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Protect Your Sensitive Data With These Super Useful Guidelines

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Sensitive data is defined as any information that is protected against unwarranted disclosure. If you’re running a business in the information era, chances are you’re collecting sensitive information. Company data, employee information, and customer records are all targeted by cyber criminals on a regular basis. In 2021 alone, Americans lost nearly seven billion dollars to cybercrime.

This number is expected to grow. The following will explore a few things you can do to help protect your company’s sensitive data.

Of course, every industry has its own specifics when it comes to data. It’s a good idea to do further research into your particular field and see what sorts of cybercrime disproportionately target businesses within your industry and of your size.

Password Education

If you have staff that accesses company accounts or devices while working from home or within the office, it’s important to educate them about proper password selection. A good password is much more difficult to hack than a poor password. You can even increase your security by setting new password parameters. You can require your staff to update their password at regular intervals; this way if someone you don’t want accessing company data ends up figuring out a password, they have only a short time frame within which it could help them access company information.

Restrict Administrative Privileges

Limit who within the company is able to make changes to your network that could potentially break-the system. Part of security involves reducing risk, and the fewer people who can damage your network, the less likely you are to experience network damage due to employee error. Of course, you need to balance this with allowing employees to do their job without having to jump through unnecessary hoops or feeling like they’re micromanaged. The right amount of access is going to vary from company to company.

Email Hacking

One of the most common ways that hackers and cybercriminals gain access to company information is through email hacking and scams. Part of your staff training should include proper examination of emails to determine whether the sender can be trusted or not. Email security involves everyone who is using a work email account, not just your security team.

Conduct Regular Backups

One of the ways that data breaches can cost companies money is by damaging or stealing data. If you have a backup of all your important information, you know that you’ll be able to get your hands on the stolen information again. Ideally, you want an encrypted and offline backup in addition to a cloud-based backup. Digital backups help protect you from data loss in the event of a fire, flood, or even a coffee incident. Physical backups help protect you from data loss in the event of cybercrime.

Antivirus Software

No matter what digital devices you use within your company, antivirus software can help keep you safe. This kind of software will scan any applications or program installation requests before they launch for dangers. This can help catch any problems that slip past your staff in the form of email attachments or other forms of cyber attacks.

Keep Things Updated

You know when you get those messages about updating your software? It turns out those are really important. Often, updates are created by companies when vulnerabilities in their systems have been discovered. Updates can improve weak points in a program’s security that are known. If software companies know there’s a flaw, chances are hackers also know there’s a flaw. If you don’t update, you’re leaving your devices with big openings.

Continuity Plan

Just like you are taught fire drills in school, it’s a good idea for you to practice data breaches at work. When a cybercrime happens, it’s vital that you’re able to act quickly and salvage all that you can. A plan of action can help keep you prepared in the event that something goes wrong security-wise. This can help you protect your financial standing, business brand, customers, and employees.

Conduct Regular Risk Assessments

Hackers are always studying and finding new ways to breach data security systems. This means you need to regularly examine your security measures. Something that worked six months ago might be obsolete now, and the only way you’re going to figure that out is if you constantly revisit your security system and any space it has for improvement. Be sure to read up on the latest cybercrime news as part of this process.

The above information should help you manage your company’s data security needs. Again, every business is different, and this means that you might have security particulars not included on this list. For best results, speak to a local security provider to figure out what best suits your business.

What Is Predictive Maintenance, And What Can It Do For Your Business?

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Traditionally, professionals who deal with maintenance in their manufacturing facilities have combined different techniques to optimise all maintenance tasks. These included both qualitative techniques and were used to predict possible failures and mitigate downtime in their manufacturing facilities.

However, there is a tool that can help optimise tasks in real-time. This tool is called predictive maintenance. If you were wondering what this technique is, and how it can be used, you have come to the right place.

In this article, you will find a detailed explanation of predictive maintenance and its uses in the business world.

What Exactly is Predictive Maintenance?

Predictive maintenance represents an amazing maintenance strategy that can allow you to prevent breakdowns. It is the most advanced approach that exists today when it comes to managing maintenance within process plants. The way you can look at it is as a subset of predictive analytics. This strategy uses AI/ML, the Internet of Things, as well as big data.

The goal is to monitor all of the equipment and check for part failure. There are, of course, different predictive maintenance techniques you can use. You just have to choose the one that best suits your business’s needs.

How Does it Work?

In theory, predictive maintenance is quite simple. The way it works is by gathering data about all your assets, and from there on, it can extract information that can allow you to calculate when exactly you need to perform maintenance.

When it comes to practice, predictive maintenance can be divided into three stages: data collection, data mining and calculations, and machine learning.

Data Collection

As mentioned above, the goal of predictive maintenance is predicting the breakdowns that might occur. And to be able to do so, this system uses sensors that can collect information in real-time. That is, you can track the performance of your equipment live.

Of course, these sensors can detect different types of data, and it all depends on the techniques you intend to use in the monitoring process. You can control anything from pressure and temperature to vibration, noise level, and corrosion level.

Data Mining

If you only accumulate data but do not know how to exploit them, you will not be able to predict any failures that might occur. This is where the Internet of Things, mentioned above, comes into play. This tool allows the sensors to send all collected information to the central system or software that analyses the data and allows you to see what is going on.

In systems where the various assets are integrated, using predictive maintenance is very effective.

Calculations and Machine Learning

If you can only act when sensors detect anomalies, it is predicting the failures, but just detecting already existing ones. Fortunately, predictive maintenance can be used to build and apply algorithms that give you sort of a prognosis of breakdowns that might occur.

First, it is usually based on maintenance logs, statistics, and equipment history. But, further on, artificial intelligence can detect anomalies early, find the right correlations and give you intelligent suggestions that can help you prevent failure.

Which Businesses Can Benefit from Predictive Maintenance?

This amazing tool can bring benefits to various types of businesses. But, it might be the most popular amongst process manufacturing companies, as they have numerous interconnected moving parts, and practically every part of the equipment is vital.

Some of these industries are oil and gas industries, refineries, chemical processing plants, cement plants, as well as pharmaceutical industries. But, no matter what kind of business you might have, if you need any failure prediction tools, you can use predictive maintenance for sure.

How Predictive Maintenance Can Benefit Your Business

If you have a manufacturing company of any kind, using predictive maintenance is a much better idea than using reactive or preventive maintenance. As in any manufacturing business, each plant has many pieces of equipment, and all of them need to perform correctly if you want the production to go smoothly. However, if there are any possible mistakes in any of them, predictive maintenance will allow you to act on time and avoid bigger failures. This is especially useful in those cases when a really expensive part of equipment might be affected. But, when you catch the problem while it is small, it will be a lot easier and less expensive to repair.

The reason why you can do this is that the predictive maintenance system will give you an early condition warning. From there on, you can move the relevant piece of equipment to the top of your maintenance management schedule. They will be able to repair or replace the problematic part, and prevent your business from facing huge expenses.

Examples of Application:

Motor circuit Analysis

This type of analysis uses a technique called electronic signature analysis. It can be applied to assess engine degradation, to scan for short-circuits, as well as insulation and gears. Besides analysing the circuit and the components that belong to it, it can evaluate the voltage as well as the current that enters the motor.

Of course, this type of analysis can work on both DC and AC motors and can operate even when the equipment is running.

Acoustic Analysis

Acoustic analysis can be used to detect any issues in a machine’s technical performance. The way it works is by detecting changes in the sound frequencies. As every machine makes at least some sort of noise, the changes in its frequency can signal that there is some sort of issue.

For example, it can signal that there is a leak or a pressure change somewhere. This technique is most popular in applications for air compressors, pipes and plumbing, fans, and vacuum systems.

Oil Analysis

When it comes to oils in manufacturing systems, it is very important to test their viscosity, as well as the amount of water and amount of metals present in them, etc. This is why oil analysis is so important. For instance, in a hydraulic system, it is crucial to check for the by-products of overheating and erosion that can occur as the system ages.

Some other applications include turbines, evaluation of engines, and lubricant levels.

Predictive maintenance is an amazing tool that you can use no matter what kind of manufacturing business you might have. It can allow you to see earlier if any breakdowns are going to happen and therefore save your business tons of money.

How Artificial Intelligence Will Directly Affect The Media Industry

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Many media companies from around the globe are anticipating the affect that artificial intelligence (AI) will have on the way they do business. The dynamic nature of technology trends demands its continuous evolution from publishing to a digital media company. Progress has been made in terms of content, as well as in terms of technology used to gather and publish information.

Artificial intelligence now possesses a larger pool of data to work with and automate so as to generate reports and other forms of content.

But How Will AI Affect Your Business?

Data Collection

Content in media is generated in all visible media formats. Relevant keywords, sentiments, and entities, along with topic classification is computed. Image classification is used for face detection or finding important parts of an image. All this data is then used to build a knowledge graph for ease of content search, recommendations, and relevant content syndication.

The second part of data collection is around collecting time series data on what content is consumed by the end user. This helps the algorithm match user interest with content meta data.

Insights Utilisation

The insights obtained from text mining allow for trends to be identified and leveraged in order to solidify a target audience and appeal to their interests. Historical analysis of trending content helps the editors focus on the topics they would want to write and distribute across social media. By serving relevant ads for a target audience, the ROI for the advertisers can be improved resulting in increased revenue for the publisher.

High performing advertising campaigns then become templates for future campaigns and low-performing ones can be analysed for their defects.

Customer Feedback

Algorithms can also help formulate responses to questions posed by customers. A direct outcome of this report would be the ability to weed out fake news that may be published by backlinking their sources and exposing their inaccuracies.

Smart artificial intelligence would be able to perform these semiotic analyses to determine accuracy.

Conclusion

In conclusion, artificial intelligence is reshaping the media industry in profound ways. From automating content creation and enhancing audience engagement to enabling data-driven decision-making, AI is a driving force of transformation. However, careful consideration of ethical implications and the need for human oversight are vital as the industry navigates this evolving landscape. As AI continues to evolve, media companies that embrace its potential while upholding journalistic integrity are poised to thrive in this rapidly changing environment.