For safe online shopping!

Since this is the last blog of this semester, I thought why not write about a topic that is so in during the holiday season.  Next week, it’s all about shopping for the best deals that many look forward to since the beginning of the year.  Many of you will plan to form long lines early in the morning in front of your favorite stores to get the best deals of the season. Some even arrange tents to sit in and avoid the cold or tiresomeness. Some prefer shopping from their home comforts, shopping online. While doing this, they should be well aware of the cyber risks that come with it. 

With so many retailers posting huge hoardings and advertisements about the savings that consumer can have during the “Black Friday”, not many pay attention to the internet attacks that are possible while shopping online. According to the statistic analysis by TRUSTe, an Internet privacy services provider, 25% of the purchases are usually done online not only from their computers but through Mobile web too. Let me consolidate below some measures that need to be taken by deal hunters as put up by Paypal, Trend Micro, and Amazon:

1.       Use a more secure and tough to break password for the shopping websites

2.       Investing on the best antimalware and antivirus protection

3.       Being aware of the “looks so good deals” – like an ipad worth $100. Come on, its just common sense   that is needed to distinguish such deals

4.       Avoiding less heard about sites for better deals

5.       Contacting your credit or debit card banks to find out if they have any form of additional authentication to avoid any frauds

6.       Avoiding shopping using public Wi-Fi or a PC in public places

Hopefully, cyber criminals get a day off, while consumers take care of all the above methods. Regardless of these risks, am sure all shoppers will have to do some homework to hunt around for best deals.

Outsourcing for Mid-Size companies

Though there is a major difference in terms of services between Outsourcing and Offshoring, Indian mid-size companies seem to be very competent with the larger companies like Wipro, Infosys and TCS. Offshoring is basically chosen to cut certain costs in business by making use of affordable services from across the world, while Outsourcing is a way to utilize the staff of a company to perform various core functions to cover up any lack of resources. India has grown as one of the hubs for Offshoring and Outsourcing markets because of its low labor costs and competent services offered. One of the articles in CIO this week mentions that, for medium size Indian outsources to be on par with the larger companies like Wipro, INFY and TCS, they have to focus on specific industry, services or specific geography as their potential markets. 

The major advantage for the mid-size customers to work with the medium-size outsources of India would be the direct contact with its high level management and the specific focus and attention they receive. In my point of view, to gain contracts, the medium-size companies should first focus on the services they are ready to provide and should equip themselves with the facilities that none of the other companies on par with them have. One close example in the U.S. market for such a scenario would be the Wimax Forum Designated Certification Labs (WFDCL). Even though all of its 7 labs are equally competent all over the world, AT4 Wireless, Inc.  gains a slight edge over the others by acquiring the latest testing equipment and thus gaining additional sub-contracts (Outsources projects) from the other labs apart from major contracts from larger companies like, Sprint, Clearwire, etc.

Apart from getting high-end projects, India has proven itself to be the single largest location to receive projects related to IT application development and maintenance (ADM) and remote infrastructure management (RIM) services. Also, the stats show that India accounts for 50 percent of the global offshore IT services industry. In such a scenario, the grave threat that the mid-size Outsourcers face from the larger companies is a lack of contact base with global customers, may be mainly because of the poor marketing strategies they use or not being aware of the way they are introduced to the world by media. If they can get hold of these factors, am sure the day for them to announce a bigger share in the market is not far away.

Sprint vs ZTE & Huawei

Being two of the leading telecommunications equipment manufacturers now does not give enough reason to win a contract for U.S. based carriers. This is the latest news that has come up in the wake of security concerns for the U.S. The mobile operator in question who had announced for Request For Proposals to improve their infrastructure was Sprint Nextel. Even though being the lowest bids among the others that Sprint had received, ZTE and Huawei are supposedly been denied approvals of a possible win in the competition at the last minute. The reason being that ZTE and Huawei are Chinese based companies that are closely tied to its government and military forces. 

The new provision given to the U.S. military agencies by the U.S. lawmakers states that the military agencies can at will exclude subcontractors if they sense any threat to their nation’s security. The main concerns that the U.S. Department of Defense and Federal Communications Commission has now with these companies is that a possibility of the Chinese military forces utilizing the equipment of these companies to interfere in their peaceful operations with the U.S. based Sprint and disrupt, tamper, intercept or even purposely misroute the U.S Telecom systems as put up in a letter written by U.S. lawmakers to the FCC. Not only this, but there are concerns over china’s trade and currency policies with the U.S. that had not been elaborated enough. 

Now the big question is – Even after Huawei’s denial of current ties with the Chinese military system and also ZTE’s self defense statements, will Sprint let them in with the contract or will Samsung and Alcatel-Lucent be the ones to take this billion dollar deal? Is the discussion of this issue in the G20 summit going to make any difference with Obama’s presence in Seoul along with other business leaders?