving, deleting, or marking as unread with a simple swipe. Go to Settings > General settings > Swipe actions to configure them according to your preference.

7. Explore Add-ons and Extensions

Gmail offers a range of add-ons and extensions that can enhance your email experience. Whether you need to track emails, schedule meetings, or improve email content, there’s likely an extension to help.

8. Use Templates

If you frequently send similar emails, you can create and use email templates in Gmail. This saves time and ensures consistency in your messages.

9. Search Like a Pro

Gmail’s search capabilities are robust. You can use operators like “from,” “to,” “subject,” and “has:” to refine your search.

10. Stay Informed with Notifications

Customize your notification settings in Gmail to receive alerts for essential emails. You can choose to be notified for all emails, only important ones, or none at all to minimize distractions.

By mastering these Gmail tips and incorporating them into your email management routine, you can optimize your inbox

Phishing attacks continue to grow in their scale and sophistication by taking advantage of security weaknesses in passwords. Beyond the password: Google Workspace brings a major security innovation to customers with passkeys For example:

1. Over 60% of data breaches in 2021 involved stolen credentials or phishing

2. Data breaches caused by phishing cost organizations $4.91 million on average in 2022

3. Phishing attacks grew 61% in 2022, reaching 255 million in a six-month period

Over the past decade Google has been at the forefront of the battle against phishing and password-related threats, including with our automated defenses powered by Google AI. We championed the development of physical security keys and their standardization under the FIDO Alliance. As a generally simpler and more secure alternative to passwords, passkeys represent the culmination of this work to bring phishing-resistant technology to billions of people worldwide. In early May, we made passkeys available as an additional sign-in option for personal Google Accounts. Starting today, in an open Beta, more than 9 million organizations can allow their users to sign in to Google Workspace and Google Cloud accounts using passkeys instead of passwords.

Passkeys introduce meaningful security and usability benefits to users, and we’re thrill to be the first major public cloud provider to bring this technology to our customers — from small businesses and large enterprises to schools and governments. While users can still continue using passwords to sign in to their work and personal Google Accounts, passkeys can offer a simpler and more secure alternative and can reduce the impact of phishing and other social engineering attacks.

What are passkeys?

Passkeys are a new, passwordless sign-in method that can offer a convenient and secure authentication experience across websites and apps, allowing users to sign in with a fingerprint, face recognition, or other screen-lock mechanism across phones, laptops, or desktops. Passkeys are based on an industry standard and available across popular browsers and operating systems that people use every day, including Android, ChromeOS, iOS, macOS, and Windows. Unlike passwords, passkeys don’t need to remember or type and cannot be written down or accidentally given to an adversary. Passkeys are simply easier to use.

Passkeys are based on the same public key cryptographic protocols that underpin physical security keys, such as the Titan Security Key, and therefore can be resistant to phishing and other online attacks. In fact, Google research has shown that security keys provide a stronger protection against automated bots, bulk phishing attacks, and targeted attacks than SMS, app-based one-time passwords.

Snap Inc. has already leveraged passkeys to help reduce the burden of password management and strengthen security for their employees: “Partnering with the Google Workspace team to move from passwords to passkeys reduces the risk of password leakage and account takeovers of our employees,” said Jim Higgins, CISO, Snap Inc. “Our Corporate Security team is deepening our security partnership with Google and is excited to expand the adoption of passkeys across our company to provide a more secure and convenient sign-in experience.”

Passkeys have also been design with user privacy in mind. When a user signs in with a passkey to their Workspace apps, such as a Gmail or Google Drive, the passkey can confirm that a user has access to their device and can unlock it with a fingerprint, face recognition, or other screen-lock mechanism. The user’s biometric data is never sent to Google’s servers or other websites and apps.

1. Steer clear of spam.

Gmail automatically keeps your inbox clean from spam and unwanted emails thanks to AI smarts. Gmail protects users from nearly 15 billion unwanted messages a day, blocking more than 99.9% of spam, phishing and malware. But if a message pops up that makes it past the filters, you can report it as spam by checking the box near your message, then clicking the Report Spam icon. (If you’re already in the message, it’s just one click on the Report Spam button and you’re all set.) And if it’s not quite spam, but it’s annoying anyway, you can set up a filter to block the sender’s messages from ever reaching your inbox.

2. Archive emails in bulk.

It can be overwhelming to look at a crowded post-holiday inbox. Where do you even start? One way is to minimize the number of emails you’re looking at by archiving in bulk. Let’s say you have a lot of emails from your child’s teacher that you don’t need to take action on. On desktop, search for the email address of the teacher, then look at the check box on the top left of your computer screen, below the “From” search filter. You can check that box to select all the emails, or click the arrow to select only read, unread, starred or unstarred emails. Once you’ve done that, hit Archive to remove them from your inbox view without deleting them entirely.

3. Mute email threads that get out of hand.

If you’re planning a group gathering or family reunion for 2023, chances are your email discussion is going to get long. Can’t deal with your friend’s cousin’s constant opinions on bachelorette party planning? You can mute the thread so you don’t see every update pop into your inbox, and instead these emails are sent to the “All Mail” label. On desktop, check the box to the left of your message in your inbox, click the three-dot menu near the top of the page and select Mute. On mobile, tap the message, click the three-dot menu on the top right of your screen and select Mute. Now the emails will be ready for you to read later, when you search for them or visit your “All Mail” label, but you won’t see every single update at the top of your inbox. Phew.

4. Separate incoming emails by creating multiple email addresses with a plus sign.

You use your Gmail address for lots of things: making plans with friends and family, tackling professional projects and keeping track of online shopping, just to name a few. Basically, lots of activities that ramp back up after the holiday-season lull. When all those updates end up in your inbox, though, it can leave you feeling overwhelmed. An easy way to tackle this is by signing up for things using different forms of your email address with a simple plus sign. Try it with online shopping, or even social media sites, to keep things clear of clutter.

5. Keep your messages safe.

Bringing peace to your inbox doesn’t just include cutting clutter. It also includes keeping your emails private and secure. Take action to protect your entire Google account by taking a Security Checkup and a Privacy Checkup, then take the recommended actions like choosing a secure password, enabling 2-factor authentication and adding in Account Recovery information so you never get locked out. That way you can start your year safely, too.

Microsoft Intune securely manages identities, manages apps, and manages devices As organizations move to support hybrid and remote workforces, they’re challenged with managing the different devices that access organization resources. Employees and students need to collaborate, work from anywhere, and securely access and connect to these resources. Admins need to protect organization data, manage end user access, and support users from wherever they work.

Microsoft Intune is a cloud-based endpoint management solution. It manages user access and simplifies app and device management across your many devices, including mobile devices, desktop computers, and virtual endpoints.

Key features and benefits

Some key features and benefits of Intune include:

1. You can manage users and devices, including devices owned by your organization and personally owned devices. Microsoft Intune supports Android, Android Open Source Project (AOSP), iOS/iPadOS, macOS, and Windows client devices. With Intune, you can use these devices to securely access organization resources with policies you create.

2. Intune simplifies app management with a built-in app experience, including app deployment, updates, and removal. You can connect to and distribute apps from your private app stores, enable Microsoft 365 apps, deploy Win32 apps, create app protection policies, and manage access to apps and their data.

3. Intune automates policy deployment for apps, security, device configuration, compliance, conditional access, and more. When the policies are ready, you can deploy these policies to your user groups and device groups. To receive these policies, the devices only need internet access.

4. Employees and students can use the self-service features in the Company Portal app to reset a PIN/password, install apps, join groups, and more. You can customize the Company Portal app to help reduce support calls.

5. Intune integrates with mobile threat defense services, including Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and third party partner services. With these services, the focus is on endpoint security and you can create policies that respond to threats, do real-time risk analysis, and automate remediation.

Integrates with other Microsoft services and apps

Microsoft Intune integrates with other Microsoft products and services that focus on endpoint management, including:

1. Configuration Manager for on-premises endpoint management and Windows Server, including deploying software updates and managing data centers You can use Intune and Configuration Manager together in a co-management scenario, use tenant attach, or use both. With these options, you get the benefits of the web-based admin center and can use other cloud-based features available in Intune.

2. Windows Autopilot for modern OS deployment and provisioning With Windows Autopilot, you can provision new devices and send these devices directly to users from an OEM or device provider. For existing devices, you can reimage these devices to use Windows Autopilot and deploy the latest Windows version.

3. Endpoint analytics for visibility and reporting on end user experiences, including device performance and reliability You can use Endpoint analytics to help identify policies or hardware issues that slow down devices. It also provides guidance that can help you proactively improve end user experiences and reduce help desk tickets.

4. Microsoft 365 for end user productivity Office apps, including Outlook, Teams, Sharepoint, OneDrive, and more Using Intune, you can deploy Microsoft 365 apps to users and devices in your organization. You can also deploy these apps when users sign in for the first time.

5. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint to help enterprises prevent, detect, investigate, and respond to threats In Intune, you can create a service-to-service connection between Intune and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. When they’re connected, you can create policies that scan files, detect threats, and report threat levels to Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. You can also create compliance policies that set an allowable level of risk. When combined with conditional access, you can block access to organization resources for devices that are noncompliant.

Integrates with third party partner devices and apps

The Endpoint Manager admin center makes it easy to connect to different partner services, including:

1. Managed Google Play: When you connect to your Managed Google Play account, admins can access your organization’s private store for Android apps, and deploy these apps to your devices.

2. Apple tokens and certificates: When they’re added, your iOS/iPadOS and macOS devices can enroll in Intune and receive policies from Intune. Admins can access your volume purchased iOS/iPad and macOS app licenses, and deploy these apps to your devices.

3. TeamViewer: When you connect to your TeamViewer account, you can use TeamViewer to remotely assist devices.

With these services, Intune:

• Gives admins simplified access to third party partner app services.
• Can manage hundreds of third party partner apps.
• Supports public retail store apps, line of business (LOB) apps, private apps not available in the public store, custom apps, and more.

Enroll in device management, application management, or both

Organization-owned devices are enrolled in Intune for mobile device management (MDM). MDM is device centric, so device features are configured based on who needs them. For example, you can configure a device to allow access to Wi-Fi, but only if the signed-in user is an organization account.

In Intune, you create policies that configure features & settings and provide security & protection. The devices are fully managed by your organization, including the user identities that sign in, the apps that are installed, and the data that’s accessed.

When devices enroll, you can deploy your policies during the enrollment process. When enrollment completes, the device is ready to use.

For personal devices in bring-your-own-device (BYOD) scenarios, you can use Intune for mobile application management (MAM). MAM is user centric, so the app data is protected regardless of the device used to access this data. There’s a focus on apps, including securely accessing apps and protecting data within the apps.

Protect data on any device

With Intune, you can protect data on managed devices (enrolled in Intune) and protect data on unmanaged devices (not enrolled in Intune). Intune can isolate organization data from personal data. The idea is to protect your company information by controlling the way users access and share information.

For organization-owned devices, you want full control over the devices, especially security. When devices enroll, they receive your security rules and settings.

On devices enrolled in Intune, you can:

• Create and deploy policies that configure security settings, set password requirements, deploy certificates, and more.
• Use mobile threat defense services to scan devices, detect threats, and remediate threats.
• View data and reports that measure compliance with your security settings and rules.
• Use conditional access to only allow managed and compliant devices access to organization resources, apps, and data.
• Remove organization data if a device is lost or stolen.

Simplify access

Intune helps organizations support employees who can work from anywhere. There are features you can configure that allow users to connect to an organization, wherever they might be.

This section includes some common features that you can configure in Intune.

Use Windows Hello for Business instead of passwords

Windows Hello for Business helps protect against phishing attacks and other security threats. It also helps users sign in to their devices and apps more quickly and easily.

Windows Hello for Business replaces passwords using a PIN or biometrics, such as fingerprint, facial recognition. This biometric information is stored locally on the devices and is never sent to external devices or servers.

If someone time travels from the past to 2020, he would be awestruck with 180-degree evolution in the mobile UX design process. 

They might feel amazed with Voice-based UX or would go overwhelmed with the scope of Artificial Intelligence in the domain. But, there’s one thing that they will find the same. 

Any guesses what is it?

 It’s nothing but the UX design principles. 

Over the years, various functionalities, technologies, and tools have been replaced or at the verge of extinction. But, the basic UX design principles have remained just the same as before.

Now knowing this, if you are someone who is planning to step into the UX domain this year, it is no wonder that getting acquainted with these principles is vital.

So, keeping the same into consideration, we will be covering the same below.

8 Principles To Guide You in Mobile App UX Design

1. Clutter-free Interface

Every application comes with a primary goal. The one where they target a particular pain point of end-users and provide a solution for the same.

But, because of the increasing competition, designers often introduce many other features and functionalities into their plan.

However, at times the app designers introduce multiple functionalities into the same app screen. This confuses the end-users, resulting in more clicks on the secondary (less important feature) compared to the primary one.

To combat this situation, the best way is to make a clutter-free interface. Meaning, introduce a limited number of actionable things in a single screen. A clear view of which you can take from the image shared below.

2. Personalization

We all love things that give us a personalized and special feel. There’s no denying it. The same psychology applies in the case of UX design too.

When you design a user experience that enables users to perform an action in a quick and effortless manner, they fall in love with your application. On the contrary, if it is cumbersome they exit the platform and share negative feedback.

As you can see in the screenshot of the Netflix app above, it informs and encourages users to continue their app interaction right from where they left. Or better say, continue watching the series they left in between.

3. Don’t Rush For Registration

You would encounter many mobile apps that straightaway ask for registration, without giving users a chance to explore the application. Does that leave a good impression of the app in the users mind? 

Personally, I immediately leave such applications. 

Why would any user register in vain before knowing what are the features that the app offers and whether it’s all worth it or not?

This is why it is again imperative for UX designers to follow the principle of keeping the registration process optional.

When you give some time to the new users to explore your mobile app and get familiar with it, they show more interest in your app. This reduces your app uninstallation rate and increases the chances of user conversion.

4. Avoid Nagging Permissions

It’s true that permissions to access user data open a new door to understanding the user and deliver a personalized experience. 

In such a scenario, an ideal way to keep a balance of the two is to ask for relevant permissions only. 

Let’s take another example.

VSCO, a photo-editing app asks for camera access only, whenever users wish to click a picture. It does not ask permission for accessing contacts, or other built-in device apps. This gives users an assurance that the rest of the information is secure.

5. Focus On Users Goals

Since desktop and mobile apps are essentially different, the goals that need to be fulfilled are also distinct. For example, what a user wants to do in a desktop app/website is not something they would want to do in a mobile app. 

So refrain from making it overwhelming for users to use a mobile app with the functionality of a desktop app. They would prefer selective things, i.e., say a user is using a restaurant app- he/she would want to just view the menu, book a reservation, place an order in advance, or just get directions. All the other information is secondary and can be displayed elsewhere, not on the main screen.

6. Design for Fingers

Gone are those days when mouse pointers were the one interacting with applications. Today, with the advent of touch-screen devices, users are interacting with the platforms via their fingers.

In a situation like this, it is again imperative to understand that the human finger size varies from person to person. So, designing for different human finger size is the right practice to bring more opportunities for interactions and increasing the app conversion rate.

Likewise, investing in hand gestures while creating an app UX design is also an optimal method of getting higher results.

7. Only Relevant Notifications

As a proverb goes, “Too much of anything is bad”, misuse of push notifications can drift your future from higher conversion rate to higher uninstallation rate. 

So, the next principle that every novice and experienced UX designer needs to watch out for is to discover how many push notifications are enough. And this way, prevent frustrating the users while getting their motive fulfilled.

8. Effective Offboarding

Since you have put so much effort into UX design for the whole process, it is equally important for you to end it on a positive note. 

That implies, adding UX elements that impart a positive vibe to the users even when they have performed the requisite action or are deactivating/deleting their account. This will improve the chances of them revisiting your app in the future as well.

Interactive design vs. User experience design

Interactive design focuses on the moments of your user’s direct and active engagement – one that involves tapping, clicking, dragging, typing, etc. – with your website. Meanwhile, user experience (UX) design has a wider perspective and considers even moments of passive use – like reading a text on your website’s page – to be interaction.

As such, interactive website design is a part of UX website design that aims at incentivizing and facilitating the moments of a user’s active engagement. Some UX professionals prefer to zero in on this aspect of UX design and hone to perfection the skills of implementing interaction patterns. At Webzworld, we always put such focused specialists on highly interactive web design projects to ensure the quality of interactive design.

Interactive design elements

Interactive design processes break every moment of interaction into 5 elements. Most of these elements apply to all types of interactions, but some can be optional at times. The user experience specialist’s job is to define what elements are necessary for each interaction instance to make it feel natural and seamless.

Here’s the list of all 5 elements:

• Text – A text or a symbol that indicates the possibility of interaction and focuses on its expected results – not the action itself. Think a line ‘Play’ or a triangle symbol that signifies the same intention.
• Visual Form – Some interactive elements, like buttons or fields for text input, should have distinctly visible margins to specify the interactive zone. You certainly don’t want your potential buyer to take pains in finding the input zone when they’re filling in a shipping address for their purchase, for instance.
• Medium/Platform – With interactions requiring different actions on different devices, an interactive design expert should ensure that the choice of interaction-inducing actions is predictable on all platforms.
• Time – Certain interactions require time for processing input data and your website should always keep users informed about the state of this data processing. Otherwise, users may consider the website unresponsive and leave without waiting for the result.
• Feedback – To give a user the feeling of accomplishment, your website should present a clear result of any interaction. For instance, show the ‘Success!’ notice after a user shares an article from your website to social networks.

The roles of each of these elements seem to be evident and choosing the necessary ones to assemble a smooth interaction flow appears to be a trivial task. Still, I’m sure that just like me, you’ve encountered plenty of web designs with broken interaction flows that puzzled you at one point or another or confused you enough to make you leave.

Merits of quality interactive design

Just like the negative consequences of bad interactive website design can be grave, the positive effects of quality interactive design can be impressive. Let’s look at just a few of them.

Lower support costs and increased support quality

If users don’t experience any troubles when interacting with your website, they have fewer reasons to turn to your support, which leads to minimized support costs. Thus, by ensuring that every interaction instance on your website is properly designed, you shield your support specialists from such trivial issues, and they can focus on complex and unprecedented cases, thus enhancing support quality.

Decreased bounce rate

More often than turn to support, visitors who experience a confusing interaction simply bounce and never return. Professionally designed and tested interactive design minimizes the chances of users’ frustrations with your website and prevents a high bounce rate.

Higher revenue

Whether your website’s revenue comes from clicks or purchases, it is tightly tied to the processes of interaction. By allowing users to gain a satisfying experience from engaging with your website, you motivate them to engage more often, thus bringing you more revenue.

Increased competitiveness and loyalty

There’s a caveat to what I said at the very start about good interactive design being natural enough to not attract any attention to itself at all. If you draw your users’ attention to interactive elements by adding some feel of freshness and creativity to them.

Benefit from the comfort of your users

A user interacting with your website is a client communicating with your business. Just as you wouldn’t want your business communication to appear confusing and unproductive, you shouldn’t let these qualities define the interactive design of your website. Whether you need to prevent interactive design issues in your future website or want to fix them in the existing one, don’t hesitate to turn to Webzworld’s team for assistance.

The majority of IT companies already favor cloud apps more than on-premises ones, while non-IT organizations start to share that feeling as well. And ScienceSoft’s software development experience proves this trend: more than 80% of our software development projects use cloud technologies.

In this article, I’d like to share the insights on options you have while developing and deploying cloud applications and what benefits you can achieve using cloud solutions in your business.

Public, Private or Hybrid — That’s the deployment question

Public cloud

With the public cloud, a cloud service provider (such as AWS, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud Platform among the most popular ones) offers resources, such as storage, monitoring capabilities, and networking capacities, or virtual machines, to multiple customers on a subscription basis or a pay-per-usage model.

Sometimes, public clouds are associated with insecurity and inflexibility due to their multi-tenant nature. However, the right tenant isolation makes public clouds flexible and secure, even for the most valuable information.

Private cloud

The main idea of a private cloud is that it is used exclusively by one company.

One of the benefits of using a private cloud is a high security level, which is ensured by employing a secure firewall system and hosting the cloud within an isolated network.

However, if you’re a small or mid-sized business and don’t have a huge budget, creating a private cloud for deploying your solutions may be too expensive for you. The costs are definitely higher than deploying in a public cloud, as all management, maintenance, and updating of data centers, hardware and software lie on your in-house team.

Hybrid cloud

Hybrid cloud offers a mix of public cloud and private cloud services. Hybrid cloud deployments allow those services that do not need to be on-premises (e.g., due to data security requirements) to be deployed in the cloud with all its advantages. Compared to the public cloud, this cloud type gives you more agility as you don’t fully depend on third-party providers. Hybrid cloud provides you with a unique approach to data security as you can both store your data in a private isolated environment and use the public cloud for data backup and recovery measures.

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IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, FaaS: What are they for?

IaaS

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provides companies with an infrastructure to develop their applications in the cloud. This type of cloud computing services offers you such resources as virtual machines, storage, and network services.

With IaaS, companies avoid huge capital expenditures as they pay only for the resources they use. Another strong advantage is that you can get any resources needed in just a few clicks by purchasing a required infrastructure element. Thus, by choosing IaaS, you can launch your cloud app fast.

PaaS

By choosing Platform as a Service (PaaS), besides cloud storage and other resources, like operating systems, you get ready-to-use tools for developing, configuring, customizing, testing, and managing your applications. Such tools can be, for instance, database, application integration, or AI services.

The PaaS model is popular with companies as it cuts the coding time, reduces time to market, and the overall software development expenses.

Serverless

The serverless model allows for quick development and easy scaling as, naturally, there is no reliance on virtual machines since the cloud executes application code without the need to install anything.

Serverless deployment is financially efficient as a cloud provider charges for the exact compute resources needed to execute your code, not for the number of the virtual machines. Maintenance costs are also pretty low.

SaaS

In the SaaS (Software as a Service) model, software is used on a subscription basis and centrally hosted in the public cloud. The companies don’t need to build anything from scratch but can find a pre-built solution that can be configured and customized to meet their needs fully.

SaaS solutions cover a wide variety of business needs, such as marketing, accounting, sales, HR, and etc. Popular examples of SaaS products are Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Online, and Office 365.

Why do companies choose cloud computing solutions?

Scalability

One of the great options for companies going for cloud app development is autoscaling. It means that the number of cloud virtual machines automatically changes depending on the load. However, you need to be careful not to pay for the resources you never used or for using more than you actually needed.

ScienceSoft’s experience proves that autoscaling works great for businesses. Our team has developed a billing-as-a-service (BaaS) solution for international payment processing. They created a highly scalable solution that automatically scales from using 2 to 50 app servers depending on the load. This helped to make the inherently scalable, sustainable, and auditable billing system.

Cost-effectiveness

Cloud computing makes app development faster due to the use of cloud services instead of writing custom code, thus allowing fewer human and financial resources to be used. Moving to the cloud helps manage the applications more efficiently and reducing maintenance costs. There is no need to maintain hardware or buy additional equipment when the business starts to grow.

Access to advanced technologies

Besides continuously working on introducing new services to their offering, cloud service providers already deliver a wide range of services based on cutting-edge technologies such as AR/VR, blockchain, machine learning, and IoT. For example, Azure offers Machine Learning Studio (predictive analytics technology), while AWS provides Amazon SageMaker tool for quick machine learning model deployment.

Choose cloud computing for your project

Cloud computing solutions can become highly beneficial for your business. However, you shouldn’t underestimate the knowledge and competences needed to deliver and implement such a solution. Your team needs to be proficient in DevOps, know how to work with AWS, Azure or Google Cloud Platform, and establish ample cybersecurity measures.

The above content is taken from:

Asset management: the essence

Asset management is a process of tracking, organizing, and maintaining a company’s assets. It covers numerous types of assets, both tangible and intangible, depending on business type and scope. Asset management can be roughly categorize as follows:

IT asset management (ITAM) involves hardware (e.g., company-owned devices) and software, including subscriptions, licenses, patents, and network infrastructure components.

Enterprise asset management (EAM) covers physical assets throughout their lifecycle.

Financial asset management deals with investments, securities, loans, and more.

Infrastructure asset management is use by public organizations and large companies. It is focus on maintaining, updating, and removing physical infrastructure assets like roads, bridges, and utilities.

A common goal of asset management is to optimize the utilization of assets throughout their lifecycle, increase productivity, and reduce operational costs. Asset management software helps businesses achieve that via collecting asset data, tracking asset lifecycle, and providing automated reports for company management to analyze.

Why to use asset management software?

Improve accuracy of asset documentation as compared to manual document management, since human errors like typos or accidental omissions are minimize.

Better asset accounting. Asset management software help be aware of what assets are available and where, who should work on them and when. For example, the software helps identify ghost assets as well as avoid asset theft and loss.

Time and cost saving. Automated asset management workflows allow asset management teams to do more in less time.

Enhanced asset utilization. Asset management software ensures better visibility and control over assets. It provides means to analyze asset utilization patterns as well as plan asset availability and maintenance, thus helping improve asset utilization strategies.

Improved maintenance management. The preventive maintenance feature of an asset management solution help achieve stable and continuous operation of assets.

Better compliance. Keeping in mind all license entitlements and requirements of relevant laws and regulations can be challenging. An asset management system helps minimize legal risks and reduce non-compliance costs.

Popular asset management software

AssetExplorer

ManageEngine AssetExplorer is a web-based ITAM tool aim at managing IT assets and offering features for physical asset management. Its features include:

Comprehensive inventory management throughout the asset lifecycle from procurement to disposal for all hardware and software inventory.

Software license management to support compliance, identify unnecessary or underutilized licenses, detect unauthorized software installations, and more.

Contract and purchase order management to monitor contract expiry dates and get contract- or PO-related analytics by parameters like spending patterns, contractor/supplier performance, and more.

Asset reporting to generate pre-built reports or create custom reports on the key asset data in multiple formats. Reports can be schedule and automatically email to selecte recipients.

Configuration Management Database (CMDB) to track all configuration items and their details in one repository and categorize them.

Mobile app to track and manage hardware and software assets in any location.

The starting price is $995 per year for 250 IT assets.

Asset Panda

Asset Panda is a cloud-based asset management and tracking platform that offers a range of features like barcode scanning, unlimited users, and custom reporting. Its features include:

Asset tracking, including asset assignment to users or workplaces, contract management, compliance and maintenance tracking, ticketing management, and more.

Barcode management to design and print custom barcodes and QR codes to optimize asset management.

Mobile app with built-in barcode scanning, GPS pindrop, and access to reports to manage assets on the go.

Pricing depends on the number of assets and is available upon request to AssetPanda.

GoCodes

GoCodes is web-base asset and inventory tracking software for companies that need to manage physical assets. Its features include:

Patented QR code tags with unique IDs show asset details like type, serial number, and assignment help eliminate duplicates, and prove ownership.

Automatic GPS tracking with a mapping feature enables managers to see and update asset location every time a barcode is scan.

Automated field service requests help review service records, schedule future repairs, and set service reminders.

Depreciation calculation and reporting for fixed assets based on common calculation scenarios.

Auditing financial performance and operation of assets using a fixed assets register with a possibility to review a complete audit history.

GoCodes offers five pricing plans on a monthly and annual basis, each including different number of assets, users, etc.

Make the most of your assets with asset management software

Asset management is a complicated and intensive process that plays a key role in the operation of every business dealing with assets. If you are looking for a partner who can develop a custom asset management solution to meet your company’s needs, or help you choose and customize an off-the-shelf product, just let us know.

The above content is taken from:

When mobile-mageddon arrived last April, lots of businesses realized that building a mobile website wasn’t just a thing they’d have to tackle eventually, but an absolute must-have right now if they hoped to stay relevant and compete. That Google decided that mobile friendliness is going to influence search rankings is just icing on the mobile website cake.

But even though mobile search has overtaken its desktop cousin, the way people search on mobile and the way they interact with mobile websites once they’ve landed on them is different than the way they behave on desktop. And too few mobile website designers are paying attention.

You can make of that what you will, but here are some hypotheses:

➤Mobile users have a pretty clear idea of what they are looking for when they search—they are on a mission for specific information.

➤If they don’t find what they’re looking for right away on a site, they will look somewhere else. 

➤They don’t have the patience to dig deep through a complicated navigation architecture; they expect to find what they’re looking for with just a few clicks. 

So…what does that mean for your mobile website design? Quite a lot, actually. Too many designers approach their mobile website as just a scaled down version of their main site, which misses the point, in my opinion. Your mobile website should be an opportunity to really leverage the unique qualities of mobile devices and engage the unique behaviors of mobile users.

Your mobile website should do more than just replicate the information on your desktop, it should deliver the information a mobile customer is looking for in a way that’s optimized for a mobile device. And that means a mobile-first mentality and design principles.

1. Prioritize Performance.

Slow load speed is the biggest frustration factor for mobile web users and one of the main reasons a customer will bounce away from a site; in fact, over three-fourths of consumers will click away from a site that loads slowly or won’t display properly on their mobile device. So you need to worry about performance first or your customers won’t stay on your site long enough to see all your other fancy mobile-first elements. Here are some things to keep in mind while you’re planning your mobile pages.

Keep pages to 1 MB or smaller for fastest load times. 

Think carefully about the images you need, and crop, resize, and compress them for faster loading. 

”Minify” your code, especially JavaScript; JS requests increase complexity and slow page rendering.

If you want to know how your mobile site is performing, use this Google PageSpeed analyzer for concrete steps you can take if your site is loading to slowly on mobile devices.

2. Rethink Your Homepage Content.

For most small businesses, what mobile website visitors want to accomplish is probably different from what visitors to their main website want to do. All those flashy branding elements and images on your main site homepage aren’t going to interest your mobile visitors. Therefore, the information you put on your homepage should be directed at the needs of your mobile users, most likely some combination of the following:

contact info, with click to call or click to text 

location/directions/hours of operation

search bar/product search

place an order/order status/order tracking

make a reservation/appointment/service request

customer login/account access

option to view main website

mobile app download

social media buttons

3. Simplify Menus and Navigation.

The “hamburger” menu is universally recognized and a very mobile-friendly solution to navigation and it also respects the generally accepted idea that mobile navigation should take, at most, three taps to arrive at the desired page. Ideally, you should have just one sub menu under each menu category for ease of use. Be sure to put your most important pages first.

The key consideration in both cases is making your navigation and menu options easy for fingers of any size to tap and touch. Too many options packed in too tightly makes fingertip navigation virtually impossible. Which brings us, logically.

4. Design for Touch.

This is actually more nuanced than doing the obvious: Making sure buttons are large enough and spaced far enough apart that anyone, even someone with fat fingers, can navigate with ease. The average finger needs at least 44 pixels in both dimensions for a good touch experience; anything smaller and user experience suffers.

But beyond that, you need to design your mobile website around the common gestures and motions mobile   device users naturally use and using those gestures as much as possible to let users accomplish their objectives on your site. What does that look like?

Letting users tap a button or icon to call you, text you, email you, add an event to their calendar, use GPS to get directions, download a podcast integrating the mobile device’s native functions and apps.

5. Reform Your Forms.

For the most part, mobile users really, really hate to type on their devices, so expecting them to enter a lot of information on your website is a real turn-off that is likely to cause a lot of visitors to head for the exits. So what can you do?

➤Only collect the minimum amount of information you need for a particular transaction. For example, if someone is signing up for your newsletter, you really only need a name and an email address (and don’t forget to use the email keyboard!).

➤If you have an e-commerce site, don’t force customers to register for an account to check out, give them the option of checking out as a guest.

➤For longer, multi-page forms/transactions, give users a status bar to gauge their progress.

➤Use best practices when designing forms for your mobile website. Users have an easier time completing forms with labels above the input boxes like the one on the left.

6. Make It Easy for Them to Find the Products They Want.

Most mobile consumers have something specific in mind when they visit your site; mobile shoppers aren’t really browsers, as this chart showing Amazon’s visitors demonstrates.

A mobile visitor spends just four minutes and checks out about eight pages on average, which means he is spending about half a minute per page. That is a shopper on a mission; the desktop visitor spends twice as long on site per page.

For the mobile website designer, then, the challenge is making sure the menus and navigation makes it easy to find a specific product or narrow down the choices to meet a shopper’s particular needs that day. A mobile device user is most likely not going to spend a lot of time scrolling endlessly through products, so you have to be creative in providing menu options to help him find what he wants quickly.

Take a look at this menu from Paperchase, a UK stationery store. The menu options on the left are neatly organized with helpful submenus that will take the user to a very specific product category to help her find what she wants without a lot of searching.

7. Don’t Neglect Your Fonts and Colors.

One of the worst things you can do is design your mobile website with text too small to be easily read; your users shouldn’t have to zoom to read a single word on your site, especially your navigation text. This leads to a terrible user experience, which is something search engines pay attention to in determining page rank.

For some brands, font choice is a major part of their overall branding, so the decision to switch fonts for the mobile site needs to be made judiciously. If you market to a mainly millennial demographic, you don’t have the same font size issues as, say, a brand that markets to baby boomers.

For easier navigation, choose fonts that are taller and naturally structured to leave a bit of space between letters. Most device manufacturers recommend Arial, Helvetica, Courier, Georgia, Times New Roman, and Trebuchet MS. Pick font colors that stand out from your background colors for easy reading.

And don’t forget the effect fonts have on load times, which is extremely important for mobile websites. When you are choosing a typeface, check it for speed. And only use a limited number of typefaces to keep page loads fast.

Security testing is sometimes thought of as being hard to automate or a testing process that lacks tools and resources to help make it easier to learn.  

I find most testers are not even aware of the amount of free, open-source security testing tools available to them. 

This is a shame because I believe the next wave of DevOps is adding security tests to our pipelines. There’s even a name for this next wave: DevSecOps.  

I thought I’d create a quick resource to point you to some security tools that you can start trying out. 

Below are some of the best ones I’ve found or have heard about.

INDEX
DevSlop
Exercise in a Box
Mobile Security Framework
Needle
Frida
Tamper
Nishang
Faraday
InSpec
Pocsuite
OWTF
Astra
Pacu
Taipan
Archery
Retire.JS
mitmproxy
Metasploit Framework
Selenium
ZAP
Secure Guild

DevSlop

You’re probably aware that modern applications often use APIs, microservices, and containerization to deliver faster and better products and services.

This changing landscape means security folks need to step up their game. DevSlop (“Sloppy DevOps”) is an exploration of this area via several different modules consisting of pipelines, vulnerable apps, and The DevSlop Show.

If you’re looking to start learning more about adding security to your DevOps pipeline, this is a good resource to start with.

Exercise in a Box

Exercise in a Box is a free online tool from the National Cyber Security Centre in the UK. It helps organizations find out how resilient they are to cyber-attacks and practice their response in a safe environment. 

The service provides exercises based on the main cyber threats that your organization can do in its own time, in a safe environment, as many times as you wish. It includes everything you need for setting up, planning, delivery, and post-exercise activity, all in one place. 

Top Free Security Testing Tools

SECURITY TESTING Published on: 05/14/2019

Security testing is sometimes thought of as being hard to automate or a testing process that lacks tools and resources to help make it easier to learn.  

I find most testers are not even aware of the amount of free, open-source security testing tools available to them. 

This is a shame because I believe the next wave of DevOps is adding security tests to our pipelines. There’s even a name for this next wave: DevSecOps.  

I thought I’d create a quick resource to point you to some security tools that you can start trying out. 

Below are some of the best ones I’ve found or have heard about.

INDEX
DevSlop
Exercise in a Box
Mobile Security Framework
Needle
Frida
Tamper
Nishang
Faraday
InSpec
Pocsuite
OWTF
Astra
Pacu
Taipan
Archery
Retire.JS
mitmproxy
Metasploit Framework
Selenium
ZAP
Secure Guild

DevSlop

I recently interviewed Tanya Janaca, who told me about her project, DevSlop. 

You’re probably aware that modern applications often use APIs, microservices, and containerization to deliver faster and better products and services.

This changing landscape means security folks need to step up their game. DevSlop (“Sloppy DevOps”) is an exploration of this area via several different modules consisting of pipelines, vulnerable apps, and The DevSlop Show.

If you’re looking to start learning more about adding security to your DevOps pipeline, this is a good resource to start with.

Exercise in a Box

Exercise in a Box is a free online tool from the National Cyber Security Centre in the UK. It helps organizations find out how resilient they are to cyber-attacks and practice their response in a safe environment. 

The service provides exercises based on the main cyber threats that your organization can do in its own time, in a safe environment, as many times as you wish. It includes everything you need for setting up, planning, delivery, and post-exercise activity, all in one place. 

To use it, you’ll need to register here first.

Mobile Security Framework  

Mobile Security Framework (MobSF) describes itself as an automated, all-in-one mobile application (Android/iOS/Windows) pen-testing framework capable of performing static analysis, dynamic analysis, malware analysis, and web API testing. https://opensecurity.in 

It can be used for effective and fast security analysis of Android, iOS, and Windows mobile applications and supports both binaries (APK, IPA & APPX) and zipped source code. It can also perform dynamic application testing at runtime for Android apps and has Web API fuzzing capabilities powered by CapFuzz, a Web API–specific security scanner.

Needle 

Needle is the MWR’s iOS Security Testing Framework, released at Black Hat USA in August 2016. It is an open-source, modular framework, and its goal is to streamline the entire process of conducting security assessments of iOS applications. It also acts as a central point for you to perform all these security activities. 

Needle was designed to be useful not only for security professionals but also for developers looking to secure their code.

Some examples of testing Needle can help you with are: 

• Data storage
• Inter-process communication
• Network communications
• Static code analysis
• Hooking
• Binary protections.

Needle’s only requirement to run effectively is that you use a jailbroken device.

Frida

Frida is a dynamic instrumentation toolkit for developers, reverse engineers, and security researchers. I first heard about it from Jahmel Harris, an ethical hacker, security testing expert, and founder of Digital Interruption, who highly recommended it.  

Frida is a framework or toolkit for instrumentation, also known as application hooking.  

On the Frida website, it says to inject your scripts into a black–box process. Hook any function, spy, crypto API, or trace private application code.

No source code is needed.

Tamper

Tamper Chrome is an extension that allows you to modify HTTP requests on the fly and aid in Web security testing. Chrome works across all operating systems (including Chrome OS).

 Tamper Chrome also allows you to monitor requests sent by your browser as well as the responses.

You can also modify requests as they go out and, to a limited extent, change the responses (headers, CSS, JavaScript, or XMLHttpRequest responseText).

Nishang

Is PowerShell your go-to security scripting language?

If so, you should check out the Nishang framework.

It’s a collection of scripts and payloads that enables the usage of PowerShell for offensive security, penetration testing, and red teaming.

Nishang is useful during all phases of penetration testing.

Faraday

If you’ve done any type of development in the past, you know how helpful a well-designed IDE can be to your productivity. 

But what about security testing development?

Faraday calls itself an IPE (Integrated Penetration-Test Environment), which is essentially another way of saying a multi-user Penetration Test IDE.

It was designed for distributing, indexing, and analyzing the data generated during a security audit.

Faraday was developed to allow you to take advantage of the available tools in the community in a multi-user way. 

They designed it with a focus on simplicity, so users should notice no difference between their terminal application and the one included in Faraday.

Developed with a specialized set of functionalities to help users improve their workflow.  

InSpec

At a high level,InSpec is an auditing and software testing framework.  

It’s basically an open-source testing framework for infrastructure with a human- and machine-readable language for specifying compliance, security, and policy requirements.

Pocsuite

Pocsuite is an open-source, remote vulnerability testing and proof-of-concept development framework.

It comes with a powerful proof-of-concept engine and many niche features for the ultimate penetration testers and security researchers.

OWTF

Offensive Web Testing Framework (OWTF) is a framework that tries to unite great tools and make pen testing more efficient. 

Astra

Need to security test some APIs?

Astra was made for automated security testing of REST APIs.  

Their GitHub page mentions that security engineers or developers can use Astra as an integral part of their process so they can detect and patch vulnerabilities early during the development cycle. Astra can automatically detect and test login and logout (Authentication API), so it’s easy for anyone to integrate this into a CICD pipeline. Astra can take API collection as an input, making it able to test APIs in standalone mode. 

Examples of the types of security tests you can perform with Astra are:

• SQL injection
• Cross-site scripting
• Information leakage
• Broken authentication and session management
• CSRF (including Blind CSRF)
• Rate limit
• CORS misconfiguration (including CORS bypass techniques)
• JWT attack
• CRLF detection
• Blind XXE injection 

Pacu 

Speaking of API security testing, are you worried about your Cloud-based application AWS APIs getting hacked?

Pacu is an AWS exploitation framework, designed for testing the security of Amazon Web services.

Taipan

Taipan is an automated web application vulnerability scanner that allows identifying web vulnerabilities in an automatic fashion. This project is the core engine of a broader project which includes other components, like a web dashboard where you can manage your vulnerability scans, download a PDF report, and a scanner agent to run on a specific host.

Archery

Archery is an open–source vulnerability assessment and management tool which helps developers and pentesters to perform scans and manage vulnerabilities.

It uses popular open-source tools to perform a comprehensive scanning tool for web applications and networks. It also performs web application dynamic authenticated scanning and covers the whole application using selenium. The developers can also utilize the tool for the implementation of their DevOps CI/CD environment.

Retire.JS

Have a bunch of javascript that you would like to scan for different types of vulnerabilities?

Try Retire.JS, which can scan your code for the use of JavaScript libraries with known vulnerabilities

mitmproxy

Need a way an intercepting proxy for your security testing and be able to run it from the command line?

Check out mitmproxy, which is one of the highest–rated (14,997 stars) on GitHub. Their GitHub page describes it as An interactive TLS-capable intercepting HTTP proxy for penetration testers and software developers.

Metasploit Framework

Metasploit Framework is one of the more popular penetration testing tools out there. It was designed specifically for penetration testing—like how to attack MS SQL, browser-based and file exploits, and social engineering attacks. This is one of the main tools used by hard-core security professionals.

Metasploit contains a suite of tools that can help you do things like performing attacks and testing security vulnerabilities. It contains a number of different modules that can test your application against common vulnerabilities that many hackers exploit. You can also use it to develop your own exploits. In Metasploit, a module is a software component that performs a chosen attack on a specified target.

Selenium 

Umm… what is Selenium—a functional automation testing library—doing on this list?  

Well, believe it or not, there are many ways to leverage existing functional automated tests, including security testing.

For example, in his Secure Guild session on integrated security testing, Morgan Roman will demonstrate how he leverages his existing Selenium tests to check his applications for cross-site vulnerabilities.

This works mainly by taking existing Selenium tests (or any other kind of test) and then adding a simple security payload to it, and finally injecting some extra detection into it. 

This may seem complex at first, but he’ll show us just how simple it is. Register for Secure Guild and check out his session now

ZAP

 Speaking of Selenium, another popular way of expanding its capabilities is to use it with the OWASP Zed Attack Proxy (ZAP). 

ZAP can help you automatically find security vulnerabilities in your Web applications while you’re developing and testing your applications. It’s also a great tool for experienced Pen testers to use for manual security testing. 

Many testers have leveraged ZAP within their Selenium tests to help with their security testing efforts. 

Secure Guild 

As you can see, there are many tool options available to testers who are looking to get more familiar with Security Testing.

Also, if you are just beginning your security testing career, another resource you should check out is Secure Guild, an online conference 100% dedicated to security testing. Learn more here.

Mobile App Design Process, the thought of creating a mobile app from scratch sounds like an uphill task full of corny, complex coding activities.

But it doesn’t have to be that way! Before developing a new mobile app, you need to design it first. It’s critical to plan every step, and at some point, you might want to retreat and examine what you’re building.

If you’re in a customer-first business (every business is), then you need a mobile app. It’s no longer an option, but a necessity.

Global app downloads surpassed 218 billion last year. Businesses that made the mistake of not creating a mobile app will continue to suffer in the coming years too.

Having a mobile strategy is essential because this research shows that users spend 90% of their time in apps as compared to surfing the internet.

It’s great to have a mobile responsive website backed by a solid mobile marketing strategy with major resources being allocated to cross-device reach. In today’s competitive era, not having a mobile app has severe implications.

A mobile app helps businesses reach more customers, improve marketing strategies, provide value to the customers, increase brand awareness, increase customer engagement and loyalty, and create one or more competitive advantage(s). Plus, mobile apps can improve your bottom line.

When the average user spends more time looking at a mobile phone than watching television or using a desktop or laptop, what excuse does your business have for not having a mobile app?

The question remains, where and how to start?

There are two phases of any mobile app design.

1. Mobile app design strategy
2. App design process

Mobile App Design Strategy

It starts with a strategy. It defines the future and the path to reach your destination.

The issue, however, is with creating a mobile app design strategy. You simply can’t create an app just because your competitor has one. Your competitor might have a different business objective and mobile strategy which are quite different from yours.

Developing a mobile strategy links back to the company strategy and has four stages:

i).   Understand the business strategy

ii).  Business mobile app strategy

iii). App strategy

iv). Product management strategy

1. Understand Your Business Strategy

Understanding the overall business strategy should form the basis of your mobile app design. Misalignment between company strategy and the mobile strategy might be suicidal.

Recent statistics from the Harvard Business Review show that 70% of employees don’t have enough information about their company’s strategy or their perception of strategy is much different than the actual strategy.

There are several benefits of creating and executing a mobile strategy that’s derived from (and supports) the overall company strategy.

• It maximizes ROI by as much as 74%.
• Reduces training needs.
• It leads to customer satisfaction.
• Decreases integration requirements and bugs.
• Improvement in quality, value, productivity, employee efficiency, and customer engagement.

2. Business Mobile App Strategy

Your mobile app strategy is your surefire path to achieving success with your mobile app design and marketing in general.

Yes, the success or failure of the app depends on the strategy since everything will be linked to the strategy. It will be easy to create if you have answers to these two questions:

1. What is the purpose of the app?
2. What is the benefit that the end-user will drive from using the app?

The simplest way to chart your app strategy is none other than:

“We will build this so that our customers can do that.”

The strategy has to be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely. Anything that’s too vague or looks seemingly unachievable, strike it out. For example, having more downloads than WhatsApp isn’t a practically achievable goal.

Other Requirements

If you think a functional app idea, a roadmap, and budget allocation are all that you need for the strategy, think again.

There are several other non-functional requirements that will be needed. They include:

• Access points
• Network availability
• Maintenance costs
• Architectural support
• Payment processing
• Security Solutions
• Access to tools
• CDN
• SLAs

3. Defining The App Strategy

Now is the time to define clear use cases on the basis of the customer journey. This calls for a clear definition of the single app strategy.

A use case is at the center of defining app strategy. It’s defined as the list of actions that define the interaction between a role and the system. The image below represents a simple use case that defines the actions of the buyer and the seller – the roles.

“The number one secret is to focus on one or two main use cases. Let’s not overwhelm the user, but really focus on one or two use cases and do them really, really well.”

The best app strategy is one that uses not more than two use cases. Think of Instagram, people use it when they have to share a photo. This is a perfect example of a single-use case.

4. Define Your Product Management Implementation Strategy

Once the mobile app strategy is defined and documented, it’s time to implement it.

The test strategy should be defined before the coders get to work. Here’s what to include in the test strategy:

• What is the scope of the app?
• What is not in the scope?
• The features
• Individual cases
• Outcome
• App versions and integration

Know The Required Tools

What tools do you need for development, testing, and for maintenance? Though, it mostly depends on the budget allocation.

List all the tools required at every stage of the development and post-development.

Some of the tools that you may need include:

• JIRA or TicketsNow for documenting and tracking time.
• Google Analytics, Site Catalyst, or Omniture for analytics and performance.
• Splunk, FogLight, or AppDynamics for app performance.
• PractiTest, Test Collab, TestRail, or qTest for QA testing.

Basic App Design Process

Benji Hyam, the co-founder of Social Proof Interactive, stated that before you approach an app designer, you must have the following things ready:

• Understanding your target market and the end-user
• List of things that a user might want to accomplish with the app
• Initial wireframes
• Budget

This is, more or less, what we have covered in the previous section. Having a mobile app strategy will make app designing super easy.

Mobile app design strategy is an in-house process while app design process can be outsourced or done in-house.

The basic app design process consists of the following steps:

1. Setting the scope
2. User/market research
3. UX wireframe
4. Prototype
5. UI design
6. Animation
7. Software architecture
8. iOS development
9. Testing
10. Release

Let’s roll.

1. Setting The Scope

The scope refers to what needs to be done, what you want to achieve from the app, and how large/small it has to be. The scope may include all of the following:

• The nature of the app
• Target audience
• Most crucial functions and features of the app
• App’s visual design features
• Potential technologies to be used
• Consistency with the business strategy
• Specific preferences

Did you notice that consistency with the business strategy is just one part of this process?

In order to document the scope of the app, it’s crucial to identify all of the following:

• Objectives and goals of the app
• Phases and subphases
• Tasks and resources
• Budget
• Schedule

Based on the scope, the design and flow of the app will be prepared.

2. User & Market Research

This is the phase where the UX and UI designers will get to work based on the scope of the app and on the app strategy. It involves market research and user research.

How is it Done?

Start by conducting in-depth market research and analyzing the existing apps in your industry. If you’re going to create an image-sharing app, you’ll have to look at the existing image-sharing apps, their color schemes, patterns, flow, etc.

The user research will reveal colors and themes that will help you develop an emotional connection with the target audience.

What type of colors and styles will the end-users prefer? You can use different methods to collect data from potential users such as surveys, focus groups, design workshops, etc.

3. UX Wireframe

The visual representation of the user interface is known as the UX wireframe. You have to create a structure of the user interface, transitions, and interactions. It must be based on market research, user research, competition, and strategy.

You can use wireframing software or you can create a simple outline on paper. Lay down the user flow as you want it to appear on the actual app.

The purpose of UX wireframing is to define the flow of the app such as the number of windows, buttons, where each button leads the user, the registration process, the login screen, and everything related to the front-end of your app.

4. Create A Prototype

Prototype lets you see and feel the app. It must be created as early as possible. Once you have the UX wireframe, creating a low-fidelity prototype is easy.

The low-fidelity prototype is a sketchy prototype that can be created right away as the wireframe is ready. There is no need to waste money on expensive prototypes.

Not only does a high-fidelity prototype consume resources but it takes time.

A simple physical prototype will show you how the app looks. The purpose of a prototype, by any means, is not to test or improve the functionality.

A lot of experts recommend using low-fidelity prototypes to save cost and time. Instead of wasting money creating expensive prototypes, spend money on app functions, features, and on coding.

5. UI Design

Do not confuse UX wireframe and prototyping with the user interface (UI) design.

The UX research, wireframing, and prototyping are about how the app works while the UI design is about how the app looks.

Once the UX has been tested, tweaked, and several prototypes have been tested and finalized, you have to move to the UI designing phase.

At this stage, you have to deal with the visual representation of the concepts, color schemes, fonts, shapes, buttons, font size, images, forms, illustrations, animation, etc.

You have to test multiple designs to see what works best for your users. The color schemes, skins, themes, and all the visual elements have to be tweaked several times to find what works.

It’s somewhat similar to A/B testing with the difference being that in the case of UI design, you have to make the judgments yourself. You cannot bring customers on board at this stage.

6. Interface Animation

The animation should be applied and tested with the UI design phase, so as to test different styles of animation in real-time.

Animation refers to the user interface animation such as how a new screen will pop out and how gestures are defined, and so on.

Interface animation has the power of grabbing user attention, as pointed out in Google’s material design principles:

“Motion design can effectively guide the user’s attention in ways that both inform and delight. Use motion to smoothly transport users between navigational contexts, explain changes in the arrangement of elements on a screen, and reinforce element hierarchy.”

The animation should be functional instead of a simple design element.

Anatoly Nesterov has shared seven types of animations for mobile apps. You can choose from the following list.

1. Visual feedback
2. Function change
3. Element hierarchy
4. Orientation in space
5. Condition of the system
6. Visual prompts
7. Fun animations

7. Software Architecture Planning

This is perhaps the most crucial part of the entire design process. The core purpose of software architecture planning is to scale the app, and make it better in terms of functionality and design.

It takes place as a parallel stage of designing.

It involves the entire team including the designers, programmers, and managers. The idea is to improve the frontend and the backend processes by constructively tweaking the software architecture.

It calls for regular constructive discussion on platforms, frameworks, abstract layers, design platforms, technology, components, etc.

Some of the best practices include:

• Build to change.
• Understand the end user needs before designing and redesigning.
• Do not hesitate to invest in architecture.
• Identify key interfaces, layers, and subsystems.
• Use an iterative approach to designing.

8. App Development

This is the phase where coding begins and the developers start creating the app.

This is something that developers have to do, so make sure you deal with the best coders. The app can be developed for android or iOS depending on your choice.

Instead of creating the app for multiple platforms simultaneously, the better approach is to create the app for one platform first.

Why?

Because developing an app for a single platform from an expert will cost you tens of thousands of dollars. If it turns out to be a poorly coded app, you will find yourself in the middle of nowhere.

Better yet, choose android app development first, since it’s cost-effective as compared to iOS.

9. Testing

When the average failure rate for app testing for android is 16.4%, you can’t afford to launch your newly created app without testing.

The purpose of testing the app is to ensure there aren’t any bugs and the app works as expected.

There are several stages in an app testing process. This type of rigorous testing process will ensure that your app works smoothly.

There are different types of testing and a decent approach is to test for all the types.

• Functional testing
• Memory testing
• Performance test
• Security test
• Interruption test
• Usability test

The app can be tested in-house, outsourced, or the developers can do the preliminary testing. The app testers should not be your developers or partners of the developers.

10. Release

Finally, it’s time to release your app once it has passed the tests.

The app must be submitted to the appropriate app store. It will take time since most of the apps are reviewed before they are published. It can take up to a week for the app to get approval so plan your release accordingly.

Most developers believe that a proper release strategy should be used for app launches.

Partnering with the right business is the best approach that worked exceptionally well for David and Goliath. They partnered with David Eckstein for the launch of their app which turned out to be a huge success.

Mobile Design Tips

The following mobile design tips will help you in achieving your set goals:

1. Iterate user interface designs: This tip comes from Amanda Cline, who is a developer with intensive experience under her belt.

She says:

“It is an excellent idea to iterate the interface design options so as to achieve apps that are fully engaging and retain the attention of targeted users.”

Every single iteration will help you learn a valuable lesson that might not be useful for this project, but it can help you in another project.

2. Understand your users: There is only one rule to designing better apps – understand your users. The best mobile app developers collect user feedback and apply it to the design. This is a crucial part of the mobile application design process. 

There are three ways to understand your users.

• Create personas – characters developed to represent your target audience.
• Experience maps – help you explore all the possibilities for a single interaction.
• User scenarios – how a person acts based on different UI designs.

3. Design for the future: Yes you should look beyond today and design for the future.

Jeff Haden says:

“When I decided to put speed radar on a mobile device, the capability really wasn’t there, but I knew it would be.”

While designing an app, keep the future in mind. Never design for today because by the time you will finish designing the app, the hardware will have been upgraded and when you launch the app, you will always be behind.

System Architecture

This stage is often overlooked in the app development process. But taking the time to understand your system ensures that you can grow your business without outgrowing your app.

The best apps are scalable, reliable, and secure—but also achieve your goals.

Without a system architecture analysis, something will eventually get lost in the shuffle. So make sure you understand the various entities of your system. Figure out the different data flows between each entity as well.

What workflows will be required for each process? Do you need third-party integrations? What are the technical requirements on the backend?

Create a functional spec sheet that details all of the data flows and flow charts. This information can ultimately be handed off to your design team. A designer will need to understand your system architecture to create a design that makes sense for your specific app and its goals.

Wireframes

Your wireframe will be another crucial tool for your app’s design. Anyone can create a wireframe—you don’t need to be a designer to accomplish this.

Think of your wireframe as a rough sketch of your app’s usability. These can be super informal. I’ve even seen some wireframes sketched on napkins or pieces of paper, although most people today will create a digital version.

Conclusion

Mobile app design can be complicated, but it doesn’t have to be.

To nail the design of your app, make sure you follow the design guidelines explained in this article. Rather than trying to tackle this on your own, contact our team here at BuildFire. We can handle all of the design elements, and more, while providing consultancy services for your app as well.

Our mobile app designers and app developers will double as strategic partners for your app development project. It’s time to take your design to the next level. Let’s build something great together!

Matching brands with the right advocates in digital

With more ads than ever vying for their attention, consumers today are selective with their trust. To cut through, brands need advocates their audiences like and believe in – which is where influencers shine.

Smart marketers focus on creating natural relationships with online trendsetters, no matter the size of their following. Look for agencies that:

Aren’t blinded by follower counts.

 Just because someone has a million followers doesn’t mean they’ll get you a million fans. Experienced teams know how to spot the right people to promote your product – whether that’s micro-influencers or a true celebrity.

Understand the needs of influencers.

 Many influencers make their living online. As excited as they may be to work with your brand, they also need to see how it benefits them. Partner with an agency that influencers like and will go the extra mile to help.

Get the brand balance right.

 Influencers have already put in the time to bond with their audience, so good influencer marketers don’t insist on total creative control. At the same time, influencer marketers should always be advocating for a relationship that serves the brand and the creator alike.

Big or small, businesses that win at search reap enormous benefits. But although SEO is technical, it’s not an exact science, and it takes time to show results.

Search Engine Optimization process

Keyword Research

Keyword research gives us invaluable data about the specific terms users are using to search, and the volume of searches for those terms.

Just as importantly, the keyword research helps us understand users’ underlying intent. Are prospects looking for general information, doing research on a product, or ready to buy? Answering these questions helps us shape content for maximum impact.

Search Engine Optimization Strategy

It’s great to uncover fixes that can give you a bump in the rankings, but our true value comes from being an organic marketing partner. 

Our SEO strategy may be part of a fully integrate digital marketing strategy  or a more channel-specific effort (depending on your needs). The strategy will set the stage,and covering the tactics we’ll deploy and the benchmarks that will help to measure success.

Organic Marketing

We believe there’s no longer a bright line between and organic marketing. If you can find it through search, we think of it through the lens of search – from social media, and to customer reviews, also to sites where you’re talk about.

As a result, your team may feature a roster of organic marketing talent spanning content, influencer. Taking a holistic approach to your presence, we seek out opportunities to boost your brand wherever you may be find

Why brands need digital strategy

Businesses today differentiate not on product or price, but on the quality.

If you can impress demanding customers with a frictionless journey, you’ll win favor, engagement, and market Digital Strategy share. But the question is: what do your customers really want?

Competitor Analysis

Sizing up your rivals

No business operates in a vacuum. That’s why we take your competitors very seriously. Understanding who is out there, how they set customer expectations, and where there are opportunities to stand out from the pack is central to delivering a digital experience that’s above the rest.

Audience Research

Defining your people

We take every step of our strategy process seriously, and but we’re obsessed with figuring out what makes your audience tick. No part of the process is more important.

Often, the deliverable for audience research is personas – audience profiles that identify who customers are and what they will demand from your digital experience. Personas are informed by a range of inputs, including analytics, social listening data, user testing, and information from the client. They help us focus on what visitors want and how they will navigate your digital experience.

Building a Strategy

Insight turns actionable

Preparing a strategy is a team effort. Strategy, design, UX, and content experts all come together to turn research into a concise plan for your brand in digital. We value a multidisciplinary approach because it’s rare that problems (or their solutions) fit neatly within the lines.

It’s here that problems are distilled and big questions are answered. And because we build digital experiences ourselves, we don’t just describe what you should do, but how it can be done.

Presentation & Implementation

Moving toward the future

. After the initial presentation, the team remains on standby, ready to offer clarity, answer questions, and plan the next steps to set the new experience in motion.

You use your to get in touch with lots of people. Use your email signature to get lots of people clicking through to your blog.

Make a friendly call to action in your email signature, inviting contacts to visit your blog. Give a brief benefit to motivate action – such as what your blog’s about. Include an easy to click link.

Example:

Tips for using your email signature:

• Include a link to your blog in yoursignature, and encourage your co-workers to so too
• Give a beneficial reason for people to click to your blog
• Use the signature in all your emails, to generate more clicks

Give emails

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Ok, now that you’ve got a robust email list  – people will be clicking through to your blog in droves, right? Not quite.

Are you saturated with inbox info? So are your customers…

To get your emails opened, read and clicked through you need to stand out, connect with your readers, and beat out your content competitors.