TECH

What You Need To Become A Certified White-Hat Hacker

Published

7 months ago

January 14, 2021

admin

What You Need To Become A Certified White-Hat Hacker

Online frauds and malicious online activities are usual these days and affecting our lives in some manner. Hackers are adopting creative new techniques to infiltrate our network and to the data and information saved on our systems. So, it’s required sometimes to think like a criminal to handle the other one. The best defensive approach when you want to prevent hacking is hiring an ethical hacker to protect your data and network. Against common perceptions, hacking is not about engagement in malicious activities all the time. Ethical hacking or ‘White-hat Hacking” is also a version of hacking skills used proactively to prevent the loss and ensure the security of entities. White-hat hackers are allowed to, or we can say, are specially hired to, infiltrate an organization’s security to find vulnerabilities in the system and network security mechanism. They do this for identifying and reporting bugs, vulnerabilities and weaknesses in the security system of the organization so that these can be fixed by the concerned IT professionals to ensure IT security of the organization. In other words, white-hat professionals assist organizations in assessing and strengthening their network security against the bad actors. Let’s find out what is needed to become a certified white-hat hacker.

What Is Needed To Become A Certified White-Hat Hacker?

While the demand for white-hat hackers is increasing rapidly, the more opportunities are emerging for the aspirants seeking a career in this exciting profession. These opportunities require some fundamental qualifications and skills, which one has to obtain if they want to pursue this profession.

For beginners, it is necessary to have some education in the related field. It is highly considerable and useful if you have a bachelor’s or master’s degree in a relevant area or stream of IT education, including Computer Programming, Computer Science, Information Security, or Information Technology. Notably, every company or organization doesn’t require similar educational qualifications. Instead, some businesses better prefer to consider and accept real hands-on-experience for a year or two, and it’s in an appropriately related field, in place of degree or certificate. You cannot be sure that spending three years in a mailroom and obtaining a degree will be your ticket to the profession. There is the possibility that spending a few years in an IT-related job may give you the required access to building a career in the field of ethical hacking. The next thing you need is a specialized White-hat Hacker training and White-hat Hacker Certification. Certification as a white-hat hacker is crucial because it affirms and tells a prospective employer about your proficiency in the necessary skills and methods required to perform your role and responsibilities as a professional.

It would help if you also learned, in addition to White-hat Certification or Ethical Hacking Certification, several additional security certifications because it is better to know more to be competent in the fast-paced, highly competitive Cyber Security arena. Such Certifications include- Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA), Certified Information Security Manager (CISM), Certified Cloud Security Professional (CCSP) and Licensed Penetration Tester (LPT) Master, etc. Finally, you should gain some on-the-job experience because there is no alternative and better way to learn other than experience. All these essentials prepare you to strike out on your own as a skilled white-hat hacker.

Some Personality Traits needed for a White-hat Hacker

Undoubtedly education has its importance, but a professional in any field must have the same personal qualities that build the attitude that leads to success in the area. Some personality traits would suit to a career as a white-hat hacker. These are:

Understanding of fundamental concepts of operating systems;
Being Intelligent and quick learner;
Logical and rational thinking and ability to show common logic;
Being well-organized;
Exceptional and instant problem-solving skills;
Excellent communication skills;
Envisioning or thinking like a black hat hacker to prevent the penetration by them in an IT system.
Strong and disciplined work-ethics;
Dedication to work and learning;
Ability to keep calm under pressure or tight situation; and
Being persuasive or the ability to convince others to give you access to sensitive information.

Along with all these traits, you also need to learn how to code. It would help if you learned coding on several coding platforms like HTML, Java, Swift etc., and the learning to code should be vast from coding for computers to coding for mobile devices.

Roles and Responsibilities of a White-Hat Hacker

Being a White-hat professional, you are expected to use all your technical knowledge, expertise and security experience to breach the security system of the organization you are working for. You have to analyze what you explore and provide recommendations on how to strengthen the network security of the organization. There are general misconceptions that an ethical or white-hat hacker is only responsible for penetration testing of network or security systems and applications in an organization, which is not valid. A white-hat hacker is expected to do much more and play a crucial role and perform several responsibilities in an organization:

Scanning variously closed and open ports using reconnaissance tools;
To scan target networks using commercial, open-source, or custom vulnerability checking devices;
Involvement in social engineering techniques;
Performing vigorous vulnerability analysis on and examination of patch releases;
A white-hat hacker ensures the defence of intrusion detection systems (IDS), intrusion prevention systems (IPS), honeypots and firewalls; and
He is responsible for deploying other strategies like sniffing networks, cracking wireless encryption and hijacking web servers and applications.

A certified white-hat hacker works to replicate the actions of a black hat hacker by examining the security protocols and social-engineering aspects of an organization. His responsibility is to ensure that the organization’s response to such threats must be instant and intense.

White-hat hacking is a responsible job and not a joy ride through networks of other organization or people. An ethical hacker has to ensure the security of IT network of the organization while on work as well as at the odd timings because most of the black hat hacking activities happen at odd hours as at that time the target is usually least monitored and most vulnerable. Ethical hacking is not strictly limited to penetration testing only, and many ethical hackers perform writing or examining computer coder to exploit flaws in the defence mechanism of the organization.

SEO

Conversational AI and Customer Experience Automation: What to Expect in 2021

Published

4 weeks ago

July 2, 2021

admin

AI has become an integral part of any organization’s work. It can make a positive contribution to brand reputation, cut costs, and even increase profits.

With its help, companies process personal data, consumer preferences, and the history of their interaction. AI builds forecasts of consumer behavior based on this data, what kind of product will be in demand in the future, and much more.

Also, artificial intelligence provides a personalized customer experience. While voice recognition still remains a puzzle to developers who are trying to create an algorithm that will mimic human-like communication as much as possible.

Let’s take a closer look at what trends in customer experience and conversational AI are taking place in 2021 and what to expect in the future.

Conversational AI and Customer Experience Automation Trends

1. Personalized Customer Experience

Because of the fast pace of life, people began to value their time more. We are bombarded with gigabytes of content every day that we can’t process. Therefore, it is tough to capture the client’s attention.

Customers buy on the go, so they want an app-like shopping experience without swamping their phone memories with heavy apps. Some impressive progressive web app examples illustrate that companies convert their websites to PWAs to provide a polished shopping experience and smooth navigation.

In 2021, customers no longer accept a general approach. Now companies can achieve results with audience segmentation and a personalized strategy. And that’s one of AI capacities.

When collecting data, artificial intelligence allows for analyzing potential and real customers. It lets you personalize everything from content to reviews, recommendations for products and services.

Assess who you are targeting. What are the common interests of the selected group? How many people will receive information?

What’s more, you can go beyond just segmentation. Look for interesting information for the consumers, learn new things about them, and offer a product or service that suits best.

An example of personalized recommendations is the “You may also like” section on the product pages. They are not just random collections of goods but similar products that may appeal to you. You can check it out in the screenshot below taken on the Ariat website.

Ariat

2. The Omnichannel Approach Is Key

In the field of customer experience (CX), we will see more sophisticated customer interaction strategies. Channels for CX are expanding and going beyond just offline or online.

According to statistics, 51% of companies use at least eight communication channels to interact with clients.

In 2020, customer service was complicated by the transition to online trading. It required companies to refine their customer experience approaches and enable an omnichannel experience. With this approach, the customer can interact with the brand via social media and continue communication via phone or SMS.

The company provides a seamless and integrated experience and preserves customer data, so they don’t have to repeat the same thing every time. From the first to the last contact, the user has no friction along the entire customer journey.

3. Chatbots Will Become Smarter

Primitive chatbots are a thing of the past. As companies accumulate more information, chatbots will become smarter. They will need to switch to customer support specialists less and will respond to advanced queries. In addition, chatbots will be increasingly personalized. They will adapt to the individuals to solve their routine tasks.

Chatbots won’t only inform but also take action, and it’s already the case. For example, a client using a chatbot can order food delivery, book a table in a restaurant, or a hotel room.

I provide the screenshot below as an illustration of my words. It is Dom, Domino’s pizza virtual assistant. Customers can save time without browsing the site or downloading a mobile application. Instead, the chatbot will collect and send all the information to the system.

Domino’s

Also, chatbots will develop in the direction of better voice recognition. High-quality systems will be able to understand accents, slang and analyze speech amid the noise. For quick customer identification and additional service capabilities, voice bots will use biometrics technologies.

The most probable trends in bot creation include:

the ability to extract and accumulate knowledge from dialogues (i.e., self-learning of chatbots),
the power of chatbots to communicate with each other to exchange “knowledge” and “skills”.

Final Thoughts

In the 2020s, AI will integrate more deeply into the customer service infrastructure. Trust in technology will grow, and approaches to using conversational AI in corporations will mature. Thanks to the accumulated data, bots will predict the reasons for support calls, relying on the communication history and personalizing the communication with each client.

SEO

5 Most Common WordPress Errors & How to Fix Them

Published

4 weeks ago

July 2, 2021

admin

WordPress is a content management system that is slick to use and helps you in building websites and build e-commerce website design. With the help of plug-in architecture and template systems, you can customize any website and create an online store or start your business. However, most businesses hire WordPress experts to solve their web development issues.

Here this article elaborates the common errors that people make in WordPress development along with the solution.

List of Top 5 WordPress Common Errors

1. The “White Screen of Death”:

One of the cryptic errors in WordPress is White Screen of Death. This error turns your website into a complete white blank with nothing in it. When the site is not loaded properly, then this error usually takes place.

Way to Fix: To fix this error, you need to disable your faulty plug-in. At times, the culprit is your theme and you need to disable the theme and activate the WordPress debug mode- This will let you see the errors directly on a specific page. You can pinpoint the cause of WSoD. Finally, you need to Purge your cache and raise your memory limit.

With the above-mentioned methods, your error would be fixed. Still, if you continue to face the issue, then you should seek assistance from your hosting provider support team.

2. Internal Server Error:

When a foreign issue takes place in the server, the server does not know how to react to it and thus you end up having this issue. Fortunately, there are fewer chances for this error to take place, but whenever you do you can’t just sit back and wait. You need to solve the issue.

Way to fix: .htaccess is the name of the file that directs how your site will communicate with the server. .htaccess file is used to secure your site and to override some default server settings. You need to disable this file, you can find this file in the site’s root directory. There is not any rocket science that you need to apply, just change the name of the file.

If after changing the name, your server error is resolved then you need to generate a new .htaccess file. For that, you need to go to the Admin dashboard > accessing settings > permalinks. Just click on save changes to generate a new file.

3. 404 Not Found Error:

Any non-technical and any internet user will be aware of this 404 Not found error. It is the most familiar error. This error takes place when the server is unable to request the page. .htaccess file is again responsible for this error as this file handles your hyperlink structure.

Way to Fix: The simplest thing to do is refresh the page. Here refresh means, edit and update the page. You can try changing the permalink and re-upload .htaccess files. The easiest thing to do is create a new file and name it .htaccess. Don’t misspell the name. You can upload the file to the root folder of the site. This way, your 404 not found error will be solved.

4. Error Establishing a Database Connection:

When your site can’t access the database, you will see this error. The database has all content stored, which includes information, posts, pages, and many more. When you are not able to access this important data, your site is not going to function at any cost.

Way to fix: To fix this error, go to the root folder, and access the wp-config.php file. To view or edit, click on the right side of this file. First, you need to check the credentials and see if it’s the same as the exact details. If you find any wrong in the credentials such as hostname, password, or username then correct it and your issue will be resolved.

If the error persists then you need to activate WordPress’s automatic database optimization tool. This tool can repair your corrupted database, and later you can define and save the file. You can run the new script in your browser. You will be asked to repair and optimize the database and finally, your issue will be resolved.

5. Connection Timed Out Error:

When the site takes a long time in loading, then you are highly likely to see this error of connection time out. In this error, the server struggles to load and then give uploading. When the site does not have enough resources for it to function, then this error happens.

Way to fix: You need to apply higher-tier to avoid this error. With higher-tier, your site will have more resources and it won’t need to load more. You need to optimize the speed of your site to avoid this issue. You can also check your theme if that is a hidden cause of this issue.

Conclusion:

If you are planning to use WordPress for your eCommerce website then you should be aware of those above-mentioned solutions to overcome those mistakes. Else it’s better to approach a reliable WordPress Development Company to build your eCommerce website.

APPS AND SOFTWARE

Get the Most Out of Cloud Computing with Backblaze

Published

4 weeks ago

June 30, 2021

admin

When you’re looking at data backup software programs, Backblaze B2 vs. AWS S3 can be an interesting comparison point. Both programs offer a service with which to back up all of your files in your private cloud. However, they have different service offerings. Let’s look at how Backblaze B2 vs. AWS S3 to find out which one is the best choice for your business.

Keep data Protective:

Backblaze cloud storage is a data backup service that lets you store data in its private cloud. Rather than having all of your information stored on a traditional data server, this kind of service stores all of your information on their virtual cloud. To do this, it makes use of its virtual machine.

It can use all sorts of technology – including the Amazon EC2 – to make sure that your data stays protected no matter what happens to the actual physical machines that it is kept on. It stores its backups on Amazon’s main server.

Able to View All your Files:

The way that Backblaze B2 works is by allowing you to create a web interface that you can use from your website. When people come to your site, they can access the Backblaze cloud backup page and view all of your files on the cloud. They can then download these files into their computers and upload them to their hard drives. You can also access your files from any computer with internet access through the Backblaze web interface.

Schedule Multiple Backup Events:

The nice thing about Backblaze B2 is that it offers a lot of additional features for the money that you pay. One of those features is its built-in scheduler. This lets you schedule multiple backup events so that your company’s data will always be backed up no matter what you’re doing. Another benefit to using Backblaze B2 is its excellent ability to intelligently consolidate data into small chunks that are easy to access. Through this process, you’ll get an improvement in the speed at which your files transfer to your other computers and flash drives. This helps you to save a significant amount of time when it comes to your data backup operations.

Offers Unlimited Cloud Storage:

Since Backblaze’s service offers unlimited cloud storage, you can store any number of documents and other data and quickly create a timeline to retrieve them all on one computer. You don’t have to worry about keeping up with hard drives’ storage capacities, which is essential if you need to Backblaze frequently. Instead, you can let the service run on its schedule, with your files stored in an off-site data backup facility so that you can access them from any computer.

The best thing about Backblaze is that it lets you access your data from any computer with an internet connection. Because the service is cloud-based, all your files are stored in a secure online data backup center. This means that even if you experience a hardware failure at your office, you’ll still be able to access your important files and information – as long as they’re in an internet zone. That redundancy is extremely important for any business because, in today’s age, the value of one person’s data is no longer insignificant.