July | 2021
www.techfastly.com
IN CONVERSATION WITH
Cloud Cryptography by Sai Srivani Mandapaka
SANJAY VYAS CEO and Co-founder, Diyotta
Hubble’s Remarkable Secret Google Tools for p.04 31 Year Journey p.22 Your Business | Barkha Sheth | Ragini Agarwal
Contents
July-2021 Hubble’s Remarkable 31 Year Journey | Barkha Sheth | P.04 All You Need to Know About StopElon Coins | Anjali Prabhanjanan | P.68 Artificial Empathy: The last step of Humanizing Machines | Angela Stojkovic | P.16
How These Secret Google Tools Will Take Your Business to a Next Level | Ragini Agarwal | P.22 In conversation with: Sanjay Vyas, CEO and Co-founder, Diyotta | P.47
10 B2B Marketing Trends that you Cannot Miss |Toulika Das | P.35
NFT’s – A 101 On Non-Fungible Tokens | Barkha Sheth | P.58 Cloud Cryptography –The Solution to your Cloud Security | Sai Srivani Mandapaka | P.74
C
Editor’s note
ryptocurrencies have gained a lot of popularity since Elon Musk’s recent tweet. This issue would talk about two cryptocurrencies that have been most talked about in the crypto world. $StopElon is the new cryptocurrency being created on the blockchain Binance Smart Chain which is currently trading at around 0.00005600 with a market capitalization of approximately $30 million. If you belong to the group of uninitiated who have been left scratching their heads on the latest cryptocurrency phenomenon, then this space is for you. Here is a complete 101 rundown of everything you need to know about this new trend in intellectual ownership, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs).
Reader’s Choice: Best Performing Articles on Techfastly in 2021
Cyber-attacks have become the biggest social menace for many corporations. It can cost millions to big companies and harm their reputation in the corporate world. Not only large organizations, but it has also affected many individuals. We have provided you with a guide on cyber-attacks and how you can protect yourself and your organizations. In another article, we talked about Cryptographic security measures. Cloud cryptography utilizes encryption methods to safeguard data that is stored in a cloud environment. They offer security measures that best cover information in motion and information at rest.
The Fourth Technological Revolution: Why that Matters to Businesses
In our interview series, we spoke with Sanjay Vyas, CEO and Co-founder, Diyotta Inc. Mr Vyas spoke about his journey of launching a successful startup and how it got acquired by ThoughSpot recently. He also spoke about Diyotta’s products and how technology empowers them. During the interview he also gave some tips for young entrepreneurs and shared his thoughts on cryptocurrencies. We bring you the story of the Hubble Telescope, ‘Hubble’s Remarkable 31 Year Journey: Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science. (Edwin Powell Hubble)’ in our ‘Story of Machine’ series.
How to Leverage Kaggle to Hire Top Data Scientists for Your Organization
We would appreciate your feedback and are always open to suggestions. Here is your edition. Do read it, enjoy it, and nourish in the knowledge. Happy reading!
Srikant rawat CTO, Techfastly
Ditch Your Rule-Based Chatbot Strategy for Conversational AI Bots
Hubble’s Remarkable 31 Year Journey Barkha Sheth
From supernovas to charting the effects of dark energy on the universe’s growth, and from capturing the distant moons to photographing thousands of galaxies to reveal galactic evolution; The Hubble Space Telescope is, as NASA terms, “the most important advance in astronomy since Galileo”. Techfastly | July 2021 | P- 4
Amidst a plethora of galaxies and distant stars, Hubble makes its quiet orbit around the Earth. Even today, as it speeds its way, at 17,000 miles an hour, the first major optical telescope to be placed in space is expanding scientific vision day after day. Since its launch in the 1990s, Hubble has consistently lifted a shutter from our view of the universe. In fact, it has changed our perception so profoundly that humans have never been able to look at the stars in the same way again. But as many, who were initially tasked with getting this scientific wizardry to the skies, would agree - the going was not easy.
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The life source of the planet, our atmosphere, acts as a translucent veil blurring our vision of the skies. Moreover, it does not help that the atmosphere is in constant flux, causing the light from the heavens to shift and wiggle as it reaches the naked eye. Did you know it’s this wobble that causes the twinkling of the stars? But on a photographic plate, this twinkling, in turn, causes the accumulated light to spread out so that a genuinely sharp image is just not possible. Trapped underneath the Earth’s
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Murky Sight – Glasses, Anyone?
unsteady atmosphere, early astronomers had to contend with looking up at the skies as if they had a terrible vision and were forbidden to wear glasses. In effect, up until man conquered parts of space, both professional and amateur astronomers were never sure of what they saw. A determined lot that astronomers are, they built more gigantic telescopes, some even perched on mountain tops, where the atmosphere is thinner. But even then, our brains refused to comprehend the fuzzy and distant images it perceived from the comforts of the ground. As a result, our theories on the universe’s expansion, its birth and its evolution were sound, but the data to support it was not good enough. But as fate would have it, one man would take the first steps in what would become an ambitious half-century-long saga to solve the age-old dilemma that astronomers had been facing. This man was about to propose that the United States build the first optical telescope – in space.
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Inspiration For An Orbiting Telescope In 1946, Lyman Spitzer Jr published Appendix V of the Douglas Aircraft Company’s Project RAND. The title of the work was “Astronomical Advantages of an Extra-Terrestrial Observatory.”
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As he later summarised,
“While a more exhaustive analysis would alter some of the details of the present study, it would probably not change the chief conclusion that such a scientific tool, if practically feasible, could revolutionize astronomical techniques and open up completely new vistas of astronomical research.”
He was not the first to suggest such an idea. Still, in comparison to works of his predecessors, his paper was concrete, realistic, and based on technology that was either available at the time or expected to be developed in the coming decade. But for many, it was still an audacious idea, especially given that, in 1946, the 200-inch Hale Telescope on Palomar Mountain in California, soon to become the world’s largest ground-based telescope, was not yet finished. It had taken almost three decades to build and would weigh a million pounds. Now imagine carrying that load into space on a rocket that remained firmly rooted in the realms of science fiction.
Through the ’40s and the ’50s, Spitzer struggled to garner interest in his space telescope idea. But on October 4, 1957, everything changed.
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On that day, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, with a diameter of 22 inches and weighing 184 pounds; it circled Earth once every hour and 36 minutes. The launch of Sputnik sent shock waves through the intellectual and political communities of the United States. In a rush to match their Soviet compatriots, NASA was formed, the Mercury program was instigated, and President Kennedy declared to the nation that the United States would put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. For astronomers, the sudden interest in a Space program proved to be a boon. Plans for several projects that would help get a better view of the universe were recommended. Still,
The Beginnings Of Space Race Techfastly | July 2021 | P- 10
the balance between cost and benefit remained elusive, and the endeavours failed to find credence. However, by 1965, the “Sky was the Limit” for NASA. The Gemini program, proposed in 1961, was putting two men in orbit every two months. In addition, they had launched three Ranger probes to the moon and had also sent a rover towards Mars.
So, when in 1966, Lyman Spitzer chaired the working group on astronomy with fellow space enthusiasts, everyone’s mind was ripe to receive the idea of building a large orbiting telescope. Plans to construct one in conjunction with the manned space program were ultimately reached. In fact, the astronomers were in such agreement that a lighthearted discussion on its name took centre stage, and after some good amount of jest and, of course, complaining, a decision was reached. The telescope would eventually be called, precisely what it was “LST – Large Space Telescope”. Techfastly | July 2021 | P- 11
The years that followed saw the LST encountering many setbacks. From rising costs to the project’s brief cancellation, the telescope faced pretty much every roadblock for a venture of its size. Eventually, the LST was slated to be launched in 1983. But setbacks in its assembly delayed the launch clock by another several years. Nevertheless, the year 1983 did prove to be eventful in the telescope’s timeline. The LST
The Build Up Towards The Launch
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was renamed ‘Hubble’ in honour of Edwin P Hubble - a notable astronomer who revolutionized our understanding of the universe and our place within it. By 1986, Hubble was ready for launch. However, a tragedy with the Space Shuttle Challenger in the same year paused NASA’s
shuttle program and put the launch into limbo once again. With the resumption of the space shuttle initiative in 1988, Hubble was finally sent to its new home aboard the Discovery on April 24,1990, almost 45 years after it was first conceived.
A month later, the first photo from Hubble was taken amidst much media fanfare. The subject of this first-ever galactic screenshot was a binary star HD96755 (the snowman-shaped object in the top corner of the picture on the right). The star was about 1,300 light-years away. NASA released the image along with a second one, taken of the same object by a ground-based telescope to show that the $2.5 billion Hubble could do a better job. Which it certainly did – but not by much. Within days, the telescope became a laughingstock. Hubble engineers promised the pictures would get better as they calibrated the telescope’s instruments, plus they had a lot more tricks they could try. But it was all in vain. Eventually, it was discovered that a chip of paint on a measuring rod caused Hubble’s 8-foot
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diameter mirror to be 4 millionths of an inch too flat, leaving the telescope with blurry vision. The scientific community eventually concurred on one remedy - Hubble needed glasses. Three years later, the crew of the space shuttle Endeavor rode to the rescue. Spacewalking astronauts installed tiny mirrors to correct Hubble’s vision, and a fortnight later, the scientific community breathed in a sigh of relief as the universe finally snapped into focus. From there on, Hubble scanned the heavens with unparalleled clarity.
Pillars of Light to Deep Field An interesting fact about Hubble is that it records all its photos in black and white, but its onboard filters can isolate different wavelengths of light. As a result, the observatory often takes pictures of the same object through multiple filters. Scientists then combine the images, assigning blue light to the data that came in through the blue filter, and say red light to the data read through the red filter to create a comprehensive colour image. This fusion of art and science has resulted in spectacular glimpses of our ever-expanding universe. From the breathtaking ‘Pillars of Creation’ to delving into the dusty birthplace of stars deep within the Eagle Nebula, Hubble’s dedication to its cause has been unwavering. Peering beyond what the human eye can see, it has even gone back in time, gazing at a spot in the universe for 11 days to create “The Hubble Ultra Deep Field” exposure - a rich tapestry of galaxies of all shapes and sizes.
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Since its launch Hubble, has been leased a new life over and over again. Over the years, astronauts have replaced instruments that have malfunctioned, serviced them to keep them running smoothly and corrected flaws that crept up during their lifetime. Initially planned as a 15-year project, Hubble is still going strong. In 2009, NASA agreed to one last mission to service the old telescope. Since then, Hubble has still been releasing photos after photos of cosmic wonders. However, in the fall of 2021, the space agency hopes to find a suitable replacement – The James Web Space Telescope. Slated to be the most complex and powerful telescope ever built, scientists expect that the more recent technology can help them see beyond what Hubble could. But just as it has consistently
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Hubble’s Legacy surprised us in the last 31 years, many in the scientific community feel that the best from Hubble is yet to come. With a few more years until its orbit decays and NASA takes the call to crash the telescope, we too cannot wait for what this trusty old ‘eyes in the skies’ is getting ready to reveal.
Artificial Empathy:
The last step of humanizing machines
Angela Stojkovic
The growth of Artificial intelligence has been under the spotlight of technology throughout the past decade and emotional AI may be the very pinnacle of science or the human’s aspiration to understand and reconstruct nature, and, finally, himself. This scientific inclination is most transparent in the posthuman rise of humanoid robots.
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The enthusiasm inwrought in the study and the development of AI resulted in rapid progress that can be felt in the average daily life today worldwide in the form of smartphones, navigation, all the way to online banking. The technology in our hands is changing and evolving every year.
Still, even though Artificial Intelligence is growing and improving (mainly through the machine learning processes), the gem that is still unattainable to the AI capacities are emotions and emotional intelligence.
Can Machines Develop Emotions? Many argue that machines can’t develop humanlike emotions, even though there are human activities in which a human can nevermore beat even a basic computer, like calculation for instance. The fact is that machines are master calculators because the calculation is based on a system. On the other hand, emotions can’t be translated or fit into any precise system. Even though emotional expressions and gestures can be observed and classified, these kinds of scientific methods can’t get a hang of something as spiritual as emotions. The important factor that plays a role in the odds for AI to evolve into real “EI” is the fact that grasping emotions and the way they work is so complex it remains a challenge even for the competence of our own language. At the end of the day, robots are still complex machines that come down to operating by programming languages built on binary code. Techfastly | July 2021 | P- 17
Ethical Problems AI is a controversial subject on its own, but if AI becomes empowered with emotional intelligence, the complexity of the problem deepens as AI becomes more powerful, and possibly more out of control. Some of the potential suspicions include privacy issues, loss of work in certain areas, even more, widespread surveillance, security issues, “AI awakening” (meaning that the intelligence could become so autonomous that we can’t control it anymore), etc. Many studies address possible troubles regarding Virtual personal assistants (VPA), like Alexa and Google Assistant, especially the ones regarding privacy. However, the emotional development of AI could have some benefits as well, such as in medicine, education, mental health, etc. For instance, emotional AI referred to as “Empathic AI mirrors” in the form of robotic playmates showed positive results with children with autism.
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Uses of Emotional AI With the flourishment of empathy in AI, many industries and fields of life would reap the benefits, from the gaming and car industries to healthcare, retail, and it would even improve cooking. Presumably, the prognosis of advanced emotional AI promises empathic fridges that are able to recognize your mood and suggest appropriate food. One of the major benefits it would bring to healthcare is monitoring patients at all times and therefore avoiding any oversights. Some games could detect the recipient’s reactions and adjust the game mode and difficulty according to them. Facial recognition and emotion detection are already being applied by the apps such as Instagram.
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Pro et contra Machines learn from us, but this time maybe we can learn something from machines. If experiencing love, anger or jealousy is the biggest challenge for them, could we presume that those are the very things that significantly define us as human beings? If the answer is yes, maybe we should take our emotional lives far more seriously and nurture them more, instead of attempting to create artificially emotional beings when we don’t understand our own emotionality. On the other hand, maybe we will discover new knowledge about the nature of our own emotions through striving to create an artificial one. Opinions regarding AI are divided, not only among the laics, but within the scientific circles as well, but the discussion is intensifying furthermore when we add emotional intelligence to the picture, especially because of the ethical problems.
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Lovotics
A CBC article titled “Can a robot love you back” introduces a robot called lovotics (which is a coinage of love and robotics), a robot whose aim is not completing some trivial assignments, but to practice the very crown of emotions - love. Dr. Samani, the director of AI technology in Taiwan, even studies reciprocal love between humans and robots. These love-oriented robots look more like toys than advanced machines, but, in love, it’s always more important what’s on the inside. In this case, it’s a sophisticated endocrine system thatnavigates digital hormones based on interactions with humans. Samani himself says that “a robot is a piece of machine” and that it is actually not capable of “experiencing” love, but what it does is more of a simulation of love or affection. Therefore, the robot remains within the limits of completing a function. It is more than questionable whether if we could use the word love to describe this machine programmed to give off an illusion of affection, at best.
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Conclusion It seems that we eagerly embraced the not so long ago future-like technologies entering our everyday lives in the forms of phones, unnecessarily diverse home devices, etc. But the truth is that maybe the world has immersed far too easily into creating new forms of consciousness and interacting with them. Additionally, bear in mind that all those mass-produced trivial devices are made of plastic that is one of the most urgent environmental threats today. As we just might be witnessing the very pinnacle of this technological evolution, maybe it is the perfect time to consider all the pros and cons, as well as all the potential repercussions of this groundbreaking, but also possibly vain and dangerous invention, regardless of whether if robots are our friends or our enemies. Erich Fromm, an expert on human nature and the nature of emotions said: The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots. True enough, robots do not rebel. Techfastly | July 2021 | P- 22
How These Secret Ragini Agarwal
Tools Will Take Your Business to a Next Level You all might have used a variety of Google Tools for several purposes. But, have you used the Google tools to make your business grow faster? If you want your business to grow at an accelerated pace or you are planning to start a new business, then you are at the right place. This article will provide you a detailed insight about the Secret Google Tools that can be used for marketing your business. Techfastly | July 2021 | P- 23
What are Google Marketing Tools? Without marketing, it is next to impossible for a business to tackle the milestone of success. Marketing helps the customers know about a particular product or a service which leads to brand awareness. When it comes to marketing, Google can be trusted, as Google is by far the best search engine in the world. Although, Google is so much more than a mere search engine. Here are some tools that Google offers for you to create brand awareness worldwide and driving targeted audiences towards your business website. By using relevant tools, you can make your brand grow so that it can reach a larger audience. Having the best services does not guarantee you high conversions until the services are marketed properly.
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This application will help you stand out from the crowd and show what makes your business unique. You can make people aware of the facilities that you provide using your business profile by posting photos, events, offers, bookings, etc. With this app, you can connect with your customers before and after sales and keep them coming back again and again. No matter whatever your business is, you can let them discover it on Google My Business.
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Google Search Console This was previously known as Google Webmaster Tools. With the help of this application, you get an analysis of what people liked and disliked about your website. This information can help you improve your website and boost its performance and help it rank higher in search results. It is one of the best SEO tools. It allows the website makers or webmasters to check indexing status and optimize the visibility of their website.
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If a person wants to know look for something online what comes to their mind first? Yes, it’s Google. Google AdWords now known as Google Ads helps you to get your website at the top when someone searches for anything related to your brand or product. You just need to pay a minimal amount for getting your website at the top when someone searches a keyword related to your website or your content.
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Google Suite is not just a powerful email provider. Google Suite is an all-in-one business productivity and communication hub that has all the tools and apps you need for your small business. It includes various applications like Gmail, Google Meet, Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google forms, etc. This application is a powerhouse containing a variety of facilities that can help in connecting to our customers using various mediums.
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Google Alerts
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This application will help you in marketing through web monitoring. Now, rather than having to search for outreach prospects, whether that’s for collaborations, links, or guest posting opportunities, you can get them emailed to you without lifting a finger using Google Alerts. This will send you an email every time it finds something similar to what you searched most often or what you have mentioned as your interests. It is a very beneficial application for getting the latest news articles, blogs, or scientific research in your inbox without even actually searching for it.
Google Analytics Google Analytics is just a simple tool that allows you to track and analyze your website traffic. It is a must to use applications for the people who want to grow their website using digital marketing. It allows you to see how many visitors are coming to your website, where they are coming from either Google, You Tube, Facebook, which pages they are viewing, what is their age, what’s their location, and much more. This data will eventually help you know about the audience that is interested in your product or service. Google launched Google Analytics in November 2005 after acquiring Urchin
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It's an ad network that is basically a complement of Google AdWords but differs totally from it. In Google AdWords, you need to pay Google for getting your website at the top of the search results whereas in Google AdSense you get paid from Google from the traffic that is coming to your website. If you make a website and allow Google to show ads on it, then you will be paid according to the number of people coming to your website and watching those ads.
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This application is another perk to your business growth as it lets you know the most trending topics within Google Search, Google News, Google Images, Google Shopping, and You Tube so that you can alter your website according to those trends. Using Google Trends, you can see the latest stories and insights and can get knowledge about the things which people are searching for the most. It is a very useful tool that can increase the rating of a website along with keeping it SEO-friendly.
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Feed Burner FeedBurner is a web feed management service that provides custom RSS feeds and management tools for bloggers, podcasts, and other web-based content publishers. On April 14 2021, Google announced that Google FeedBurner will move to a new platform, and it will get an updated version that will meet the present-day demands. However, Google added that one of its core features, which is the email subscription service, will be deprecated in the latest version.
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Summing Up Though Google is an indispensable part of our lives, right from the simple search to Gmail, or using docs & sheets for day-to-day information handling, many of us are still unaware of tools that have the power to make our lives easy as well as help us in rocketing the business process.
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TOP
10
B2B MARKETING TRENDS THAT YOU CANNOT MISS
T
Toulika Das
he key marketing strategy in business nowadays is to identify the emerging marketing trends that affect the customer buying pattern. While some marketing strategies tend to remain constantly rewarding in terms of sales, new ones always pop up with every passing year.
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Understanding the B2B sectors in terms of marketing strategy can keep you ahead in the competition. It can fetch you more sales and conversions. That is why we have taken a close look at the emerging trends of this year and as a result, come up with a few prominent ones.
INCREASING DOMINANCE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)
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Artificial Intelligence or AI enables businesses to reveal the value of their data, scale up content for a more diverse outreach plan, and give a more comprehensive view of customers and how to serve them.
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Data analysis is a very prominent role AI will help in facilitating B2B marketing. Moreover, by automating operations, you may multiply your productivity immensely.
Artificial intelligence can be used in the corporate world to gain a competitive advantage and enhance efficiency. Automated interactions with customers, partners, and employees are becoming more common and can be hailed as one of the top B2B marketing trends in 2021.
Chatbots are an essential component of websites, apps, and any other business structure in today’s world. More customers are expecting and receiving faster responses, better services, and a 24hour agent to meet their needs.
As the world is still stuck in a pandemonium of the COVID-19 virus, businesses are experiencing an upsurge in customers buying their products through social media. Social commerce involves directly using social media platforms to sell products and services to consumers. However, it is not the same as e-commerce, contrary to the popular notion. There is a slight difference between the two.
RISE IN
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SOCIAL COMMERCE SELLING ON SOCIAL MEDIA
E-commerce refers to a website or dedicated brand application shopping experience. By definition, social commerce enables customers to buy their products through their experience on social media.
Today’s prominent players in social commerce are Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and Pinterest. Techfastly | July 2021 | P- 37
No one wants to read the same information repeatedly in a recycled manner and that is why customers always respond best to “original content”. This may appear to be overstated, but it remains true to this day. Be it graphics, writing blog content, preparing ad copies, etc., your original creation will always work best with your target audience. Remember, they are waiting for a fresh experience, something unique that you have to offer along with your product. You will get the highest ROIs (return on investments) when you use original content rather than some copypasted or slightly alternated versions. Here are some tricks to help you do that: • Brainstorm content ideas. • Mix short-form and long-form content. • Add quirky graphics or high-quality images to support your content. • Add keywords research strategies while publishing content. • Sell it to your prospective customers, B2B leads, etc. • Invest in paid promotional strategies.
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FOCUS ON ORIGINAL CONTENT
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VIDEO CONTENT RULES THE DAY
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No matter what type of business you are in, video marketing will always reward you beyond expectations. Think about it - more than 70% of B2B buyers watch product videos alone as part of their market research. Videos are used by 86% of businesses as a marketing tool. Video marketing incorporates an important aspect of the B2B buyer’s journey mainly because of its visual appeal. More than 93% of marketers believe that video is an essential element in their B2B as well as B2C marketing strategies. Especially after the pandemic has struck, market research shows that the consumption of video content has skyrocketed.
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Here are some video ideas for your B2B marketing strategy: • • • • •
Informative videos/product demo videos Customer testimonial videos Event teasers, event recap videos Company news Behind-the-scenes video
Videos will enable you to show off your products or your teamwork, educate your clients in an interesting and effective manner.
INVEST IN PAID ADS ON SOCIAL MEDIA
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The importance of paid ads in B2B marketing is monumental, and it is only increasing day by day. Especially in 2021, digital marketing and investing in paid ads is one of the top B2B marketing trends. Social media platforms are an excellent lead generation tool, solely because more than 50% of B2B marketers using them for research. Investing in paid ads is a foolproof way to acquire those highly valued B2B leads. Don’t just post ads on social media, create high-quality content and promote them. Nearly 97% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn which is why it is a key tool for marketing strategies for your business. The same is for Facebook, which is used by 91% of B2B marketers worldwide for business purposes.
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REFINE YOUR EMAIL MARKETING TACTICS Do you remember those days when emails were regarded as long and dull pieces of text that were immediately discarded from your inbox? They seem ancient today. For B2B marketers, emails offer an engaging, consistent, and reliable medium of distribution. Even 60% of B2B marketers believe in its effectiveness, believing it to be a viable revenue-generating platform. Email marketing is, without a doubt, one of the top B2B marketing trends in 2021. A successful way to hone your email marketing strategy is described below.
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• Craft attractive subject lines. • Include a clear and concise call-toaction(CTA) per email, not more than one in quantity. • Make sure your email marketing list consists of only potential customers who fit in your target audience description. • Cold emails can increase your B2B marketing game by almost 16 times, according to research. • Personalize your emails. Wish your clients on special occasions like birthdays, anniversaries etc.
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CUSTOMER RETENTION THROUGH TARGETED MARKETING
New B2B customers are interestingly and effectively good, but what also need in order to grow your business in terms of a good reputation is a long term customer retention strategy. Building rapport with existing customers is the golden rule of retention marketing. Existing B2B customers should always be specially treated in terms of marketing. That is because selling a product to a current customer is always easier, faster, and less exhausting than selling to a stranger.
How can you do that? • Establish clear and open lines of communication. • Provide customer care & support and answer their queries in simple, actionable terms. • Gather feedback, take surveys to see where you need to improve. • Appreciate them frequently for showing customer loyalty. • Give special offers, coupons & discounts, etc.
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According to a Harvard study, a 5% in customer retention can increase your profits by 95%. This type of marketing is especially effective when you are on a tight budget.
EXPLORE THE REALM OF AUGMENTED REALITY
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ith the increase in technological advancements, the rise of Augmented reality or AR has benefitted the B2B marketing realm to a unique extent. It enables businesses to provide customers with one-of-a-kind experiences through the use of their mobile devices or tablets. As augmented shopping experiences are becoming increasingly popular, brands are engaging AR to let consumers have a ‘taste’ of things before they buy them. B2B organisations are now using augmented reality to improve their sales presentations, product demos, and brand introductions. Without the need for an app, the technology is now available to organisations of all sizes. It's incredibly effective, cool and is one of the top B2B marketing trends that you cannot miss.
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Influencer marketing is the fastestgrowing method of acquiring new customers as part of your B2B marketing strategy. Someone who has 1,000 to 100,000 followers on social media can be termed as a ‘micro-influencer’. In the B2B buying cycle, an influencer is someone who clients trust, someone who knows a particular niche and can positively influencer buyer decisions. According to one study, B2B companies can manage an 11x yearly ROI through micro-influencer marketing compared to traditional techniques. Social media experts say that 94 % of B2B marketers who have attempted influencer marketing believe it is extremely beneficial.
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UTILISE MICROINFLUENCERS TO YOUR ADVANTAGE
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Siri or Alexa or Cortana, even, are being used daily in our lives for answering queries or performing simple actions like telling the weather forecast, taking down notes, calling or texting someone, or simply chatting. Another great thing is when we are searching for something we don’t always have to manually type in the words. Instead, we can just use our voice to talk to these artificial assistants and they’ll provide the desired search results. Optimizing the website for voice searches is something a lot of B2B marketers are doing nowadays, and lately has been one of the top B2B marketing trends. Voice search is in high demand among today's audience, with over one billion queries conducted by voice internationally, according to a study. Furthermore, this figure is predicted to reach 5 billion by the end of 2021 and 6.4 billion by 2022.
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OPTIMIZE YOUR WEBSITE FOR VOICE SEARCHES
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ENDING NOTE Companies grow and evolve in their marketing strategies each year. Technology is developing with each passing day and for some, it may seem daunting. However, if you learn some simple tips and tricks, you can turn the game in your favour any day. The main aim is to know your competition and stay on top of the latest B2B marketing trends. Some of the afore-mentioned B2B marketing trends will come in handy. Lastly, make sure your company has the right marketing tools to keep the customers in the spotlight. Only then, will they return the favour.
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Having spent over 20+ years in Data Management and Information Systems, Sanjay Vyas has built a strong passion for data architecture and management.
He co-founded Diyotta with one goal — to build disruptive technologies and take Data Integration to the next level to address the modern-day challenges. In conversation with
Sanjay Vyas CEO and Co-Founder of Diyotta
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Journey Sanjay and his co-founders were project managers and solution architects at a global communications company in the heyday of the data warehousing appliance, when they finally said enough is enough. In 2011, they started Diyotta as a side project to develop a new data integration architecture that could easily connect to data sources, leverage the processing power of modern data lakes and data warehouses, and adapt to new and changing technologies. Their startup story is not unlike many we’ve heard. After several months of coffee shop meetings, late-night deliberations, and successful prototypes, they finally left their day jobs and focused full-time on building their company. Their initial team included 15 developers working in a rented space in a gym. After 11,000 collective hours, Techfastly | July 2021 | P- 48
they launched Diyotta 1.0 and sold their first license in October 2011. Today, Diyotta has been successfully acquired by ThoughSpot. I am happy to be a part of a company that is changing that. Diyotta is a data integration technology that captures and moves enormous volumes of data from the many systems and applications that create it to the systems where it all comes together to be manipulated and analyzed by people and machines.
Q| Tell us a little bit about your past before you started Diyotta and what made you start this successful entrepreneurial journey? Right from a young age, I wanted to be independent and start an enterprise. Becoming an entrepreneur doesn’t happen overnight. One must have a zeal and passion for succeeding — which one may acquire overtime or be born with it. In my case, I believe I had that attitude right when I was young. I was not that normal kid who did things as expected. I was a risk-taker, and if 100 people took a left turn, I took a right. Even today, I like challenging the status quo. It was almost like an epiphany when I met the other two founders who incidentally were in the same situation as mine. That’s when our energies collided, and we conceptualized what soon became Diyotta. The timing of our collaboration was perfect because the industry witnessed a paradigm shift — moving from traditional data storage and processing to a more modern outlook with Hado and BI Data. So, we wanted to go all out. We discussed with our families about quitting our jobs and commencing this new journey.
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Q| I would like to know about Diyotta's product, what it offers, and the technologies that empower it. As I had spent 15 years in the data architecture field, witnessed the evolution of data management, data practices, business intelligence, I came to the realization that there was an acute gap in how the data was processed. And this exact thought was what gave birth to Diyotta. We were looking at a system that will evolve and remain modern as data volumes become larger. The only way to do this is by separating the logic and data. Diyotta's product was changing the equation - which was - generating the processing instruction and sending them to where data is residing thereby leveraging the compute power of the destination
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“ Diyotta’s product was changing the equation which was - generating the processing instruction and sending them to where data is residing thereby leveraging the compute power of the destination system “. system. I think this idea was what was revolutionary about the product. This approach according to me was an architectural revolution. And after all these successful years, Diyotta has been acquired by ThoughtSpot.
Q| When you started Diyotta, what were the major challenges in terms of competition, human resources, and the market size? In the world of startup and enterprise B2B - nobody wants to put their risk on new technology. They want to make sure that the technology is mature. if it is a new concept, people sure like it but when it comes to deploying it, they want to take a look at the longevity cycle and how far the system is mature. That was the biggest challenge for me. When you bootstrap, you need to take care of sales, marketing, and every other sector, however, you don't have enough revenue. The finances are another big challenge. When you are trying to hire - you find that people don't understand the startup concept, or assume that they will never be paid. We took care of this challenge by going after people who work for passion and not money entirely. We found people who wanted to add experience to their resumes and not just big brands. As far as competition is concerned, we were pretty much non-existent for a long time. Unless and until you hit the news, spread the word, and make people you exist, I don't think the big companies and competitors really care.
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“When you bootstrap, you need to take care of sales, marketing, and every other sector”.
Q | How did you onboard the first few customers and from there on what strategies did you adopt to scale up the company? For a startup, their first customers are everything. You learn a lot from the first few guys- from how you want to sell your product, deploy it, how you want to price it, documentation around the product, packaging, and support. You learn a lot of things. For them, you are a product and you cannot make excuses just because you are a startup. Your product and service delivery has to be top-notch. You need to standardize everything. That's where scalability
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“how you want to sell your product, deploy it, how you want to price it, documentation around the product, packaging, and support. You learn a lot of things. For them, you are a product and you cannot make excuses just because you are a startup”. comes into the picture- build a strategy and a support team. When you actually start making sales, is when you will realize several newer challenges that might crop up and you ultimately learn from it all.
things forward. I must say that they were very encouraging; they also agreed to provide product direction, keep us updated with the latest trends, etc. However, everything came with a price. We signed a twoyear contract at a huge price. We didn’t have that kind of money back then. They offered several other services, and everything cost a lot of money. You may be of the opinion that some companies may help you; instead, they can mislead you. My response
Q| Between starting up and scaling up a startup, what do you think are the most common mistakes an entrepreneur makes, and tell us about a few mistakes you made in your journey? The ability to make decisions quickly — can lead you in the right or not so right direction. But at least you took a call! When we started, we had to deliver our first POC with our only client — Clarity Telecom. I quickly decided to spend the time and effort
to fly to their head office in Kuala Lumpur. We won that deal. If I had evaded the decision-making process or waited for them to make the call, things might have gone the other way. In the early days,
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I religiously followed a leading analyst firm in the US. All the clients we approached asked us whether we
are approved by the analyst firm. We were not. So, I decided to speak to the officials at that firm to take
to the question is a two-point answer: do not get advice from people you don’t know. Second -only take the direction with your solicitation. Now I realize that I should not have listened to that analyst firm.
Q| You successfully scaled up and sold your company, tell us how did it come about and how difficult it was to make such a decision For any entrepreneur, this could be something they thought about when they started the company. If you are an entrepreneur and you don't have an exit strategy then you are not an entrepreneur. You know it is your baby
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that you have to give away someday. That's the bitter truth and every entrepreneur has to have that mindset. Everything you do for the company, you need to make sure your company can be sold on the marketplace and is sellable. I mean this not from a material aspect but more to do with present ability and finances. Are you capturing your goal, checking the balance sheet, revenue evaluation, how you position yourself, the company's growth and work cycle?
Always ask yourself - if someone is looking at your company, how they will value it?
How do you, as a leader, ensure that the customers and the employees both remain satisfied most of the times, which obviously is a very difficult objective to achieve and maintain They are two different domains. Customers will always ask you for something and you need to find solutions for the problems. There have been times when we have had all hands on deck to complete tasks. End of the day, your success is based on your customer's success. That's the thought I have ingrained in the members of the company. That's why we are here. The customer-centric approach is what defines us. Companies like Amazon run
with a complete customer focus and they are such winners. Whether it is buying a product, customer support, or returns - everything about them is about their customers. But having said all that, you need to make sure that you don't put your team under the bus. So balance it out. They are part of the family, they are part of the game and they matter. You have
“End of the day, your success is based on your customer’s success”.
to take care of your people and they need to feel the ownership of the company for them to put their heart and soul. I personally would spend one on one with several employees and make them feel included. Techfastly | July 2021 | P- 55
What do you think Diyotta's roadmap looks like in the next five years to come? We have been acquired so there is no roadmap for Diyotta anymore.
“If you, as an entrepreneur, are trying to keep the process organic, then the only way to do it is by bootstrapping.
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What message do you have for entrepreneurs that are starting out? What should be the best practices they should follow to ensure they are on the right track? I would tell them to bootstrap as long as they can. Diyotta is the most prominent example of that. If you, as an entrepreneur, are trying to keep the process organic, then the only way to do it is by bootstrapping. Bring in external funding only when you are looking to scale the business. Otherwise, bootstrap as long as you can.
The last question: what do you think about cryptocurrencies? I am not an expert on this but there is a demand and there could be some hype too. People are investing without knowing what it is. But there could be a time when it becomes a more accepted way of doing transactions when it becomes more visible. Eventually, it may become regular. There are a few positive and negative aspects of it but one should look at the positive rather than the negative.
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Sanjay Vyas CEO and Co-Founder of Diyotta
NFT’s – A 101 On Non-Fungible Tokens
Barkha Sheth
If you belong to the group of uninitiated who have been left scratching their heads on the latest cryptocurrency phenomenon, then this space is for you. Here is a complete 101 rundown of everything you need to know about this new trend in intellectual ownership.
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Lately, everyone seems to have a question on NFT’s. The trend seems to have come out of the ether and rocketed to stardom. After the 254-year-old auction house, Christie’s recently sold Beeple’s NFT artwork ‘Everydays – The First 1000 Days’ for an eyewatering $69.3 million, the NFT marketplace has become hotter than a boiling kettle. Here is the thing, though – unlike the ‘Mona Lisa’, Beeple’s artwork won’t be sitting on a collector’s physical wall somewhere. It is a ‘jpg’ file, of course. There is also nothing stopping someone from right-clicking and saving the file to their desktop countless times. It’s usually somewhere after this revelation that curiosity turns to a head-scratching, eyebrow-raising ‘Huh!’ of a moment. But there is certainly some substance to the basic idea, one that goes beyond CyberKitties and wacky Digi-art (don’t worry, it’s all explained). Here is everything about NFT’s and why some of the worlds leading crypto-enthusiasts are hoping to take it mainstream.
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In Economics, a fungible asset is referred to as something that can be readily exchanged with another product possessing the same properties and an equivalent value. A $20 note can be exchanged for two $10 notes. Similarly, a 4 lb bag of almonds can be exchanged for two 2lb bags of almonds. However, if something is non-fungible, this is impossible - it means it has unique properties, so it cannot be interchanged with something else. It could be a house, the chair you sit on or even the infamous painting of the Mona Lisa, which, as we all know, is one of a kind. You could
buy a print of the portrait or even download it innumerable times; however, there is only one original Mona Lisa.
So, what are NonFungible Tokens (NFT)? Non-fungible tokens (or NFTs) are unique blockchain-based tokens; in other words, they are essentially a certificate of authenticity. They can be used to represent the genuineness and the ownership of almost anything, including physical
assets. Most tokens are stored on Etherums blockchains, but some other blockchains like TRON, Tezos and NEO also support NFTs. By storing it on the blockchain, artists, celebrities and collectors, establish ownership on a publicly held encrypted ledger secured by blockchain’s powerful crypto technology which is a proven ownership and authentication enabler. The NFT is coded to contain specific data relating to its creation, transaction history, and associated timestamps. Bear in mind, though, that the same asset can be associated with several NFT’s, but they are still “non-fungible,” which means they are unique and cannot be interchanged.
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ince NFT’s are used to embody ownership of items, they let us tokenise things like art, collectables, real estate and most recently, diamonds. They can only have one official owner at a time, and they’re secured by the blockchain – no one can modify the record of ownership or copy/paste a new NFT into existence. With the increasing expansion of our digital presence, video games, digital artwork, logos, photos, music, and a lot more has gone electronic over the internet. Data, including spreadsheets, counts as one such asset. As with all digital assets – we have to navigate through the legal right to use that resource. Enter the idea of NFT – Complement digital assets with the security of cryptocurrency. In essence, a buyer of an NFT gets a digital asset, with proof of authenticity, hackerproof encryption, plus legal rights over its use, in one transaction.
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How do
NFTs Work? NFT’s have essentially become a much-needed gateway, for artists and collectors, to a democratised market for owning, selling, and buying rare assets. For investors, and cryptoenthusiasts its become another way to cash in on the digital currency boom.
NFT’s have been around for a few years. In late 2017 CryptoKitties, became the first project to take NFT’s mainstream. It essentially allowed people to buy, sell and breed digital cats. From there, NFT’s went through multiple iterations in gaming like Kitty Race and Hot Potatoes. Sometime in late 2018-2019, with a decline or perhaps saturation of the interest in the games, NFT’s went through another build cycle. NonFungible.com started a tracking platform for NFT markets and actively monitored the trend and their “blue book” - a reference book of value of NFT assets. The website also helped buyers determine whether there was adequate liquidity for the items they were interested in. This helped in the creation of a new asset class – Non-Fungibles.
Where did NFT’s come from? Around this time, the art world took notice, and digital art happened to be the right fit for this new market. The launch of NFT minting platforms made the market a lot more accessible. By 2020, featurerich platforms like Rarible and Opensea, allowed anyone to mint NFT’s at a fraction of a cost. Off late, OpenSea removed the need to pay ‘gas cost’ to mint them, making NFT creation free for anyone with the right tools.
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So, NFT’s are all about digital art? Not really. NFT’s can be used to tokenise any digital object that represents both tangible and intangible items, including • Art (Physical or digital, though digital seems to be more popular) • Collectables, think NBA and Pokemon Cards • GIF’s • Video game skins and Avatars • Designer sneakers • Videos & Music • Real Estate • Jewellery and more Tweets count, too - Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey sold his first-ever tweet as an NFT for more than $2.9 million. So do Diamonds! A Dubai-based company ‘Icecap LLC.’ recently launched their tokenised “Icecap Collectibles”,
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a collection of NFT based high-end natural and rare coloured diamonds. Icecap’s diamond tokens are traded on the world’s largest NFT exchange, OpenSea.io. A buyer can hold the token as an investment, sell the token to liquidate, or redeem the token and take delivery of the physical diamond itself—which can later be re-tokenised if desired.
If you decide to go ahead and create your very own digital art/ video to auction, then here’s what you need to do. 1. Select the blockchain that will host the token for your digital asset. As mentioned previously, apart from Ethereum, options include Binance Smart Chain, Tron, Tezos, Polkadot and a few more. Ethereum, by far, is the most popular. Do note that once you mint (create) your NFT on any of the blockchains listed above, it is most likely impossible to transfer them or sell them on other blockchains. Hence, take the time to research the pros and cons of each blockchain’s NFT ecosystem. 2. Once you decide to go with a blockchain, you will need a wallet that supports NFTs, and an account on that cryptocurrency-focused NFT marketplace. Some examples of wallets that are compatible with Ethereum, for instance, are Metamask, Trust Wallet, and Coinbase. 3. Go to one of the marketplaces that support your chosen blockchain – Opensea.io or Rarible (for Ethereum), and follow the creative prompts. Once you upload your file, click the “Mint NFT” button. Sign your NFT: Your wallet will prompt you to “Sign” the transaction. In the same way that a painter signs a canvas to confirm its authenticity, you can do the same with your wallet.
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How do I create an NFT? Minting your own NFTs is almost as easy as creating an account and uploading products on any of the traditional online marketplaces
If you’re keen to start your own NFT collection, you’ll need to acquire some essential items: 1. First, you’ll need to get a digital wallet that allows you to store NFTs and cryptocurrencies. You will obviously need to convert your dollars to a cryptocurrency, depending on what currencies your NFT provider accepts. You can buy crypto using a credit card on platforms like Coinbase, Kraken, eToro and even PayPal and Robinhood. You’ll then be able to move it from the exchange to your wallet of choice. 2. Once you have your wallet set up and funded, there’s no shortage of NFT sites to shop. Currently, the largest NFT marketplaces are - OpenSea.io, Rarible, and Foundation. In marketplaces like ‘Foundation’, artists must receive “upvotes” to get featured or invite fellow creators to post their art. This makes the community a bit more exclusive. 3. The next step is all about opening your wallet (digitally, of course) and spending on what you like*.
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How do I buy NFT’s?
How do I transfer a NFT? before that). And a lot of millennials are making this their sole source of income. However, the entire idea of NFT is built on the premise of rarity and bragging rights. As an investment course, the product you own is worth eventually only as much as its demand.
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Much like sending Bitcoin or any
How do I transfer a NFT? transferring ownercryptocurrency,
ship of an NFT requires a blockchain transaction that can be authorised only by the NFT owner’s private key. Moving across blockchains is still tricky, so the transaction will have to remain in the original blockchain.
Where to from here? As the NFT trend picks up steam, it’s also drawing in curious new buyers and traditional artists who might otherwise have stayed away. Sotheby’s recently announced its second curated auction of NFT’s. Christie’s became the first auction house to have sold a purely digital NFT (it did sell a token and a physical painting
At the same time, concerns over environmental impacts, mining and trading cryptocurrencies are taking centre stage. Furthermore, the market of NFT’s is directly linked to the popularity of crypto, which has torpedoed to new heights in the last few months. Any pullback in that market could have a spillover effect. Whether all this affects the popularity of NFT, only time will tell. The question then remains - Are NFTs a passing fad? Who knows! But even with no crystal ball in hand, this is for sure – NFT’s have opened a very significant gateway in the creative world by helping artists sell their work directly to people who want and appreciate them. That trend is certainly here to stay.
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“Caveat Emptor - Since NFT’s are still relatively new, the marketplace is a bit unregulated, and it may be wise to research thoroughly and give due consideration before investing.”
All You Need to Know
Anjali Prabhanjanan
About StopElon Coins What is StopElon?
A new cryptocurrency called StopElon coins surges after bitcoin backlash by Tesla Founder and CEO, Elon Musk. This project aims to raise enough money to take control of Tesla stock. This new cryptocurrency has grown by 1,800% in value within 24 hours as part of a backlash against Elon, who had a greater influence on bitcoin running upwards with a series of tweets via his Twitter account. Earlier, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO was considered an ally by the cryptocurrency faithful as the firm was accepting bitcoin payments. However, some changed their minds after Musk revealed that Tesla would no longer be accepting payments in bitcoin. This incident prompted them to launch their own protest cryptocurrency- with the ultimate goal of taking control of Tesla.
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StopElon coins emerged as a token minted on the Binance Smart Chain. The value of this latest protest crypto coin has increased from $0.0000019 to $0.00003679 in just 24 hours. Though that is still closely worth nothing as a single US dollar could buy 27,180 $StopElon coins, as per the Dogecoin enthusiasts when it comes to investing- it is the gains that matter over the size of an individual coin price.
rest, about 5% each for the wallet and marketing of the developer.
StopElon has already started accumulating wider value with a market cap of above $17 million after two days. The total StopElon supply shows nearly 50% of coins made available for purchase while about 40% has been burned and removed from the circulation. And for the
However, all this changed when Elon shared that Tesla had changed its viewpoint on bitcoin considering the impact on the environment due to its energy-intensive mining model. He tweeted that Tesla
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will no longer accept BTC as payment. The company will wait to transact using cryptocurrency in the future The official website of when “mining bitcoins StopElon lists ambitious, albeit transitions to more sustainable appropriately meme-like goals energy.” for this project protesting Musk. It includes creating Just as the original enough value to buy Tesla announcement of Tesla in stock, with the ultimate plan January 2021 helped send to purchase full control of the Bitcoin’s price soaring to new company owned by Elon Musk. heights, their reversal tweet led to crashing the value of Before the Tesla news of bitcoins by 22%. Now the no more accepting current value of BTC is around bitcoin payments, $43,386 and many other top the Dogecoin-loving cryptocurrency performers Musk was seen have followed suit. as an incredibly influential, memeSince then, Musk has affirmed sharing billionaire his belief in the potential of adored among crypto cryptocurrencies and tweeted enthusiasts. Tesla’s working with Dogecoin move in January to developers to improve its buy up $1.5 billion transaction efficiency. Though worth of bitcoin (BTC) not all cryptocurrency has and also accept the similar kind of energycryptocurrency as intensive mining demands, payment for electric some alternative eco-friendly cars seemed to affirm coins by designs include Chia this notion. (XCH) and Nano (NANO).
Story of StopElon Creation StopElon is a new cryptocurrency with one aim: to stop Elon Musk from manipulating the crypto market with his tweets. After Elon Musk’s latest tweets caused a drop in bitcoin prices people have realized that he must be stopped. StopElon is seen more as a protest than a cryptocurrency.
For the past few months, Elon Musk has influenced the crypto market as per his will. StopElon is here to put an end to that. The price of StopElon has surged by 550% with the current market cap at $13 million and it seems this will not stop until it ousts Elon Musk as the CEO of Tesla.
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How to buy StopElon coin?
PANCAKESWAP
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StopElon coin is available on Pancakeswap, to buy the tokens you’ll need BNB. Purchase BNB from binance.com. Now, you need a wallet to store your StopElon coins, we suggest metamask.io. Go to Pancakeswap using the link, ensure that the selected currencies are BNB and StopElon. Enter the amount of token you would like to purchase, then click on the swap button. Congrats now you have successfully bought $StopElon crypto. You can check the latest prices of StopElon tokens at poocoin.app or dex.guru.
StopElon Tokenomics StopElon has a total supply of 1,000,000,000,000 $StopElon tokens. Being a deflationary currency no more StopElon coins will be minted. Each transaction of StopElon has a 10% tax. Half the tax is automatically added to the liquidity pool and the other half goes to the holders of the coin. StopElon is currently trading at $0.0000341507 which has increased from $0.00001607 in just 24 hours. Total holdings of StopElon are worth 870.39 BNB ($370,838), and the current market cap is $17 million.
Each transaction of StopElon has a 10% tax. Half the tax is automatically added to the liquidity pool and the other half goes to the holders of the coin.
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Bottom Line $StopElon is the new cryptocurrency being created on the blockchain Binance Smart Chain which is currently trading at around 0.00005600 with a market capitalization of approximately $30 million. Since the launch of this new crypto coin, other cryptocurrencies from bitcoin including Ethereum to Dogecoins had massively tanked after Elon Musk tweeted that his company will no longer accept bitcoin for transactions due to their energy-intensive mining model. His tweets have caused a sharp decline in crypto assets. It is in this backdrop that a set of crypto traders has launched $StopElon, whose prices are claimed to be not controlled by the tweets from Elon Musk. They call themselves a community created to destroy the biggest market manipulator- Musk. Anyone with a bit of critical thinking can see through Musk’s lies, as has been trying to pump cryptocurrency for ages with his tweets, and even going to Saturday Night Live (SNL) as a final resort to get Dogecoin up. He is toying with people’s portfolios like the narcissistic billionaire he is and always will be, says the official website of StopElon. And this what created the $StopElon with the website saying where we get rich, without anyone controlling our fate except ourselves. Techfastly | July 2021 | P- 73
According to a cryptocurrency enthusiast working in the field of decentralized finance, this is another meme coin created by some random traders and serves no purpose. It has become a fashion to hate Musk after his series of irresponsible tweets on cryptocurrency that led to him losing his credibility. Some people want to express dissent while making money, and they are now doing so by actively trading $StopElon coins.
Cloud computing is all about computer system resources Author Name available on-demand, especially data storage and computing power, without direct active management from the user. The word refers to data centers that are accessible to a large number of people via the internet. Customers may use cloud computing to store data and run applications on a virtual computing system. Despite the several advantages that cloud services provide, it also raises some unique security issues because cloud providers are required to access client data without being wholly trusted. Cloud technology has influenced our lives in more ways than we know, from allowing remote access of data to digitalizing the educational system.
The ‘Everything’ guide to Cyber Attacks
Cloud Cryptography – Sai Srivani Mandapaka
The Solution to your Cloud Security
This technology can take your online business to new heights. But, wait! What about data security, which is a top concern in cloud adoption? The answer to this is cloud cryptography. A one-stop solution to all your cloud security problems. This article will talk about cloud cryptography, its importance, types of cloud securities, and the possible benefits. Techfastly | July 2021 | P- 74
Ralph Spencer Poore Cryptography Expert
“Cryptographic security measures best cover information in motion and information at rest”.
Cloud Cryptography
Cloud cryptography utilizes encryption methods to safeguard data that is stored in a cloud environment. It enables users to access shared cloud resources efficiently and securely, as all the data hosted by cloud providers is encrypted. Confidential information is protected using cloud cryptography without slowing down data sharing.
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Cryptography in the cloud environment makes it possible to protect sensitive data outside of your business IT network, where your physical supervision is not required. “Cryptographic security measures best
cover information in motion and information at rest,” says cryptography expert Ralph Spencer Poore.
How Does It Work? Cloud cryptography is based on encryption, a method of scrambling text into a mixed code called ciphertext, using algorithms and computers. The ciphertext can then be decoded with a sequence of bits and converted to plaintext utilizing an encryption key. Information at rest and information in transit are two forms of data that are protected using encryption. When data is processed electronically in the cloud platform through web applications, mobile devices, or computer hard drives, it is referred to as information at rest. On the other hand transit information,refers to data passing through an online medium such as browsers, emails, or applications. One of the following methods can be used to encrypt data:
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End-to-End EncryptionEnd-to-end encryption is the standard method for communication security. Only the sender and the targeted recipient(s) – and nobody else – have access to the data in an end-toend encrypted framework. The encrypted data on the server is not accessible to hackers or unauthorized third parties.The existence of a public-private key pair ensures the reliability of end-to-end encryption. This method, also known as asymmetric cryptography, encrypts and decrypts the message using different cryptographic keys. Public keys are commonly distributed and are used to encrypt or lock messages. Only the owner has access to the private keys, which can be used to decrypt or unlock the messages. Techfastly | July 2021 | P- 77
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re-Encrypted and Cloud-synced Data - There is software available to pre-encrypt data before it is transferred to the cloud, making it difficult to read for someone attempting to hack it. The data stored in Dropbox, Googledrive, and other supporting cloud folders are moved into a secure functioning called nCrypted cloud. It is an application in cloud to secure other cloud folders. It doesn’t encrypt anything by default; to encrypt and decrypt files within those directories, you need to do it manually. Few more applications that work similarly to nCrypted Cloud are Cryptomator and Encrypto.
File Encryption –When data is encrypted at rest, it prevents an unauthorized party from accessing the data it contains. For example, without any interference from the user, Google cloud secures all customer content collected at rest by using one or perhaps more encryption techniques. This prohibits intruders to access the information stored. Full Disk Encryption (FDE) - All files that are saved on an external drive are automatically protected. This is the most important strategy for securing computer hard drives. FDE encrypts all device data and transforms it into a format that can only be decrypted by the person who has the key to access the system. To reverse the conversion and make the data readable, an authentication key is used. FDE protects data and drives from unauthorized access.
FDE encrypts all device data and transforms it into a format that can only be decrypted by the person who has the key to access the system.
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How it secures C the data? To strike a balance between security and performance, various companies establish cryptographic protocols for cloud computing. It is unlikely to have physical power over cloud storage. The only way to keep a piece of information safe is to encrypt it while keeping hold of the cryptographic key. For cloud encryption, there are a variety of cryptographic keys to choose from. There are 3 significant algorithms used in cryptography that ensures cloud security.
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ryptography is a technique that uses codes to encrypt data and communications. Cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and Bitcoin might be familiar to you. Cryptography is used to validate asset transfers, monitor the production of additional units, and protect transactions in this interchangeable digital currency. By encrypting data stored in cloud services, cryptography provides the same level of security as cryptocurrencies. Surprisingly, cryptography can protect confidential cloud data without slowing down data transmission.
Symmetric Key
This algorithm encrypts and decrypts data with the same key. It does not necessitate a lot of processing power and is very effective in terms of encryption. Users can ensure authenticity and authorisation by using symmetrical systems, which have a two-way mechanism. The encrypted data is secured in the cloud platform and prohibited from decoding unless the user has the key. Asymmetric Key For encryption and decryption, this method employs various keys. Each recipient receives a private decryption key. The encryption key is normally associated with a single individual or organization. This type of algorithm is the safest since it needs both keys to access files and data stored in the cloud. Hashing One of the most critical aspects of blockchain security is hashing. Information is stored in blocks on the blockchain and linked together like a string or chain with cryptographic principles. A unique code or hash is allocated to each data block when it is added to the chain. Hashing is primarily used in databases to index and retrieve objects. It also encrypts and decrypts messages using two separate keys. A quicker data retrieval is possible in this case.
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“encryption key is normally associated with a single individual or organization.”
Benefits of Cloud Cryptography • Cloud cryptography ensures that consumer information is secure while maintaining confidentiality. • If an unauthorized personnel attempt to access the files, the organization is immediately notified. To avoid cyber threats, Receivers of information can discern whether the data is compromised, allowing for a speedy reaction and remedy to the attack. Also, the access needs the right cryptographic keys which is an already ensured protective measure. • When data is transferred from one device to another, encryption prevents it from being vulnerable to cyberattacks. • In today’s data-driven environment, cloud encryption allows organizations to be vigilant in their protection against security breaches and cyber threats, and it has become a necessity. • Since encryption complies with the restrictions imposed by organisations such as FISMA, FIPS, PCI/DSS, and HIPAA. Hence it is one of the safest methods for storing and transferring data.
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Conclusion Businesses and Organisations must take a data-centric approach to protect sensitive data. It helps them guard against advanced threats in the diverse and evolving environments of mobility, cloud computing, and virtualization. Companies can incorporate data security technologies that provide clear protection of sensitive data, such as authentication and cryptographic key management for cloud data. A comprehensive framework for cloud security features should also provide robust data security and strategic control capabilities. This can help organisations to use encryption for accomplishing security goals in a realistic, cost-effective, and comprehensive manner.
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According to Forbes, NASA confirmed that its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) was hacked in the year 2019. One of the biggest cyberattacks witnessed till now. Cyber-attacks have become the biggest social menace for many corporations. It can cost millions to big companies and harm their reputation in the corporate world. Not only large organizations, but it has also affected many individuals. This article will explain everything you need to know about cyberattacks, what they are, types of cyberattacks, major causes of cyberattacks, and how to prevent them.
The ‘Everything’ guide to Cyber Attacks
Author Name
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What is a Cyber Attack? In simple words, crashing into someone’s system using unfair means could be an example of a cyberattack. The principal aim of the attacker is to misuse someone’s credentials and valuable data. The tools used for this purpose are referred to as cyberweapons. The attacker can either be an individual or a group of people.
Cyberattacks have been increasing, and to date, no one has escaped its grip. From common people to big corporations like Google, Yahoo, etc., everyone got engulfed by it.
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Some common types of CyberAttacks are listed below:
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• Malware - Malware is malicious software that can harm a computer system or a network. There is a wide range of malware, including Trojan horses, worms, ransomware, adware, computer viruses, spyware, etc. • Phishing - A fraudulent message, e-mail, or phone call aiming at revealing sensitive information from people can be termed Phishing. It is the most common type of cyberattack. These attacks are easy to judge as the spoofed messages or emails have some inadequacy like incorrect domain name or spelling mistakes. • Denial-of-service attack (DoS) - As the name suggests, in this type of attack, the owner of the system is denied access to it. It is generally challenging to get rid of this type of attack as it originates from a variety of sources, and tackling only one source won’t be enough.
• SQL Injection - In this type of cyberattack, the web applications which use SQL are targeted. The statistics show that SQL injection now represents nearly two-thirds (65.1%) of all web application attacks. That’s a sharp increase from 44% of web application layer attacks that SQL Injection represented just two years ago. • Zero-day exploit - Zero-day, which means it does not even take a day for the attacker to exploit a user in this attack. It occurs the same day on which a system vulnerability is caught. And before it is cured, it gets exploited by the attacker. • Man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack - This attack is observed in cryptography, where a hacker enters a conversation and manipulates it. Still, the two parties believe that they are directly conversing with each other. According to Netcraft, man-in-the-middle attacks were thought to pose a threat to 95% of HTTPS servers in 2016. More than one-third of exploitation of inadvertent weaknesses involved MitM attacks, according to IBM’s X- Force Threat Intelligence Index of 2018.
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Most catastrophic cyberattacks of the decade The past decade has witnessed a tremendous increase in cyberattacks. These cyberattacks have shaken the roots of some popular organizations. Below are a few incidents of cyberattack that took place in past few years: Twitter - The famous social networking site Twitter was hacked in July 2020. One hundred twenty million user accounts were hacked, including past presidents of the US and famous personalities like Elon Musk. The hacker transferred more than $100,000 in Bitcoins to his account. This was a Phishing attack. Adobe Acrobat- The popular software used for editing PDF files, Adobe Acrobat was hacked in October 2013. One fifty-three million user records were hacked. It cost the company 2 million dollars. Weeks of research has shown that many credentials of people like passwords, credit and debit information was exposed in this hack. Yahoo- One of the internet’s leading search engines, Yahoo was hacked in 2013 and 2014. One million accounts were hacked in 2013, and three million accounts were hacked in the year 2014 by a different hacker. It cost the company three hundred fifty million dollars. The timing of the hack being announced was terrible, as it was when Yahoo was in the process of being acquired by Verizon. Techfastly | July 2021 | P- 87
Dub smash- A New York-based video messaging platform, Dub smash was hacked in December 2018. One sixty-two million user accounts were hacked. It acknowledged the data breach and information being sold but could not find a valid reason for the breach and exactly how many users got affected. LinkedIn- A leading social media platform for business associates, Linkedin was hacked in 201516. Three million user accounts were hacked in 2015 and credentials were sold to Russian hacker forums, and one hundred sixty-five million user accounts were hacked in 2016 by the same hacker who sold data for five bitcoins. LinkedIn acknowledged the data breach and reset the passwords of the affected accounts. Canva- A famous Australian graphic designing software, Canva was hacked in May 2019. One thirty-seven million user accounts were hacked. A post by Canva said that the hackers were able to see but not steal the data. Later the accounts with stolen passwords were decrypted, and the users were notified to reset their passwords using OAuth tokens. The attacker claimed to have stolen OAuth tokens of users who logged in using google accounts.
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System vulnerabilities
System vulnerabilities are the weaknesses in a system that make it easier for attacks and data breaches. As soon as the attacker finds out a vulnerability in a system, they attack it and exploit the data.
Easy Accessibility
The more accessible the system will be, the much less time it will take for the hacker to breach data. It’s not very difficult for the attackers to crack a code to get access to a system. “123456” is the most commonly used password in 2020, with 2,543,285 people using it.
Human Error
According to a study by IBM, human error is the major cause of 95% of cybersecurity breaches. If we eliminate human error, 19 out of 20 cyber breaches can be avoided entirely.
BYOD Policies
Bring-Your-Own-Device policies are still prevailing in many companies and are a significant cause of cyber threats. Under this policy, the employees use the same system for their personal and professional work. The employee might surf on a website that is not trustworthy. Malicious sites can hack the system and breach out some company’s critical credentials, which could create a big problem.
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6-year-old Kevin Mitnick executed the first-ever cyberattack in 1976. He hacked into The Ark, a computer at the Digital Equipment Corporation; this was the first time the world was introduced to cybercrimes. Since then, these cases have only been increasing. There are over 2200 cyber-attacks per day, which breaks down to one cyber attack every 39 seconds. What might be the reason for the proliferation of cybercrimes at such mind-wrecking rates? The cybercriminals are always on the outlook of making tons of money by breaching data. Following are some of the prime causes of cyberattacks:-
Causes of
Cyber Attacks
cybercriminal are significantly less. The updated system and latest software offer better security services.
Preventions of Cyber Attacks
Endpoint Protection When laptops, mobile phones, tablets, etc., are connected to the systems used for professional work, there is an increase in the pathways leading hackers to attack the network. Certain endpoint protection platforms are quick at detecting, analyzing, and blocking suspicious networks. These software will protect your system from the attacker. Firewall Installation A firewall is a network security device
Keeping software and system updated Ignore no update notifications! When you receive an update notification, download the update immediately. When you have an updated system, the chances of getting attacked by a
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that acts as a barrier between the system and the external sources. It filters out the sources trying to get unauthorized access to a computer or a network system. A firewall can identify a malicious code and can stop it from reaching the system.
Data Backup When a system is attacked, it could lead to loss of data. Backing up data is an advantageous way of avoiding the crucial data files. Identity & Access Management A company can prevent data breaches by limiting the access that they have given to the employees. The employees should only get access to the system they are working on and not more than that. There can be an insider attack that can cause data breaches.
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Conclusion The COVID upsurge has forced each of us to work from home, consequently increasing vulnerability to cyberattacks. Thus, having a reliable security framework in place is of paramount importance. Securing your personal data as well as enterprise information is important, since both are equally susceptible to cyber attacks. And thus, pose a threat to the confidentiality of the information. Following the preventive measures that we discussed earlier, you can definitely mitigate the risk of cyber attack to a very large extent, if not completely. You should be very proactive while dealing with any sensitive data or information. Using strong passwords, keeping all personal information in encrypted folders, and following the security policies can definitely save you from falling prey to cyber attacks.
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