Most businesses collect information about their clients on each website visit and store it using a piece of text (commonly known as “cookie”) stored on user’s computer by their web browser. On the average, websites have 10 to 20 cookies but some of the big corporations with multiple websites may even have thousands of cookies in use. Now, the companies operating within European Union need to comply with a new internet privacy law stating that internet users must give their consent before cookies store their web surfing activities.

Cookies can track the websites that the customer visits or the products that he or she buys online and then pass this valuable information on to advertising companies and other third parties. Internet companies, such as Google, Amazon or Facebook, and advertisers are worried that the new regulations could seriously affect their business model that use targeted adverts.

The EU privacy law affects all the companies that do business online. Penalties up to £500.000 can be imposed on the firms that fail to comply. However, the UK government has decided to give businesses one year to comply as they want the law to be phased in rather than implemented on deadline. Christopher Graham, information commissioner at Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) warned: “Those who choose to do nothing will have their lack of action taken into account when we begin formal enforcement of the rules.”

The new legislation aims at improving the control individuals hold over their personal data so they can use the internet with confidence. Government is currently in talks with web browser providers such as Google and Mozilla about their default browser settings which enable users to block cookies. Ben Rapp, CEO at Managed Networks commented: “This marks the third significant direct regulation of websites since 2002, yet most websites still fail to comply with the 2002 EC e-commerce directive and the 2007 Companies Act. These regulations are easy to ignore but have real teeth, including significant possible fines. B2C businesses in particular should use this latest deadline to drive a proper check of their website and email compliance.”

Internet companies will not keen on loosing the very valuable customer’s information that drives their revenue. There is a possibility that some companies will host their websites outside the UK and European Union to avoid new law enforcing stricter cookie rules. Time will reveal whether ne EU regulations are going to change anything and secure customer’s privacy.

The big businesses have always lead the way, as they are richer and more powerful than small and medium-sized enterprises. However, the politicians are convinced that SMEs, rather than large corporations are going to provide the economy with a much-needed growth. It is believed that thanks to their innovative approach SMEs are able to take up the slack caused by savage cutback in public sector.

Large companies with their impressive resources are still substantially more advantageous and attract more attention than small and medium firms. However, smaller companies also play a significant role as they constantly come up with innovative ideas of  their products, services and ways of running a business. Researchers stress that SMEs can help economy to grow again, but they won’t be able to do so on their own. They will collaborate with other businesses to achieve better results.

Outsourcing wasn’t that popular a few years back. Because of the recession and the need to save money, businesses have switched to collaborate. Now they outsource many of their operations like information technology support or administration work. That solution enables them to hire people they really need and only they need them. The rapid development of internet and crowdsourcing  techniques will make the collaborations become even more widespread.

Many large corporations consider SMEs as a potential threat, rather than as a potential partner. However, some of the big companies like Procter and Gamble, Pfizer or Cisco are already looking for ideas from small medium enterprises. Pharmaceutical companies, such as Pfizer which spend incredible amount of money on Research and Development, are cutting down on such facilities and are turning to university labs and various small operations to look for ideas. Consumer product giant P&G realised it cannot come up with all the answers it needs and is welcoming different ideas from independent individuals and companies. Cisco is appreciating smaller businesses with its Business Heroes campaign. The company believes that small and medium-seized enterprises are the backbone of the economy and the most important creators of new jobs and economic wealth.

The public sector is under unprecedented pressure to save money and do more for less. Following the example of big businesses it can also gain by using SMEs services.

Microsoft announced that it s going to buy Skype for 8.5 billion US dollars (£5bn) and it is going to be the biggest takeover deal in giant’s history. As soon as the information appeared, it sparked mixed opinions and speculation. The question is whether the Microsoft has made the right move and if Skype is really worth $8.5 bn?

Skype was founded in 2003 by Nikklas Zennströms from Sweden and Janus Friis from Denmark. The Skype software was developed by three Estonians- Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu an Jaan Tallinn, people who were also behind famous peer-to-peer file sharing software Kazaa. On October 2005 Skype was purchased by eBay for $2.6 billion. In 2009 eBay announced the sell 70 per cent of Skype to Silver Lake Partners for approximately $2billion, valuing entire business at $2.75 billion.

Last year, Skype had revenue of $860 million, with an operating profit of $264 million. Overall, Skype made a loss of  $7 million and had a long-term debt of $686 million.

There have been reports that Facebook and Google were interested in partnering with or even buying Skype, for the price around $3-4 billion. Microsoft’s $8.5 billion purchase price is a huge premium over other deals. Skype’s purchase would be Microsoft’s biggest to date.

Many believe that Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer highly overpaid for Skype acquisition. The question is why Microsoft decided to buy a business that has changed owners so many times and never made money and on top of it has a substantial debt. The price tag is three times what Skype fetched 18 months ago. Ballmer defended the purchase in an interview, saying that it will make Microsoft “more ambitious, do more things”. Microsoft explains that they want to reach professional users.

Microsoft has already developed a software that is considered to overlap with Skype. Windows Live Messenger has around 330 million active users each month and offers free instant messaging and voice- and video chat. Microsoft also has an equivalent corporate-oriented communicator, Lync 2010, allowing the companies to create private networks.

Skype has around 700 million users and 124 million active users each month, its features are broadly similar to those found ion Windows Live Messenger. Although the Skype user base is significantly smaller than Windows Messenger’s one, it has one big advantage- about 8 million users pay for the service. Skype integrates telephone connectivity and is able to make inbound and outbound calls and those are paid services, its online services are all for free.

The Skype telephony infrastructure would be a valuable addition to Windows Live Messenger/Lync platform. Its functionality could also be deployed in Windows Phones, revolutionising the mobile phones market. However, the purchase price is phenomenal and many believe that Microsoft could build equivalent telephony infrastructure for much less. According to Peter Bright from Ars Technica, even the access to paying customers doesn’t justify the $8.5 billion deal, “The terms of the deal mean that for each Skype customer, Microsoft is paying about $1,000. And on average, those customers are worth a profit of about $30, presuming most of Skype’s income comes from subscriptions and call charges. That’s a huge disparity,” said Bright.

It is also believed that Microsoft bought Skype just to keep it out of reach of Google and Facebook. Skype technology and user base may not be worth $8.5 billion, but time will reveal whether it was a good move from strategic point of view and whether Microsoft will gain a competitive advantage.

You may have the most appealing website and sell the most desirable products, it will serve for nothing unless your business venture stands out on search engines. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is vital to a business because it generates 90% of all the online traffic. There are more that 250m websites worldwide, even the smallest business needs to take on SEO to be noticed. The research shows that websites that appear in top three places  of the search engine’s results attract 98% of all the web traffic. People not very often look at the second results page or beyond.

Search Engine Optimisation is the method of analysing and constructing individual web pages and entire sites to get them discovered, analysed and indexed by various search engines. The main purpose of SEO is to make the content of the website more relevant, more easily read by search engines and their indexing software. How exactly search engines arrive at their list of most relevant sites is a secret, as the algorithms are constantly being tweaked in. However, the relevancy is mainly based on the content and on the number of sites that lead to your website.

“SEO is about reverse engineering to try to trick Google into thinking you are the most relevant site. Anybody can launch a website and the barriers to entry are low, so if your business relies on the web for customers you need to be proactive,” said Aneesh Varma, the co-founder of FabriQate, a creative digital agency in west London.

SEO can be very beneficial, especially for small and medium enterprises as the usually don’t have a big budget to advertise their products and services and on-line presence can lift their business at little cost. Here are a few tricks that can improve your search engine visibility:

1. Keywords in the URL- give your website (and your business) a name that describes what it does. That will encourage search engines to rate your web higher and will also make it easier for potential customers to find you. For example you are selling handmade earrings it would be better to name your website handmadearrings.co.uk than for example prettyjewellery.co.uk. Whenever you are creating a new sub-page, make sure it has a meaningful URL. Avoid the default URLs and use a structure containing links with keywords. For example www.managednetworks.co.uk/it-services/business-continuity URL indicates that the business is providing unique content.

2. Not only the name of your website is essential, its description matters too. Title containing keywords in itself always achieves a better rank, it should brief the service provided by your firm. Generally, use as many keywords as possible, include the words and phrases you wish to be known for into the content of your website. Take advantage of meta tags, which are information that you can write into the unseen instruction part of your website and are recognised by search engines as they trawl the internet looking for relevant sites.

3. Engage in social media- create a Facebook page and Twitter account and a blog for your business and link them to your website. Remember to try to generate original content and update social media platforms on the regular basis. You may also try to find some affiliates who will add a link to your website from their website in exchange for the same favour. Try to have links from site that matches the profile with your own services. It will boost your presence in the web and assist in establishing the authority of your domain.

Search Engine Optimisation can help your small medium business grow. All it takes is to be systematic and consequent in your on-line activity.

The debate around cloud services and their security has been on for a while. There is a huge schism between IT departments and business communities in terms of cloud services adoption.

The study carried out by Accenture, London School of Economics and Political Science’s Outsourcing Unit revealed that IT people see security and privacy as serious barriers in deploying cloud-based services while business communities perceive it as a big chance for improvement. Andrew Greenway, global cloud programme leader for Accenture commented: “Business people said they didn’t see security and privacy as an issue around cloud. IT people conversely saw data privacy, lock-in and security as much more of a problem. They also weren’t as convinced by the cloud as the business community, which has got increasingly frustrated with the speed of delivery of IT.”

Business communities look to increase the effectiveness and reduce costs and believe that cloud computing is a perfect solution. A report by Microsoft indicates that businesses which use cloud applications and services save on energy use and emissions. It translates into smaller carbon footprint for companies. Microsoft estimates that simply by switching to cloud services the emission of carbon can be reduced by 90 percent for small deployments of 100 users and between 30 to 60 percent for large deployment above 1000 employees.

However, over 40 percent of surveyed IT professionals believe risks far overweight benefits and only 10 percent said they would move mission critical applications to the cloud. The experts say that the gap between IT people and business communities needs to be narrowed down. Otherwise business people are going to bypass IT departments to buy services they desire but ultimately they both want to improve the company they work for.  “There is a need for IT to get with the programme and understand the world is going to be different and demand a much more transparent and agile method [of IT delivery] in the future. This is a major change in direction for IT that’s going to impact every organisation, public and private, and it could be a long journey,” said Greenway.

Switching to cloud computing appears to be inevitable, so the organisations need to start to adapt the changes and learn how to manage cloud coherently. IT and business people play different roles within a firm, they can bring with them different perspectives when it comes to cloud services. When a schism does emerge, the best approach is to engage in genuine conversation, to share views and considerations about how to move forward with cloud.

Just a week after Sony revealed that the PlayStation Network had been hacked and the details of 77milion customers had been accessed by the hackers, the company suspended the Sony Online Entertainment service and informed that the details of another 25 million users may be at risk. The question is whether the online service suppliers are able to provide their customers with the right protection? How Sony is going to deal with the problem to rebuild their clients trust?

 More that 100 million users have been potentially exposed to fraud as a result of PlayStation Network and Sony Online Entertainment Service hacking and it is believed to be one of the biggest data breaches in history. The stolen information includes users’ names, addresses, email addresses, passwords and possibly even their credit cards details. Ross Brewer, Vice President and Managing Director of International Market at LogRhythm said: “An incident this size is sure to have significant repercussions for Sony.” He also stressed that the relation with the existing customers have been damaged and the ability to attract new ones significantly reduced.

All the online service providers should ensure their users’ data is properly protected. If they fail to do so, their business will face very negative repercussions. However, if the data breach has already occurred, the companies need to act quickly, sensibly and effectively. The organisations need to re-evaluate their security controls to reduce or eliminate the risks.

In order to provide additional security to usernames and passwords, organisations can take a one-time password (OTP), using smartcard devices and tokens. Some gaming firms already require clients to use OTP devices to access their accounts or to make transactions. “OTP devices can easily be integrated into most gaming consoles, securing access to the gaming environment, account holder information and to ensure customer data does not fall into the wrong hands,” says Peter Regent, director of online authentication firm Gemalto.

Companies should continually monitor their IT infrastructure and the IT security industry to be hands-on with threats and new approaches to managing threats. There is no individual or organisation immune to hackers’ attack but implementing multi-layer authentication into security processes increases the fraud protection. Acorrding to Randy Abrams, director of technical education at security firm ESET, online service providers cannot prove that customer data is safe. There is no 100% security, there is only risk management.

Organisations need to make sure that their employers are aware of the security issues and provide them with the relevant training. Data breaches will occur but the mission is to reduce their frequency and impact. “In a complex, dynamic IT environment, only those organisations that create the right security policies and processes, and then enforce policy with the right automated controls to increase visibility of suspicious activity, can reduce attack and better safeguard the business,” says Rob Warmack, EMEA director for Tripwire.

Sony data breach is yet another proof that the hackers are more active, focused and resourceful than ever. Organisations need to work even harder to secure their networks and they need to assume that hacktivists’ groups keep on finding new ways around existing defences. To increase the effectiveness the security industry and users organisations need to work together to identify and tackle new threats.

Sony revealed it is initiating several measures to increase all aspects of PlayStation Network’s security and user’s personal data. It will include moving network infrastructure and datacentre to more secure location. The company also announced that it will not restore services until the security improvement systems are fully implemented. The company is said to handle the crisis situation well and is doing everything to win back the trust of their clients. However, many would ask why did it take a huge data breach to push the organisation to action. It would be so much easier (and cheaper) to prevent than to treat.