Caron Beesley

If you want your business to thrive in today’s world, it’s essential that you establish and cultivate an online presence — and social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are ideal platforms for doing so. In fact, social media is the most popular marketing tactic used by small-business owners today.
What’s more, social media is a big favorite among women-owned small businesses, in particular. According to Facebook research, 81percent of women-owned small businesses say that...

If you’re heading to Autodesk University this year or plan to catch up with the sessions on-demand after the event, then you’ll notice that many of the sessions focus on the intersection of engineering and GIS. Much of this is prompted by Autodesk’s relatively new partnership with Esri which aims to build a bridge between the companies’ respective BIM and GIS platforms.
But what’s prompted this shift towards seamless workflows between these two technologies?
The world is changing fast. Each d...

As the fallout from the Capital One data breach continues, new lessons are being learned. Although technical failings were at the heart of the breach, a recent article in the The Wall Street Journal points to a series of overlooked issues that produced perfect storm conditions for the attack.
Notably, the Capital One hack did not come out of the blue. Before the breach, “…employees raised concerns within the company about what they saw as a high turnover in its cybersecurity unit and a failur...

The days are getting shorter, and, as the end of September approaches, the window of opportunity for technology providers to capitalize on federal fiscal year-end sales opportunities is shrinking. September 30th marks the end of the federal government’s fiscal year which means the run-up to month-end is a busy one as contractors vie for federal “use it or lose it” dollars.
In 2018, the feds spent $97 billion in September alone, that’s the equivalent of $3.2 billion per day. A huge portion of ...

Stress and burnout is emerging as perhaps the biggest threat to corporate security. Long hours, alert overload, and a lack of visibility into their IT infrastructure have many security professionals reconsidering their chosen careers.
This is contributing to a massive cybersecurity skills shortage that is creating real security threats at companies across the globe. There are close to three million open and unfilled cyber vacancies around the world. Meanwhile, a majority of organizations cite...

It doesn’t matter what business you’re in — cybersecurity has become extremely important to both your organization’s reputation and its bottom line. According to reports, the average cost of a data breach is $3.86 million.
No wonder employees with great cybersecurity skill sets are in such high demand, with CISOs at the top of many companies’ wish lists. CISOs have become the chief protectors of their organizations thanks to their specialized knowledge of security operations, cyber risk and i...

Civil infrastructure – roads, bridges, railways, airports, and utilities – are an essential foundation of modern society. Infrastructure connects people, enhances access to services, education, and work opportunities.
Infrastructure also plays a crucial role in addressing climate challenges. According to the New Climate Economy, the world’s existing infrastructure is responsible for more than 60% of greenhouse gas emissions. Designing sustainable infrastructure is critical to building a bette...

2019 has already been rife with cybersecurity woes. Unfortunately, as we enter the second half of the year, things are going from bad to worse.
The recent Capital One data breach compromised the personal data of more than 100 million Capital One customer accounts stored in the cloud. The incident comes on the heels of the massive penalties levied against Equifax and raises a troubling question: are enterprises becoming too complacent about cloud security?
What’s in your cloud?
Attacks of this...

Taking a business global affords new opportunities for revenue streams and growth. But one of the many challenges of doing business internationally is that to conduct any transactions, such as opening a bank account, the business is required to certify and authenticate certain documents such as articles of incorporation.
Even though such documents may be valid and acceptable in the United States, foreign jurisdictions require that businesses go through extra hoops to ensure these corporate do...

The summer of 2019 is proving to be a cybersecurity record breaker – for all the wrong reasons. In the past two weeks, businesses in Europe and the U.S. were levied massive penalties after probes into data breaches that left consumer data exposed.
The record setting began in early July when fines were imposed on British Airways and Marriott International for non-compliance with the European Union’s (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) data privacy requirements following breaches rep...

Although millennials currently comprise the largest generation in the U.S. labor force, Generation Z is hot on their heels. Born between 1995 and 2010, the older members of Gen Z are graduating college and the whole generation is expected to account for up to 40% of consumers by 2020.
The Generation Z workforce is like no other in history. They grew up in an age of unprecedented digital connections. Yet, according to Concordia University, they crave real-life connections and highly value offl...

Small business owners have more marketing tools available to them now than ever before — more than 7,000, to be precise. Yet, despite this array of solutions, they still struggle with one of marketing’s fundamental functions: lead generation. “Not enough leads” is far and away the biggest marketing challenge reported by small-business owners.
And actually, it’s not surprising. A lack of time, resources and know-how can make it difficult to stay on top of small business lead generation. There’...

If your organization is grappling with a tight cybersecurity talent pool, you’re not alone. According to Gartner, 61% of organizations struggle to hire security professionals. It’s a problem that’s only going to get worse. The Harvard Business Review predicts that, by 2020, there will be more than 1.5 million unfilled cyber positions worldwide.
It couldn’t come at a worse time.
The advent of 5G and the explosion of the Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to add 20.4 billion connected devices...