Normally, we come across situations where we need to decide between build or buy. Ultimately, we need to focus on our core technologies and business. We use different SaaS products to maintain our fast growth. Knowing about the security protocols of these services is an essential part.
One of such services is the chat service. In this article, we will cover basic security checks developers need to consider while integrating chat. Even if you are building your own chat component, you should consider these checks.
5 Basic Security Checks for Chat Service
All APIs call over HTTPS
In most of the cases, you need to call the APIs of your service provider to send or receive information. This information might be very private for your users or your business. You need to secure the transport layer and ensure that you are communicating with trusted resources. For this, your first check should be to ensure that all the APIs calls you are making must be on HTTPS.
Two-factor user authentication
User authentication is the best thing to do to avoid any unintended users to log-in to your chat system. You can authenticate the user from your backend before giving them access to the chat system. Sometimes, it may feel like an extra effort but this will give you complete control over authorizations.
Your chat service provider should have the configuration to provide your own authentication URL where user’s credentials should be verified. This will enable you to take other security measures such as expiring user password after some time. You can check out how you can configure it with Applozic.
Identify the source of any incoming calls to your servers
You might be using proactive callbacks from third-party servers to your backend servers to get some event-based data. For example, if messages are not delivered to a receiver within X minutes (let’s say 5 minutes), post messages to your backend servers. Sometimes we keep these webhook URLs open. Calls from an unidentified source might cause potential damage.
Your chat service provider should have some setting to pass parameter or header in each call. You can control and change this setting anytime to identify the source of the calls to your backend.
We, at Applozic, provide similar configuration to define your own token which we pass in each call as a header.
Real-time updates to authenticated users
You must ensure that data transferred is intended to intended users only while sending real-time updates.
Encryption of your chat data
It is very important to understand if you really need encryption of data and what level of encryption you need? You might not need any encryption if your chat service covers all of the above points and you have configured it correctly.
However, based on the nature of your business and usage of the chat data, you can decide whether to encrypt the data or not. For example, if you are using chat service in some kind of social app where chat data directly belongs to your users, you may enable E2E encryption.
Another usage case might be customer support, where chat data significantly connected with your business and you might need to analyze data for improving services. You can keep it to only encrypting data in motion or even avoid it.
It is really important to implement basic security checks for any service that you use. Especially in the light of recent major data leaks and privacy mishaps. These basic checkpoints will make your system more reliable and robust.
Adarsh Kumar
December 19, 2018
Small businesses have to overcome many obstacles on their path to transform into bigger organizations. However, in this digital age, you can conquer these obstacles by using technology. Technology allows small businesses to look much bigger than they are. Reach more people across horizons, at lesser costs.
One example of companies leaping over hurdles is in the area of communication. Good communication helps small businesses find new customers and listen to their own people. It also helps them develop new strategies for marketing, sales, and operations. The following tips could help small businesses continue on the path of growth.
How to Enhance Business Communication
Develop a Communication Strategy
First, you need to think about what kind of communication strategy you want as a company. Together with your employees, think about your mission, vision, and goals. Thereafter, you can think about a communication strategy can help you achieve these goals.
Additionally, analyze your existing communication strategy to figure out what is working and what is not working. How cost effective is your current strategy? Finally, be sure that your strategy works with your goals and objectives.
Analyze the Received Information
It doesn’t matter how good your communication strategy is if you don’t listen to your employees or your customers. Learning and practicing active listening is essential if you hope to improve your communication skills overall.
Many business owners find active listening a difficult skill to master, but with practice, anyone can improve their listening skills. Active listening is more than just listening to what is being said. You should understand what the person is trying to convey, respond and give feedback to the person. It is also important to remember what was communicated to you. Think about turning off or moving any distracting devices. You can also take notes on the conversation to remember it later.
CISCO had set up a social media listening center and listened to more than 5000 social mentions per day on Facebook, Twitter, and other social channels. It enhanced team productivity and developed new sales opportunities. It has successfully generated an annual profit of 1.5 million USD by using this communication medium.
Use of Cloud Tech
Many businesses find cloud-based technology essential for improving communication, both with employees and customers. A cloud-based phone system or chat platform allows employees to communicate and keep track of communication with other employees, vendors, customers and partners in order to facilitate and retain communication for later.
In addition, cloud-based applications in word processing, payroll and accounting, and even task management allow employees to collaborate and share information in real time. This, in turn, makes it much easier to work, not just from within the same office but also with other offices around the world.
The new way to do business is to have some employees who work remotely or do part-time freelancing. Using cloud technology is essential for business expansion. For Example – DemandBase, a B2B marketing cloud utilized white paper, infographic, webinar, SlideShare to assist the B2B marketers to make the correct choice for technology investments. They generated around 1700 leads and 1 Million USD for their business development.
Integration of Technological Communication tools
To have an effective communication strategy, you need to be sure that your tech tools are up to speed. In an environment where voice networks, the internet, and data are all connected, communication is simplified, and costs are reduced.
In addition, a seamless integration of such tech networks can result in a business gaining a competitive advantage over your closest competitors — and in this competitive business market, you need as much advantage as you can get.
Customers want a quick and easy way to communicate with a business; if they have questions, they want them answered as quickly as possible. If customers run into problems, they want to communicate with business to get them resolved.
Integrated tools allow a company to streamline the process of communication and increase productivity, which leads to more profit. For instance – ADP Solutions devised a content marketing campaign to reach to its targeted customers with the means of white papers and diagnostic assessment tools. It successfully generated close to $1m is sales from such campaigns.
Create an Internal Communication System
You need to come up with a way to have a dedicated internal communication process for your employees. Lots of platforms are available to help with employee communication and file or document sharing.
In addition, there are lots of messaging apps that allow employees to message each other in real time. There are also apps for collaborative messaging and group messaging, even while employees are working on documents and sharing documents. Some applications also allow cloud messaging, where some messages between employees are saved and then used later when needed.
If communication with people outside the business, such as vendors and customers is important than communication in the business is even more important. Without good internal communication, the business can’t continue to move forward. Take the case of Virgin Trains that created an internal app store called “amazing apps” with 20 distinct apps serving to provide information to its employees on the company smartphones to understand their demands and queries in a better way.
Create a Feedback Mechanism
So, now you are feeling pretty good about finding new ways to improve your communication, you need to think about the final step. How do you know that your communication strategies and working? You need a feedback mechanism in place. Companies need both internal and external feedback to determine how effective their business practices are.
In order to ensure you are receiving positive feedback, you need to figure out a method for both collecting feedback and ensuring that your feedback gets out to the people who need to hear it. There are multiple platforms that allow to collect feedback and get the feedback out.
You can use employee surveys to determine how well the employees feel the business is living up to their expectations. Best would be to use a combination of personal-stressors questions as well as business-related questions to gauge the climate within the business.
Businesses can send feedback questions to their customers to ask about how they did on the customer service and communication front. Some of the survey platforms even reward customers who answer the survey by giving them a coupon towards their next order with the company who requested the survey.
Final Thoughts
Ensuring that you have good communication externally and internally is vital to the success of your business. It helps you reach more customers, ease through troublesome issues between employees and increases productivity at work. With good communication skills, you can take huge forward leaps in your business.
The perfect example of this is Logicall. They provide inbound and outbound customer management solutions. They use communication tools such as e-mails, microsite, and ebooks to enable custom messaging for its sales team and have successfully generated 8 million USD business.
About the Author:
Peter Davidson is a senior business associate. Peter strives to help different brands and startups to make effective business decisions and plan effective business strategies. With years of rich domain expertise, he loves to share his views on the latest technologies and applications through his well-researched content pieces. Follow him on Google+ and Twitter.
Parth Shrivastava
October 30, 2018
Messaging technologies have made it possible for both small and large corporations to improve how efficient information is sent and received. This improvement in efficiency is the byproduct of improving interaction not only between users but systems as well.
Another amazing feature of messaging technology is that messages can be sent from one user to another even if the recipient is not connected to the messaging system.
The messaging system is responsible for keeping various messages. It then forwards them to a limited number of interested receivers. So, should this technology be implemented in business and if so, what are its benefits?
Things Messaging Technology Will Do For Your Business
When you a start business, the chances are that you thought it through and have a plan of action to expand it. In order to this, this plan has to have the necessary tools. Fortunately, there are so many ways to do this today, and the fact is that there will probably be more.
Messaging technologies as briefly described above are a good example of ways to improve the efficiency of your business and eventually achieve your goals. Here are some of the ways messaging can improve your business:
1. Enabling you to automatically provide updates to your audience
Email subscriptions are quite popular today. They are one of the best ways of making sure that your customers stay up-to-date with all the products your business make available to the public.
It is also a very good way of publicizing your promotions and giveaways etc. A good messaging system can help you make the process of sharing information with your users very easy. All you need to do is wisely strategize what to deliver to whom and when.
This is possible because the system creates a list of all the recipients and automatically sends the message to all of them when you want it to. Therefore, it is in your hands to get as many subscribers to your email. Message technology can help you take care of the rest.
2. Your message content will always get to your receivers
A good messaging system will have a mediator that handles the following functions:
- Conversion of one message format to another,
- Security validation to make sure all transactions between the sender and receiver are secure,
- Protocol transposing.
The primary intention is to make it possible for messages to be sent between parties with different message formats. The application of integration to business will guarantee the reception of the message by the receiver. The difference in the message format will not stop you from making sure messages move from one system to another.
3. Increasing the efficiency of the communication network of your business
With messaging, a receiver does not only refer to an individual but a machine as well. A good network of communication should be established in a business for it to be run smoothly. Message technologies can enable computers in business to communicate with each other. This kind of communication is also known as asynchronous messaging.
In business, this kind of technology can improve the ability of the company to meet the demands of the consumer. Thanks to improvements in technology, consumers can easily communicate with the producers.
Although this can be an advantage for both parties, businesses will be required to go through so many messages, which can be time-consuming. Asynchronous messaging will enable computers to provide various replies to messages sent to the business. This way, all messages sent to the company can be responded to.
4. Security
It is very important to make sure the messaging system is secure because the messages are moving from one system to another. Messaging technologies can offer encryption to prevent the tampering of messages while they are in transit. If you want to use a secure source for the best essay service EssayOnTime, you can contact the support to get answers to any questions first.
You will notice that this kind of protection will not only protect the messages sent to recipients on message queues but also protect the devices within the business itself. The messages sent to the receiver have to be efficiently routed, especially, if they have been encrypted to allow them to safely move through public interfaces. The benefits of running a secure business are quite numerous.
One of the most important is developing trust with your customers which can lead to acquiring a bigger audience. You will also be able to stay away from external infiltration such as hacking. Keeping messages secure, especially, in a world where mobile marketing has become very popular should be one of your top priorities.
5. Establishing communication with members in remote places
If you are running a business, you probably understand how important communication is. A reliable messaging system can play a big part in identifying any issues and fixing them. Part of this technology is asynchronous messaging, which we have briefly looked at.
A very important advantage of this technology is that it does not require immediate simultaneous participation parties. This means every system involved has the freedom to engage when it is at liberty to.
How does this translate to business? If you have systems working in different locations, it is always safe to assume that internet connection can be an issue. By keeping this in mind, you will understand that the receiver has the right to respond to your messages whenever they feel like. With this type of technology, you can still work with a team in a different part of the world without having to worry about facing any drawbacks.
Conclusion
Messaging technologies and business go well together if you understand how you can integrate them. The technology not only offers solutions to communications problems with possible customers but even those with the company.
We have looked at a few of the technologies and how efficient they could be, including what kind of changes they can bring to your business. All of the solutions will get you organized, and you will be able to make business decisions better.
About the Author:
Emily Watts is a dedicated writer who is very passionate about her work. She has written a lot of articles about business, especially, how best it can work when coupled with technology. She also has her own blog where she breaks down very interesting topics around the marketing world. Her attempts have enabled many businesses around the world find a way to become more productive. Her work also considers small scale-startups and provides impressive guides on how they can build their businesses from the ground up. Her major focus is to identify the simplest and most effective ways that companies can use to get more customers and expand.
Parth Shrivastava
October 1, 2018