You can watch the video, listen to the podcast or read on

YouTube, great isn’t it – more cat videos than you can watch in a lifetime!

However, it’s also a great source of information AND a really powerful way to reach web users who prefer to watch videos rather than read stuff. Imagine you want to learn how to fly fish. Just go to google and search “learn how to fly fish” for example, and Google shows you that there are 135 million results and the top is dominated by YouTube videos .

Getting Started

Making videos has never been easier with great quality cameras in our phones, our tablets, our digital cameras – the list of devices goes on.

Before you start recording, however, you need to make sure that your video has a purpose. Then you need to make a short list of keywords that are relevant.

As you record your video and add your commentary you need to make sure that you use these words and phrases from your list.

For the video accompanying this blog I’ve concentrated on “optimising your video”, “making your video easy to find” and “SEO for YouTube”

Watch your video, does it look OK? Does it sound OK? If you are happy then you’re ready to move to the next step.

Uploading your video to YouTube

Once you’ve recorded your video and checked to make sure that you are happy with it the next step is to upload it to YouTube. Now you need to make the video easy to find and and make it easy for Google to understand what it’s about so that your video stands a chance of appearing in Google results, not just in YouTube search.

Next on the “to-do list” is to do is give your video a name that includes the types of words that people might be using when searching – so for the video that goes with this blog I’ve called the video “How to optimise your YouTube video”

Then you need a description so that YouTube can understand what the video is about.

Finally you need to add captions, in other words translate your speech in to text so that watchers don’t have to turn their speakers up or plug their headphones in. YouTube will automatically create the captions but you need to check that their speech t text translation has translated accurately and if there are errors you can go in and correct them.

Vimeo.com

Although powerful, YouTube has a number of annoying traits – not least
1/ The ability to show “People who watched this video also watched……”
2/ The ability to place annoying adverts on your video – ads which might come from your competition if you’re not careful.

So, before you embed your video in your website or share through your Social Media channels and email campaigns get on over to https://vimeo.com and set up a free account.

Vimeo is a “YouTube for professionals” and doesn’t take Ads and won’t recommend similar videos so your viewers wont get dragged away down the YouTube rabbit warren and forget where they started.

As a professional video platform it is mainly funded by subscription accounts but the free account should be more than adequate for your use.

Use the Vimeo embedding tools to add your video to your website, your blog, any email marketing that you conduct and your social media

And that’s it. If you have any problems with recording your video, optimising your video or anything else to do with your digital marketing then just give me a call on 01793 238020 for a free, obligation free, chat or drop me an email to andy@enterprise-oms.co.uk

Let’s answer the easy question first, “do I need 2FA”? The simple answer is “yes”, you do need Two Factor Authentication (2FA). Now read on to learn more about what it is, how it works and how it can secure your data and online activity

I’ve written in previous posts about passwords, hacking, identity theft and the threat to our privacy, data and businesses from cyber criminals. As you might imagine, the number of attacks is increasing, as is the sophistication.

Why are Cyber Attacks increasing

Simple! The number of websites that we log-in to continues to increase and
many people use one password across many websites. As you can see from the list on the right a lot of people use passwords that are less than ideal. The cyber criminals know this which makes it a gift for them.

Some people think they are safe because they have 3 passwords. A simple one for common sites where they don’t see a threat (posting comments to newspaper websites for example), a medium one that they use for on-line shopping and Cloud storage sites (DropBox for example) and a really complicated one for their “secure” sites, such as bank access etc.

After all, just trying to remember pWa#eeAS7uNggK49 is a challenge but if you have to remember a different one for every single website it becomes a real challenge. You might jot them down in a notebook or diary but what happens if you loose your book, or just leave it on a train. Not only have you been frozen out of your accounts (until you work your way through all those “forgotten password” routines) but your security has been seriously compromised.

Some people, like me for example, use password manager. These apps create a secure password for ever site that you log in to and make it available across desk-tops, lap-tops, phones and tablets and don’t cost very much at all. But even if you use one how secure are you, actually?

If a site that you use your super strong password on is penetrated and data stolen, your strong password is about as much use (from a security perspective) as the infamous chocolate teapot. And if you have used this super-strong password on more than one site you are at an even greater risk of becoming a victim of data theft. With more than 6,474m email addresses in the wild for cyber criminals to use and 551m passwords stolen in security hacks the criminals job gets ever easier.

Use the Have I been Pwned website to see whether your passwords have been stolen by cyber criminals or nabbed in a data breach and read more about the risk, and how the criminals use this stolen data in a previous post.

What’s the Solution

It’s actually fairly simple. It’s called two factor authentication [2FA] or multi-factor authentication. This is where another layer of authentication is required, beyond your user name and password.

In the early days of 2FA sites would send you a text with an access code so you could only log-in if you had your phone with you [and had a mobile signal]. This extra layer of security hit the cyber-criminals hard, until they realised that intercepting text messages was not particularly difficult if you were tech-savvy so something else was required.

The banks solved this problem by providing you with a device like the one to the right, this one’s from HSBC. At the website you enter your user-name and pass-code as normal, enter a PIN in the device and then enter the displayed number from the device in to your banks website. It may feel like a pain but it really does have a positive effect on the security of your on-line banking. A criminal needs a your user name/password, access to a device as well as your device PIN

Having a device for every website is pretty clunky so Microsoft and Google released authentication apps for Android and iPhones. The way they work is they generate a six digit code, as can be seen in the image on the right, and the website that you are looking to access requests this code after you have entered your user-name and password – as demonstrated in this screen-shot of my LastPass password manager.

All I have to do is launch my Authenticator App and enter the six digit password. For additional security, the code changes every 30 seconds or so

Hardware Security

The final security solution is the physical “Key” such as this one from Yubikey. This is a USB device that simply plugs in to a USB port on your computer and allows you access to secured sites – or even your computer itself.

If you are worried by your security, or need any help with your internet activity, from a new website through social media and on to other online marketing opportunities then just send me an email – andy@enterprise-oms.co.uk or give me a call on 01793 238020

The Deep Dark Web

The “Dark Web” has been in the press frequently over the past couple of years, associated with tales of hacking, the sale of personal information, credit card data, drugs, weapons and other illicit items. However,  there’s been very little by way of explanation as to what the dark web is and how you go there and this item looks to answer that, purely for research purposes of course.

A number of news stories have also referred to the “Deep Web” which has lead to a degree of confusion, as if the media consider the two to be interchangeable.

So, just to clear up any confusion here’s an explanation of the differences between the Deep and the Dark Web.

Let’s start at the top

The “Surface Web” is the web we all know and love, the websites we visit and the sites/pages that we find using Google/Bing/Yahoo and other search engines. And there’s the key, it’s only the parts of the internet that the search engines know about.

Just visit any website and click a few links, you’ll be doing the same thing that the search engines do, visiting websites and following links to find pages that they can present to you when you’re looking for things.

What is The Deep Web

Simply put, the Deep Web is just the area of the internet that is beyond the reach of the major search engines.

As an example, just go to www.britishairways.com and try to find a holiday to the Nautic Hotel between 7th and 14th October in Mallorca without using the search facilities.

It’s not that easy, in fact it you might find it confusing/difficult/impossible. You’re not alone, the search engines do to because they can’t get much further down than the first 3-4 layers. At least this is getting better because Google, Bing and the like are always looking to improve the way they manage such challenges but it’s still a struggle for them.

Websites can use code, called robots.txt, to actually block the search engines from certain pages so that they are difficult to find, deliberately. Websites with members only pages may choose to do this, for example.

As you can see, the Deep Web is neither illicit nor scary, it’s just out of reach of the major search engines.

What is the Dark Web

This is where things get really interesting. The Dark Web is a small portion of the web that is intentionally hidden and encrypted and which cannot be accessed through your typical web browser.

To access the Dark Web you need a specialised web browser that enables you to tap into the the TOR network. TOR, short for ‘The Onion Router’, so called because it uses many layers to both encrypt the data that moves around and to make it almost impossible for the authorities to trace internet activity back to a particular user and location. Great for security and anonymity which is why TOR was originally designed by US Intelligence agencies to enable American spies to securely communicate with their parent organisation and not reveal their location and identity.

The code was officially released to the public in 2004, and it’s still used by human rights groups and the like in repressive and unsafe countries to communicate with the outside world, but like almost everything it has also been subverted by those with criminal tendencies and put to a darker use.

You might recall that a couple of years ago the media was full of stories about a Dark Web website called Silk Road. This was like an eBay for criminals, a place where you could buy illegal items such as drugs & weapons and engage criminals to carry out illegal activities on your behalf, hacking for example.

The Silk Road was eventually closed down by the authorities but similar sites still exist if you know where to look and how to access them.

The first step is to download the TOR software, it’s free and pretty easy to find. However there’s no Dark Web version of Google – you have to know your way around if you want to find the illegal stuff – I don’t and wouldn’t broadcast it even if I did know.

I may not be able to help with your journey to the Dark Web but if your Surface Web needs improving or your Deep Web needs surfacing to make it easy to find, then get in touch, andy@enterprise-oms.co.uk or give me a call- 01793 238020 and I’ll dive in and see what I can do.