Ransomware attacks have developed in recent years from mere data breaches to sophisticated operations. These attacks often involve targeting organizations, and these cyber criminals have gone from a minor speck on the digital security radar — to a widespread and highly advanced type of cybercrime. Nowadays, businesses of all sizes and industries find themselves trapped in a game of digital chess. Their opponents use nefarious tactics to compromise essential and sensitive data, holding said data hostage for exorbitant ransoms, with ransomware attacks increasing 105% in 2021.

The difficult choice of whether to engage with hackers holding critical information hostage has repercussions beyond the digital sphere, challenging the ethical foundations of businesses and institutions. A thorough analysis of the ethics behind choosing to negotiate or not is necessary as businesses struggle with the conflicting demands of protecting their operations and honoring their ethical obligations.

The Case for Negotiation

As organizations confront the imminent threat of data loss, operational disruption, and potential harm to stakeholders that may be caused by ransomware, a compelling argument emerges in favor of engaging in negotiations. Therefore, we must examine the most effective techniques for mitigating the effects of ransomware attacks. Although it may appear counterintuitive to some, negotiation can be a useful strategy for safeguarding the interests of victims and the larger digital ecosystem.

• • Data Protection and Business Continuity: Because a business’s capacity to operate is significantly compromised when it is the target of ransomware, negotiation may provide enterprises access to crucial data and systems again, allowing them to resume operations quickly. Negotiation offers victims the opportunity to recover encrypted data while decreasing the impact on their everyday operations; this can be particularly crucial for medical institutions, emergency services, and other essential services that directly affect the safety and well-being of the general public.
    • Reducing Economic Impact: Organizations may suffer substantial financial losses due to ransomware attacks, including those related to downtime, damage to reputation, and potential legal consequences; such financial ramifications can be limited through negotiation. While it’s crucial to stress the need for cybersecurity precautions, bargaining can act as a backup plan to lessen firms’ burdens if all else fails.
      • Strategic Resource Allocation: The decision to negotiate with cybercriminals is complex and often influenced by resource constraints and cost considerations. Bargaining may be an effective tool for allocating resources, as negotiating for releasing valuable company assets can be less expensive than completely rebuilding systems. Organizations might choose negotiations as a strategic action that balances financial caution with the necessity of resuming operations.

Negotiation May Be a Bad Idea

In the intricate world of ransomware negotiations, a parallel argument emerges that raises questions on the ethics of the decision to engage with cybercriminals. Negotiating with cyber hackers raises a fundamental concern: the potential for organizations to reward criminal behavior inadvertently. Negotiation is a potential means of limiting losses and recovering invaluable data. However, many ethical considerations lie beneath the surface of possible relief, urging both caution and contemplation.

While the need to safeguard operations and stakeholders is of the utmost importance, the underlying ethical implications compel organizations to navigate this terrain with caution and foresight. From the troubling prospect of perpetuating criminal activities to legal liabilities, the decision to negotiate with cybercriminals or not emerges as much more complex as it has repercussions far beyond the immediate crisis.

• • • • Promises Not Kept: The first challenge in ransomware negotiation lies in the illusion of control. Organizations paying ransoms to retrieve their data may believe they have a guarantee of recovery. However, there is no assurance that cybercriminals will provide or delete stolen data and information. Businesses could pay substantial sums without recourse if the attackers renege on their promises.
    • • Legitimizing Criminal Behavior and Enabling a Vicious Cycle: Engaging in ransomware negotiation has broader implications for the cybersecurity landscape. It effectively legitimizes criminal behavior by demonstrating that ransomware attacks can yield financial gain, thus sending a dangerous message that encourages cybercriminals to continue their activities, knowing that victims might give in to their demands.

The potential for negotiation to start a vicious cycle is another of the most contentious aspects of negotiation. By succumbing to the attackers’ demands, organizations unintentionally provide money to criminal enterprises, allowing them to hone their strategies and initiate new campaigns.  This perpetuates a dangerous ecosystem and cycle where cybercriminals are financially rewarded for their illicit activities.

• • • • Undermining Law Enforcement Efforts: Negotiating ransomware can make it more challenging for law enforcement to identify and apprehend online perpetrators. The encrypted payment methods and anonymous networks utilized for negotiations make it tough for authorities to trace the flow of funds and identify the criminals behind the attacks. This makes it more challenging to hold wrongdoers accountable and break up criminal networks.

Exploring Alternatives– Proactive Measures

Ransomware attacks have evolved into a significant threat, demanding careful consideration of alternative strategies and proactive measures to mitigate their impact. Organizations must adopt a multifaceted approach that includes prevention, preparedness, and recovery rather than solely relying on negotiation. A business may be able to avoid having to decide whether or not to negotiate during a ransomware attack by investing heavily in their security, implementing effective data backup and recovery strategies, maintaining strong endpoint security, and threat intelligence & monitoring to reduce the risk of security breaches, and employee training to reduce the risk of human error.

The role of collaboration between governments, law enforcement, and businesses in preventing and addressing ransomware attacks can not be overstated. Organizations can navigate the aftermath of a ransomware attack with the aid of law enforcement agencies and legal professionals. Investigations are facilitated by reporting incidents to law enforcement, and legal advice can assist organizations in choosing the best course of action while abiding by regulatory requirements.

Conclusion

Ransomware negotiations present a complex ethical landscape where organizations must weigh their responsibilities to stakeholders, societal well-being, and the potential consequences of their decisions. While the moral dilemmas surrounding negotiations persist, businesses must consider both the short-term and long-term impacts of choosing to negotiate or not. As cyberattacks evolve and increase in both magnitude and prevalence, the ethical considerations surrounding ransomware negotiations will continue to challenge organizations, making it essential for them to navigate these complexities with vigilance and integrity.

Negotiation in ransomware situations is a nuanced strategy that must be considered in conjunction with robust cybersecurity measures. Although choosing to negotiate provides a pragmatic approach to address the immediate challenges posed by ransomware attacks, safeguarding data, business continuity, and economic stability, the technological and ethical challenges it presents cannot be ignored. By refraining from negotiation and redirecting efforts toward proactive cybersecurity measures and law enforcement collaboration, organizations can contribute to a more resilient digital landscape and send a clear message that criminal behavior will not be rewarded.

Featured Image Credit: Mikhail Nilov; Pexels; Thank you!

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Password-based authentication has always been a sore topic in enterprise cybersecurity. Passwords are inconvenient and hard to remember; this often leads employees to develop lousy password hygiene, using weak, easy-to-remember words or the same password across multiple online accounts.

Major Cause of Enterprise Data Breaches

Another too-oft-repeated no-no with passwords is writing them down in post-it notes, or storing them in insecure computer files. This practice sets the person up for the big issue of weak and stolen passwords to happen.

To prevent this issue, enterprises are fond of mandating different, more complex passwords for other online accounts.

When this is combined with the need to regularly change these passwords according to set data security suggestions and guidelines, passwords become too complex for employees to remember, and when they inevitably forget, employees tend to do what they see the most as a solution — and they call the help desk.

Forgetting a password is by far one of the most common reasons people reach out to the help desk.

The help desk is contacted all the time, regarding password issues. According to SLACK, help desks receive over 20 calls per user on average per year. A Gartner report also revealed that over 40% of all help desk tickets are related to password resets.

Employees and customers of an organization tend to see the help desk as the easiest and most efficient way to solve their problems regarding forgotten passwords or the need to change them rather than going through the inconvenient task of trying to remember them.

Lack of education (both technological and general) can mean that some users will still see a help desk call as the easiest and quickest way to solve their password-related problems.

Password resets may seem like an easy task, but it’s not a simple two-minute fix.

Instead, employees must contact the help desk and may be forced to wait for an extended time to resolve the issue. In addition, during help desk non-working hours, employees may be locked out of enterprise applications or tools, which means enterprise employees may be rendered unproductive for hours.

While employees wait for password resets, enterprises not only lose a lot of time that would have been otherwise used to be productive, but they also lose a lot of money.

On average, it costs enterprises $70 for every password reset; this adds up over time, costing enterprises a lot because of how employees forget their passwords and require a reset, with over half of users admitting to forgetting their passwords frequently.

It’s not hard to see that passwords and password reset calls have become a significant source of productivity loss for many organizations.

A survey of 600 IT professionals revealed that 36.7% of US and 60% of UK companies have over 25 apps that require passwords; because of how numerous these passwords are, employees are bound to forget, this ends up costing enterprises 2.5 months of lost productivity a year on password resets.

Training Employees to Password Change Themselves

A standard solution for the debacle of help desk calls is giving employees and business customers the ability to reset passwords entirely by themselves without calling the help desk through Self-service Password Reset Software (SSPR).

Much as the name implies, an SSPR solution gives employees the ability to securely unlock their accounts and reset their passwords without the need to contact the help desk.

It delegates the task back to the user using a self-service workflow, thus relieving the burden of password resets from help desk calls. Many companies have started using this in recent times, as it dramatically reduces the number of help desk calls, saves time, and improves overall company efficiency.

Yes, Your Password Security is Easy to Intercept

However, the problem with passwords goes far beyond just help desk calls; passwords render enterprise security weak because they are just too easy to hack or intercept. Therefore, this quick and easy solution only addresses the problem of help desk calls without considering that passwords are insecure by their very nature.

Eliminating Passwords

The writing is on the wall: for businesses and enterprises to successfully increase employee efficiency, reduce cost, and eliminate the mundane tasks that plague help desk calls while improving security. Businesses will want to completely stop traditional means of authentication like passwords.

Replace Passwords with Secure Means of Authentication

SSPR may improve a few areas – reducing cost and improving efficiency, but it doesn’t quite deliver like passwordless technology, which has the added advantage of removing passwords.

Passwordless technology, by eliminating passwords, vastly improves ease of use and security and eliminates the habits that lead to employees developing bad password hygiene, which is creating and remembering various complex passwords for different online accounts.

Passwordless Technology as a Solution

Instead of verifying users’ identities and granting user access with passwords, passwordless technology considers two main factors. These factors are: who employees are (biometric technology like face, iris, or fingerprint scanning technology) and what they have (mobile number, key card, and access token/badge).

Passwordless technology allows desk teams to focus on essential and more worthwhile tasks.

Different passwordless authentication technologies may take different verification approaches; however, they all have one thing in common — they don’t store employee data within a system. Not keeping vital data in the system is what makes passwordless technology inherently more secure than traditional and password-based security technology.

Passwordless authentication solves the issues that SSPR targets.

Because of its benefits, passwordless technology has seen increased adoption in recent years. A 2021 survey showed that cost savings, preventing credential theft and phishing, and user experience were the main reasons respondents chose to deploy passwordless technology across their organizations.

Passwordless technology also decentralizes the authentication process.

Rather than storing users’ credentials and passwords on servers, passwordless technology works by using private keys generated from and stored on employees’ devices, thus making it harder for hackers to breach and guarantee maximum security.

The Negative Effects of Passwords

Whenever the adverse effects of passwords are discussed, it’s easy to view it as negatively affecting enterprise cybersecurity. However, the problem of forgotten passwords goes beyond that — passwords reduce employee productivity, burden help desks, and cost enterprises a lot of money.

Today, passwords serve as one of the leading causes of security breaches. But, unfortunately, password fatigue and reuse still plague the cybersecurity industry.

The clamor to altogether remove passwords from organizations and services has been long overdue.

In recent years, the voices are growing in volume and number, primarily as over 80% of data breaches are caused by weak or stolen passwords.

With almost half of help desk calls being wasted on mundane, unnecessary tasks like password resets, it is easy to see why employees and help desk centers are frustrated.

Conclusion

Passwords need to be eliminated so that help desk employees and IT teams will be granted the freedom and time to solve more tasking, interesting, and essential matters.

With more modern passwordless technology, there is no better time to eliminate the time-consuming and costly ordeal of password resets and using passwords altogether than now.

Image Credit: George Milton; Pexels; Thank you!

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The dangers of using passwords as a means of authentication cannot be overemphasized. According to reports by IT Governance, poor password behavior is the number one cause of data breaches. Despite this, passwords are still very common in the average person’s personal and work life. Here are passwords and their ability to bring down even the largest of enterprises.

Passwords are difficult to manage, and bad password habits are easy to develop because of how difficult it is to store multiple complex passwords.

They are also very insecure because passwords are just too easy to guess, hack or intercept. What’s more, the legacy of bad password habits, reusing and sharing online credentials, leads to constant cybersecurity attacks of both people’s personal accounts and enterprises.

The consequences of a cybersecurity attack from a leaked, stolen, or shared password could be disastrous; a hacker could launch a highly sophisticated attack on you or your business, causing serious short-term and long-term damages. This could lead to serious financial and legal implications. In a worst-case scenario, a malicious attack could even sabotage your business and its operations to the extent that it may never be able to recover.

Too Many People Use Old Passwords — STOP THAT!

According to a 2019 HYPR password usage study, a study that involved analyzing data from over 500 American and Canadian full-time workers, about 72% of people surveyed reuse an old password when forced to change to a new one, and 78% percent of them forgot their passwords in the previous 90 days.

This can be said to be due to the overwhelming number of passwords users have to manage because the study further showed that over 37% of respondents have over 20 passwords in their personal life, which in most cases is too much to manage effectively.

Hackers will Always Try to Attack Your Employees

Many negative implications come with your business’ security being compromised due to poor passwords, some of which are discussed below.

• Financial Implications

On average, cybersecurity attacks in 2017 alone cost enterprises $1.3 million and $117,000 for small and medium scale businesses to repair hardware and software. A data breach can also lead to legal consequences for your company if data leaked belongs to a third party or contains sensitive information.

• Data Theft and Sabotage

Every single day, companies from around the world lose about 5 million records containing sensitive data due to vulnerability in their system or a human factor failure, with only a mere 4% of escaped data being protected by strong encryption and, therefore, cannot be misused.

In some cases, millions of email addresses and passwords are leaked during a single data breach.

Hacking and data breaches may also negatively affect digital data or even physical equipment. Some hackers may intentionally modify or damage data in order to harm their targets.

• Poor Web Presence

For many businesses, especially small ones, most sales and operations are made online – as an online presence exposes businesses to larger markets, with two-thirds of small businesses relying on websites to connect them to customers.

Hacking or data breach, in this case, however, may be seriously detrimental to your online presence; it may lead to your website being slowed down considerably as hackers try to upload and run files on your company server.

Also, if hackers try to use your IP address to attack other websites, your web hosting might be suspended, or your website may shut down entirely and only display a “PAGE NOT FOUND – 404 ERROR” message; all these will also cause your company’s SEO ranking to take a big hit.

• Damages to Company Reputation

When a business is hacked, its reputation also takes a huge hit, either temporarily or permanently. A large percentage of a hacked company’s customers may choose to switch over to their more secure competitor.

According to a 2019 study published on BitSight, nearly two out of five (38%) enterprises admit that they have lost business due to either a real or perceived lack of security performance within their organization. Nearly half of all executives surveyed in that same report admit that their ability to attract new customers was harmed following a security incident.

• Business Failure

Many businesses, especially small ones or those in their early stage, operate on low margins and may not withstand the significant financial loss resulting from data breaches.

Depending on the severity of such attacks, how stolen data is used, or the damage caused, your business might not be able to withstand the financial implications. It may be forced to close all operations and shut down.

How Enterprises Can Protect Themselves

Data breaches due to bad passwords are bound to happen when you ask employees to create and manage their passwords without providing them with the proper tools to do so.

There are limits to how many passwords your employees can remember and how complex they can be; this, coupled with the ever-growing number of online accounts, makes it easy for your employees to settle for poor password habits and security shortcuts put your company at risk of a data breach.

Employees often create passwords that are easy to remember and very predictable, as creating and storing different complex passwords is a burden.

Hence, employers and enterprises need to sensitize their employees to keep good password behavior with some of the solutions below.

A. Password Managers

Password managers are secure software applications designed to store and manage your online credentials. They make your accounts more secure by freeing you from generating and remembering sufficiently complex passwords, thus allowing for single-purpose passwords that meet a much higher security level.

From auto-filling to encrypting passwords, password managers ensure that credentials stored with them are kept secure.

B. Two Factor Authentication

Two-factor authentication makes use of newer improvements to authentication by combining two out of the three types of authentication; what you know (password, pin), what you have (bank card, sim card), and who you are (fingerprint, facial recognition).

Two-factor authentication is far more secure than passwords alone because it considers two forms of authentication rather than one. Other methods of two-factor authentication include using an authenticator app like Google authenticator or Microsoft authenticator, SMS Codes, and biometrics alongside your password for more secure verification.

C. Passwordless Authentication

One major shortcoming of both password managers and two-factor authentication that is commonly overlooked is the fact that they don’t completely eliminate the burden that is passwords’; this is where passwordless authentication comes in. This provides enterprises the ability to deploy desktop MFA and strong customer authentication.

The passwordless authentication technology removes hackers’ most popular target by completely replacing passwords, forcing them to attack all devices individually. This provides enterprises with increased security and a more secure means of authentication.

In Conclusion

It is becoming clearer that passwords are more of a burden or headache than they are a security tool. As a business owner, protecting your personal and customer data and ensuring your website’s security has to be one of your top daily priorities.

Hackers will always try to attack your employees, the weakest link in your security infrastructure.

The best way to strengthen your entire security system is to make sure both your employees and IT admins are aware of their responsibility to maintain good password security and that necessary steps are taken to provide employees with the necessary tools to fulfill this responsibility.

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The ongoing Coronavirus pandemic problems have negatively affected millions of people globally — not only did it affect people, but it also harmed many businesses and startups, disrupting their day to day activities. The global pandemic has hurt businesses and the economy as a whole, but this is more worrying and sparks a lot of fear in the hearts of startup CEOs, founders, and team members as startups are less likely to survive in times of crisis. Here are five ways startups can tackle the effects of the outbreak.

One major effect the virus has had on startups is how it has disrupted team members’ normal day-to-day activities. Every startup longs for a culture founded on and promotes teamwork through in-office collaboration, but with recent worldwide shutdowns, companies have turned to remote working to compensate.

The magic of in-house collaboration, peer to peer conversations, and lunch breaks would be gone, affecting employee morale. Many employees simply won’t be able to adapt to a new way of working.

The pandemic has also affected the quarterly earnings of top companies. Startups are far more likely to record a plateau or a tremendous drop in growth, thereby increasing the chances of you missing your monthly or quarterly goals.

The virus has also stopped many supply chains in various countries, including China, one of the world’s biggest suppliers; this has affected startups that deal with hardware and the production or manufacture of physical goods. Many startups had shut down totally or minimize their local and international business travel plans to reduce the chances of an employee getting the virus.

How startups can tackle the effects of the pandemic

Even with the various negative impacts of Covid-19, startup founders and CEOs can reduce the effects of the virus and their startups’ chances of closing down.

1. Remote working

In-office collaboration can simply not be overstated; it’s essential for building personal relationships between coworkers, thereby boosting employee productivity; it is also essential for the creation of company culture, but what’s more important to you as CEO is keeping your customers and employees safe.

With social distancing policies that ban public gatherings being implemented, startups have had no other choice than to turn to remote working to keep their startups running. The popularity of Zoom, Slack, and Skype, apps great for remote working, have skyrocketed since lockdowns have been in place.

2. Limiting in-office work

Limiting the number or set of people required to come to the office is important for reducing employee risk of getting the virus. Employees should only go to the office when a project is crucial and cannot be done from home.

Offering your team unlimited sick time can also incentivize workers to stay at home when feeling ill, thereby lowering the risk of spreading the virus to other team members.

3. Inform your investors

As a CEO and founder, it is important to communicate what’s happening with your startup to investors, your plans, cash runway, new business strategy, and overview of how the pandemic is affecting your startup.

This is essential in letting your investors know if you’ll need money anytime soon, and the overall impact the coronavirus would have on your startup. It is important to communicate openly and on time with investors.

4. Create a new business plan

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.” — Charles Darwin.

Scrapping your old business plan and strategy and creating a new one from scratch is essential for the survival of a startup at this time, as former business plans were made with a normal worldview and might not work well in such times.

How you as a founder completely restructure how your startup operates depends on few factors; your burn rate and cash runway, how long your startup can survive assuming this problem lasts longer, and analyzing risk and resources expected. This ensures that if the present situation persists, your business won’t go out of business. Even though we don’t have enough info on the present situation, it’s important to change plans and adjust as new updates are released.

5. Effective Communication and Transparency

As a startup leader, you have to be transparent with your team as they are also in fear of what the future holds for their startup; this means being completely honest and open about what’s going on, regular updates on the state of your startup.

When it comes to communicating with your team and investors, It’s best to find the balance where you, as a founder, can be compassionate without sugarcoating and being too optimistic, harsh, or negative. Effective communication helps employees keep calm as they are less likely to make assumptions and panic about the startup’s future because they are being told what’s going on.

In Conclusion

We can’t possibly know how long startups and businesses will suffer from the effects of the pandemic, or even when the global economy will heal anytime soon as it might take a few months for the virus to be fully contained.

However, CEOs and founders of startups need to learn from this by adapting their plans, increasing the flexibility of their future business activities, and how they operate.

Now more than ever, your team needs leadership. You panicking will only harm employee morale. You need to restructure your startup, reevaluate your expenses, be transparent, communicate effectively with the team, be compassionate, and, most of all, learn from the many lessons that are to be learned from this pandemic.

Image Credit: pexels

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Situated in Menlo Park, south of San Francisco, is a 59 acre of land adjacent to the Facebook campus, this piece of land is proposed to be a fully self-contained and functional city called Willow Village. Here is why big tech companies are building cities, and why many are worried.

However, there is one notable thing about Willow Village that makes it different from other communities in the US; it is owned and being developed by American social media giant, Facebook Inc. Proposed Plan for Willow Village, source: menlopark.org

The Facebook Village

In a few years’ time, Facebook employees will be able to work, live, and sleep without leaving the property of the 5th most valuable tech company in the world. This city is proposed to have more than 1500 homes, a pharmacy, a grocery store, office buildings, conference spaces, a 193 room hotel, and a public park.

Recently, there has been a trend of big tech getting involved in large construction projects with Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, investing One Billion Dollars in its plans to build 20000 homes in Mountain View and Apple finishing one of the world’s most expensive buildings; Apple Park estimated at Five Billion Dollars.

Privately Owned Cities

The future will surely see employees of large tech companies living luxury lives in private owned cities, rent-free, and with many benefits in the comfort of the property owned by the company they work for.

The financial crisis of 2008 ushered in a dramatic change in the way individuals choose college degrees. While the total number of available jobs took a downward turn during the recession, college students were far more likely to stay in school or go back and apply for a more marketable major. More people applied to majors that were more marketable or could provide better jobs rather than majors that interested them. 

According to a 2005 study, unemployment rates have an effect on the way people choose college majors, this can be seen in the way majors related to healthcare, engineering and computer science exploded after the great recession while the number of applicants in education, philosophy, and religious studies saw a decline. 

With the average salary of a US computer and information technology worker being $88,240 — which is $39,810 more than the average salary of all other occupations — it is easy to see why high school graduates are flocking to these majors in large numbers. 

Computer science students

With the influx of computer science students, many people wonder why the market is not saturated. Students are picking college majors according to their career prospects, getting a degree in computer science is easy to obtain and salaries are exceptionally high, which means the market should be flooded with computer scientists.

The problem is that demand for computer scientists has increased tremendously, however, the market is not flooded because universities have a hard time producing computer science professors, which in turn reduces the number of computer science graduates.

Rather than having to wait at least nine years to get a bachelor’s, masters, and then a doctorate, CS graduates would rather enter the job market and get paid the same salary they would have if they worked as a college teacher or even more because of the extra five years experience.

Why Are Tech Companies Building Cities?

The shortage of computer science professors has put universities in a tight spot, they can either choose to accept a particular amount of high school graduates applying for computer science majors, or they can increase class sizes to increase the number of CS graduates and risk hitting the staff to student ratio and lowering the schools ranking.

New shortage in grads

Today, there is a shortage of computer science graduates, so tech companies or organizations that wish to employ these graduates have to go the extra mile to please them with high salaries, stock options, bonuses, and many more benefits or, risk losing them to other nearby tech companies, leaving employees with an advantage.

Due to the fact that tech companies are so concentrated in certain areas like Silicon Valley, changing jobs is especially easy with huge tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple; being just a couple of miles from one another, Tech companies have a hard time retaining their employees as employees do not even have to change homes if they decide to switch jobs. Tech companies, therefore, have especially low turnover rates.

Average stay of employee in one company

The average employee at Google or Apple stays a little less than 2 years before calling it quits. The low retention rates of tech companies pose a huge problem and many are striving to remedy it.

Ways to garner retention of employees

With the low retention rate of employees, companies have to find new ways to retain their employees thus employers have to go the extra mile to make workers happy, with gym memberships, cell phones, fitness, and wellness programs, wifi equipped busses and subsidized uber rides.

A very good and effective way of keeping employees though is to involve themselves in every aspect of their lives. This is where company-owned homes come in, It is much harder to leave a company if that same company owns your home and that of your friends and family. 

By increasing employees’ dependence on the company, we can surely expect to see the average lifespan of employees increase, Companies have been trying to do this by building homes, with Facebook, even going as much as paying a $10000 bonus to employees who live close to the office.

Why Many Other Businesses (and People) are Worried

All the many benefits employees get from companies trying to keep them, surely increase employees’ well-being and retention rates, which is beneficial to both staff and organizations but might come at the expense of society.

Companies try to make commuting to work more enjoyable and living with the ultimate goal of increasing employees’ retention rates by providing transport like wifi equipped buses, cab rides and houses for employees, but by doing so, they use public infrastructure like bus stops without improving the quality of public transportation.

Affordable housing

Because of the tech boom and the concentration of tech companies in tech hubs like New York and San Francisco, housing has been made less affordable as there has been an increase in the average rent of these cities.

There have been a lot of concerns about the fact that as big tech companies expand their physical presence, the line between public and private is blurred.

Not only are the lines blurred, but local governments find themselves not governing but being governed by these companies.

Take for example; in 2014, facebook funded a police station next to its campus along with offering to pay an officer $200000 as a yearly salary. It is time for the country to reevaluate the power companies have over the government.

Please add your opinion in the comments. I’d like to know.

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Apple, the world’s most profitable company, has one of the most valuable products, the iPhone, which accounts for 60 percent of Apple’s yearly revenue. The iPhone and its entire ecosystem have experienced a lot of success in many countries across the globe with iPhone sales growing from a million dollars in 2007 to a staggering 231 million in 2015.

iPhone Sales

In the last couple of years, iPhone sales have been flat, and they haven’t been much of an exception, general smartphone sales have been on the decline due to smartphone saturation; where the average person has a smartphone leaving manufacturers with no one to sell to.

Apple being a public company cannot thrive on plateauing iPhone sales as it has demands to meet, iPhone sales need to grow yearly to keep shareholders happy.

Apple could sell new iPhones either by providing users with their very first-ever smartphone, switching users over from competing brands or by getting current iPhone users to upgrade their smartphones.

The last strategy of making users upgrade hasn’t been successful in recent times, because the quality of iPhones have improved over time that they tend to last longer, making users more reluctant to upgrade.

The other two methods Apple can use to curb slowing smartphone sales; acquiring new smartphone users, or switching users over from competing brands have been more successful.

The number of people on the planet is limited, so Apple has to look for new customers in developing countries with growing economies and citizens in need of smartphones; countries like India, which as been a major concern for Apple in recent years.

The iPhone in India

India, home to 1.3 billion people, is on track to beat China and become the most populous country on the planet by the year 2024.

India’s economy is one bubbling with potential, her GDP is among the fastest-growing in the world and about 44 Indians get out of extreme poverty every minute.

The trajectory of people coming out of poverty has got American companies like Google, Uber, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon excited. India can now provide these companies with 1.3 billion potential customers; many of which are using the internet and computers for the first time.

Apple expansion

Apple has been fairly successful in its plans to expand to emerging markets like China, but even with India being one of the few regions which isn’t experiencing smartphone saturation, Apple hasn’t been doing so well.

In 2018, Apple lost 3 key Indian executives, failed to meet its annual revenue target in the region, and was hit by India’s high smartphone tariffs, it is clear that Apple has been struggling in the region and for some reasons.

The iPhone’s high price

In 2016, Apple’s brand new iPhone 7 started at $650, about a year later, the iPhone X’s starting price was $1000, a $350 price increase from the last year’s model.

Apple’s 2020 ‘budget’ smartphone, the iPhone 11 costs $50 more than the 2016 flagship iPhone 7.

Due to the drastic surge in the price of the iPhone, Apple has recorded an increase in profit, making up for slowing unit sales, but in India; a price-sensitive country, this strategy is backfiring.

75% of all smartphones sold in the region cost less than $250 and 95% cost less than 500, (according to intoindia blog dot com), thus putting Apple’s flagship phones in the ultra-premium, which Apple normally operates in. The premium smartphone market in the region is less than 5% of the total smartphone market, which just isn’t enough for Apple, as Oneplus was the best selling premium smartphone in India, in 2019.

Most smartphones that are sold in India are sold for about $200. Other popular smartphone brands have adapted, with Samsung launching its budget series Samsung Galaxy A and M series, and Xiaomi its Redmii series, both starting at as low as $150.

Because of this, Samsung, Vivo, and Xiaomi accounted for the majority of Indian smartphone sales garnering 16%, 17%, and 30% respectively, with Apple only owning about 2%.

Combining the high price of the iPhone with a GDP per capita of $2,171, its easy to see why Indians aren’t willing to pay so much for a phone that costs above a thousand dollars.

High import tariffs

Apple has a specific disadvantage in the Indian market because of the local regulations. There is a very high import duty on phones that are not manufactured locally in India. Because of tariffs and duty, most smartphone producers tend to produce their smartphones locally so they don’t have to pay that high import duty.

The Indian government puts a 20% tariff on smartphones manufactured in other parts of the world, this is to incentivize more foreign companies to manufacture domestically, help employ their large population, and boost their economy. Due to Indian tariffs, the $1000 iPhone X started at about $1400 and the $700 iPhone 11 at $852 in India.

Tim Cook’s visit to India

Despite Tim Cook’s visit to India seeking tariff reductions and promising to manufacture at some point in the future if allowed to sell in India, the Indian government not only refused the offer but also made it more difficult for Apple to sell in India.

Smartphone manufacturers like Xiaomi, Vivo, Oppo, and Samsung have either opened or invested in smartphone manufacturing plants in India to produce low-cost smartphones specifically tailored to the Indian market.

Apple is yet to do the same, as it only manufactures its lower-cost iPhone 6s and SE (2016).

The iPhones subpar software experience

The iPhone software experience still isn’t as good in India as it is in places like the US. The user software lacks a robust software experience, services like Apple Pay haven’t been launched in India. The user experience is still subpar, though Samsung Pay and Google Pay have been operating in the region for a while now.

Apple Maps has been lacking for the most part and just introduced turn by turn navigation in 2019. Siri has always had problems in the west, but it is worse in India. In India, maps has an extremely hard time understanding Indian accents. Well, boo-hoo — figure it out — or have Siri and Alexa figure it out for you?!

Why can Apple not see the potential of programming and updating software to bring satisfaction to billions of users in other countries? This point brings up an essential question. Why would Indian users pay higher for a product that lacks basic features that many of its competitors offer at a much lower price?

Lack of an official retail store

Also, there are no Apple stores in India, retail or online. Only authorized resellers are in India — that means it is impossible to buy directly if you live in India, and Indians who wish to purchase an Apple device are directed to a “where to buy” page on the Indian website. (Double-pay-middleman).

Apple simply can’t start building their retail store in India to sell the iPhone because they are limited by government restrictions that require foreign retailers to buy at least 30% of their materials from Indian vendors. Since Apple buys many of its components from other places in Asia — it doesn’t meet the requirements to open retail stores in India.

In India, most smartphones are sold in small roadside shops where the vendors don’t know the many advantages the iPhone has over its competitors. Roadside shops can’t educate customers looking for a new smartphone on the advantages the iPhone has over its competitors.

How Apple can fix the very real issues

Apple has always prioritized profit over market share, owning the largest slice of the market share has never been its goal. In India, where its market share is only two percent, Apple should be alarmed as it is losing out on millions, if not billions, of potential customers.

Acquiring brand new smartphone users is essential for Apple’s growth as existing users are more valuable in more ways than one. Customers purchase accessories like the Airpods, Apple Watch, and soon Apple AR glasses that boost all services. Any Apple product seeks to grow users by having them subscribe to Apple Music, iCloud, and Apple TV.

In order for Apple to increase the number of Indian users, it has to adapt to the region, it needs to open its stores, where it can educate customers on the features of the iPhone and advantages it has over other competitors.

To further boost sales, Apple can only get approval for its official retail stores by establishing a large manufacturing presence and sourcing as much of its hardware components from the region.

Apple also has to create a true budget smartphone tailored for the Indian market, that would be manufactured in India and sold only to developing countries with lower price points.

Apple recently tried this strategy with the $400 2020 iPhone SE, which is priced at 42,500 Rupees or about $560 in the region. However, this price is still higher than the majority of smartphones sold in the region — and Apple needs to build its brand in the region.

There are more issues than an iPhone

Apart from hardware, there are other things Apple needs to consider. The Apple software is mostly lacking in India so Apple will need to improve other services in the region, such as its Maps services, Virtual Assistant; Siri, launch, and Apple Pay. The Indian market is well versed in the software aspect, so Apple may want to include software designed specifically for the Indian market.

Conclusion

In order for Apple to expand into the Indian market, it needs to change its strategy and tailor it for the Indian market. Apple will want to produce locally manufactured devices sold at an affordable price tag — with improved features.

Until they do so, their competitors will continue to make more useful and appealing devices, with features and a cheaper price point.

The post Why Apple’s iPhone Struggles in India and Why it Matters appeared first on ReadWrite.

Disrupting businesses in every sector of the economy and infecting nearly 7 million people at the time of this writing — with 400,000 deaths globally. The coronavirus pandemic that sprung up December 2019 has had negative effects on businesses across the world, and the economy as a whole.

The stay-at-home orders that have been mandatory in several countries have caused our work lives to be affected in so many ways, from working in open offices and interacting with coworkers daily to working from home and having to rely on video conferencing apps for effective communication.

These many changes in our current work-life have left many of us wondering whether it’ll have any lasting effects on our work-lives once the pandemic is over and the current lockdown measures are eased. How will how our new work lives proceed from here?

The many effects the pandemic will have on our current work-life include:

• Higher Prioritization of workers’ health.

The current attention that employee well-being has been garnered recently by organizations and employees themselves will surely increase. We will surely see employee health, wellness, and well-being being of greater importance in a post-pandemic situation.

We can predict more sick day allowances and health initiatives like the full health checks and examination of employees before they enter their workplaces.

After the pandemic and for a short period of time, signs may be posted to remind everyone to wash hands and perhaps limit how they give handshakes and hugs, and to maintain personal space.

To avoid overcrowding, keycards and sensors will monitor your whereabouts throughout the day and alert you whenever you’re in close proximity to another individual.

In the long run, contact-tracing apps for co-workers may also become part of the work-life experience to avoid the spread of future diseases and infrared body temperature scanners before access to the office building. These contact-tracing apps might even show areas with high coworker traffic similar to apps like Waze.com.

• Remote work

The role in-office collaboration has to play in a company is overwhelming as it is important for building personal bonds and relationships between coworkers and boosting employee productivity, it is also essential for the creation of company culture, but what is more important is the safety of an organization’s employees.

The importance of remote working at a time like this has shown as many organizations have looked too remote working as a means of sustaining their businesses and to keep them up and running.

In a post-pandemic situation, it’s likely that we see the retention of remote working as a means of working for non-essential workers by organizations. However, office and in-house collaboration are surely not going away and higher-ranking workers may still work in-house.

• Restructuring of office spaces.

The fundamental design of office workspaces and offices will surely be altered. More personal space, elevator capacity limits, and demarcating spots to stand in elevators to limit physical contact.

More space between desks with coworkers sitting on every other seat, partitioning may be installed to reduce the risk of spreading diseases, fewer chairs in conference rooms, private cubicles or offices, there’s an endless list of how the overall design of the office space might evolve in a post-pandemic situation.

• Business travel and conferencing.

The coronavirus pandemic will definitely have a lasting effect on meetings as a whole, we should expect fewer conferences and curtailed travel plans in the post-pandemic era. Essential meetings will still hold, but ones with lesser importance will be moved to emails, phone calls, and video conferences.

We should expect employees will only have physical meetings when a project is crucial and cannot be done via video conferencing. Conferences, meetings, and conventions will be halted for the foreseeable future with meetings that aren’t necessary would now be done with video conferencing.

• Work shifts and office hours.

Organizations will have gradual returns and might not require most people to come back until there’s widespread testing, treatment, or a vaccine. Work shifts might be put in place to ensure there’s a limited amount of employees in the workplace at any given time.

Limiting the number or set of people required to come to the office has been important for employee safety as it reduces the chances of them getting the disease. Only requiring essential workers to come to the office might be the norm in a post-pandemic situation.

In Conclusion

How business around the world is going to be changed due to the current global pandemic is unknown as we cannot predict the future with a 100 percent accuracy but by making educated guesses we might know how the impacts of the pandemic might shape our work life.

Workplaces may have significant changes in the long run, these may include new seating arrangements and the addition of building materials that discourage the spread of germs.

In order to reduce the risk of spreading future diseases, it’s a great time for new technology and innovation. We will need to be provided with access to rooms and elevators without employees having to physically touch a handle or press a button. Innovations in automatic door sensors, automatic sinks, soap dispensers, and maybe even voice-activated elevators.

Measures will surely be put in place to reduce the spread of any future diseases and pandemics to guarantee the general public and employee safety.

Image Credit: Andrea Piacquadio; Pexels

The post 5 Post-Pandemic Changes to Expect in the Workplace appeared first on ReadWrite.