Top three qualities of a successful blogger

The qualities of a blogger should be attended at all times in order to become someone popular on the internet. A blogger should have plenty of ideas for creative writing, along with a truckload of motivation. The results sought will not come overnight and there's no guarantee that this will be easy.

These are the two things that you need in order to fulfill your dream of running a successful blog: a lot of exclusive content and readers' loyalty. In each case, time is required to develop the success. This is a process and not a short-term event.

Related: How to Write SEO Optimized Blog Posts

Top Qualities To Become a Successful Blogger

Here are three qualities of a blogger who as a site administrator will need to have, if your goal is to manage a successful blog.

Patience

A successful blog is a product of time and effort and for this, you will need patience. As I said before, the results will not appear quickly overnight, so it is important to realize this from the start. If you are constantly trying to develop new and creative ideas for writing on your blog and, at the same time, you are worried whether you will see any results, this will only make things more difficult.

The building of a successful business online is a "long term" effort and you must decide if you accept this challenge or not. This is one the most important qualities of a blogger.

Credibility

Much of the traffic of any successful blog results from its unique content, as well as its credibility. In fact, the quality of what's in the site, will have a direct impact on what will become viral visitors that are coming to your platform. If you will provide quality content, people will talk about your blog, and once they do it, others may come to see what you have. It depends on you to publish useful and accurate information and your readers will do the rest.

Consistency

Maintaining a steady stream of creative writing ideas is vital to be able to constantly update the blog. The frequency of publication to a proper schedule is related to the amount of time you have available and your level of motivation. However, it is recommended to establish a sort of consistency, so that people can schedule their own visits accordingly. Just remember that the more often you write, the more people will visit, so their loyalty will grow faster and their referrals will be extended.

To become a popular blogger, it is important to have a healthy source of creative writing ideas, along with a lot of patience and motivation. Ultimately, it will be up to you, as a site administrator, to provide the three qualities of a blogger that we discussed above, who is searching tirelessly his goal of having a successful blog. In the end, your own motivation and patience will be the glue with which all the elements will be put together so that your dream will come true.

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Cloud provider research, due diligence needed to maintain compliance

http://searchcompliance.techtarget.com/tip/Cloud-provider-research-due-diligence-needed-to-maintain-compliance?asrc=EM_ERU_24376772&utm_medium=EM&utm_source=ERU&utm_campaign=20131025_ERU%20Transmission%20for%2010/25/2013%20(UserUniverse:%20580888)_myka-reports@techtarget.com&src=5176213

Christine Parizo, Contributor

Organizations generate more data than ever before through applications, email and other computing tasks. Faced with flat IT budgets, companies are turning to the cloud for storage, software and infrastructure.
This is much to the chagrin of the compliance department, which wakes up in a cold sweat thinking about data security. Experts agree, however, that by conducting due diligence, companies can minimize their cloud-related risk and maintain compliance in the cloud.
"Your security teams have to satisfy themselves that what the cloud provider is doing on a routine basis meets or exceeds what they'd do on-premises," said John Howie, chief operating officer of the Cloud Security Alliance.
But enterprises are limited in how they can conduct this due diligence. For example, a cloud provider audit may not be possible because the provider doesn't want hordes of customers tromping through its data centers. Penetration testing could also shut down an enterprise's service because the cloud provider could view it as a legitimate attack, Howie said.

Because physical audits sometimes aren't possible, reputable cloud service providers should have certifications. In the United States, the two major certifications are ISO/IEC 27001:2005 and SOC 2. The ISO/IEC 27001:2005 certification provides a definition for how to run an information security management system. It does not, however, say whether "you're particularly good at it, and it doesn't say that you have the controls in place [that] are actually working," Howie cautioned. "It just certifies that you have an information security system that understands these problems and is trying to improve."

The SOC 2 certification, which is the replacement for SAS 70 and is based on the audit standard AP 101, contains the five "SysTrust" principles developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants: confidentiality, integrity, availability, security and privacy, according to Howie.
"Privacy is a little bit of a misnomer, because it's not privacy of the customer's data," he said. Rather, it means the privacy of the cloud provider's customer, not the customers of the company that signs up for service.
To ensure the cloud provider's controls are adequate and working, SOC 2 requires an audit by a large firm. An SOC 2 report is then presented that contains detailed information about vulnerabilities and the environment as a whole. These details often make cloud providers hesitant to let customers see the results of SOC 2 reports, Howie said.

Ask providers relevant questions

Before choosing a cloud provider, companies need to ask prospective vendors some hard questions to ensure they'll stay on the right side of regulators. "It's about asking questions around what arrangements are going to be in place to protect your information … from the creation stage to the processing, the storage, the transmission and, of course, destruction," said Steve Durbin, global vice president of the Information Security Forum. Eventually, the contract with the provider will end, and organizations need to know what will happen to their data when that occurs, he added.
Other questions should include how secure the connection is, including whether a VPN is required to connect, and what the availability is, Durbin said. Companies also need to ask encryption-related questions, including whether the data needs to be encrypted, what facilities the cloud provider has to encrypt data and whether data should be encrypted before being transmitted to the cloud service, he added.
Physical security is also important, according to Mac McMillan, current chairman of the HIMSS Privacy and Security Policy Task Force and CEO of Austin, Texas-based IT security consulting firm CynergisTek. Questions should include how the cloud provider controls physical access and how systems are protected from other customers' data in colocation situations.
Finally, companies should check on the status of the cloud provider's insurance, McMillan said. For example, if there's a security breach, it's important to know if the provider will indemnify the customer and pay for the notifications, he said.

Beware the fine print during contract negotiations

The due diligence doesn't stop at the negotiating table. There is no one provision to include in the contract to maintain compliance in the cloud, but careful language can help limit liability, according to Robert Scott, managing partner at Southlake, Texas-based technology law firm Scott & Scott LLP.

More on compliance in the cloud and security

Use cloud SLAs to reduce risk, improve data recovery processes
Risk management approach needed to offset cloud security concerns

"If you outsource to a third-party cloud service provider to handle or store personally identifiable, financial or healthcare information that's regulated in any way, the law has a non-delegable duty that you can't just outsource these legal responsibilities," Scott said. Even changes to payment card industry compliance standards, which now apply to third-party services, do not absolve enterprises of maintaining regulatory compliance in the cloud, he said.
Enterprises need to ensure that their cloud services providers agree to be bound by the same regulations that they are, Scott said. For financial institutions, that means adhering to regulations such as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, for example.
One thing to be wary of in contracts is provisions where the cloud services provider asks the enterprise to agree to limit data breach liability, Scott cautioned. "Such a provision could work to significantly limit the availability of insurance and/or the ability to recover for privacy-related claims that result from a data breach," he said.
Contracts are always negotiable, and any reasonable cloud provider will be willing to negotiate with a customer regarding legitimate regulatory compliance, data security and privacy concerns, Scott said. "They're not going to be a successful cloud service provider without being sensitive to customer concerns in those areas," he said.
About the author:
Christine Parizo is a freelance writer specializing in business and technology. She focuses on feature articles for a variety of technology- and business-focused publications, as well as case studies and white papers for business-to-business technology companies. Prior to launching her freelance career, Parizo was an assistant news editor for SearchCRM.
Let us know what you think about the story; email Ben Cole, associate editor. For more regulatory compliance news and updates throughout the week, follow us on Twitter @ITCompliance.

  

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Add Keyboard Keys Effect To Your Text in Blogger with CSS

For many of us the design and the template are the most important, making our readers be more interested and coming back to our blog. There's an HTML element meant for marking up keyboard keys named <kbd> which can be styled with CSS, so why not use it to make those elements look the keyboard keys?

Thus, in this tutorial, I am going to show you how to create a keyboard keys effect with CSS. It doesn't require images so your blog will load faster.

How to Add Keyboard Keys to Blogger

Step 1. From Blogger Dashboard, select your blog and go to Template > Edit HTML

Step 2. Click anywhere inside the code area, press the Ctrl + F keys and search for this piece of code:

]]></b:skin>

Screenshot

Click on the arrow to expand the code

Step 3: Just above ]]></b:skin> paste this CSS style:

kbd{
border:1px solid gray;
font-size:1.2em;
box-shadow:1px 0 1px 0 #eee, 0 2px 0 2px #ccc, 0 2px 0 3px #444;
-webkit-border-radius:3px;
-moz-border-radius:3px;
border-radius:3px;
margin:2px 3px;
padding:1px 5px;
}

Step 4. To save the changes, press the Save change button.

Finally, we need to add the html <kbd> tags to the text on which we want to apply the keyboard keys style.
From your blogger's dashboard, go to create a New Post, write the text on which you want to apply the style and go to the HTML tab. Before and after the text, add the following HTML tags:

<kbd>Ctrl</kbd> + <kbd>F</kbd>

Screenshot

This will make it to look like this:

Ctrl + F

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How to do natural SEO on Blogger

Although many insist that blogs hosted on free servers, such as Blogger, are not ideal for getting your blog well-ranked, the truth is that a blog hosted by Blogger can be really fast and well positioned on the Internet if you are using the right SEO tools.

Now, given the latest updates from Google, the best would be hiring a specialized person. However, if you don't have the resources or you want to learn doing this job alone, you can choose to begin with the natural SEO.

Here are some tips to do natural SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Natural SEO Techniques for Blogger

Pick a Good Domain

We must try having our keyword included in the domain name, and even if this may sacrifice our branding, we can use the redirection.

Create Value Added Content

Not only rewrite articles, or write like they would be intended for us. When writing our posts, we should consider our target audience, i.e., giving advices, tips, suggestions or guidance on specific topics and aside, use links, anchor text and key phrases.

The topic of the links is important

They should be of quality and while, it's no longer required to place five or ten links within the text of your website, now what truly matters, is to make the link relevant to the context.

Finally, the domain, in value-added content and a right use of the internal and external links, will prove to be useless if we don't try to update our blog constantly.

How often should you update your blog?

You don't have to do this on daily basis, even if this may be ideal as, this way, we could achieve a greater relevance in search engines. But don't forget about your blog either. Let's say, two or three times a week would be enough. What should not happen is updating only three times a week and doing nothing next week.

Keep in mind that search engines happen to pass daily on our blog in order to index our content.

I hope that you find these SEO tips useful and if you would like to receive more tutorials by email, subscribe for free to this blog, check out the facebook page or add the RSS feed.

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How to Add a Recent Forum Topics Widget to Blogger

If you are using the Nabble forum in your blog is very likely that this gadget will interest you because, as the title suggests, it will display the lastest topics that have been published in your forum in a very similar manner to the recent comments gadget that works with the blog's feed.

If you want to add a list with the Recent Forum Topics then follow the steps below:

Go to your forum and look at the bottom where it says Feeds, click on that link and then two links of the Feed will appear (the first being the Topics only Feed and the other one is Topics and replies) - choose the one you want.

After this, log in to your Blogger Dashboard, go to Layout, click on Add a Gadget link, choose Feed from the gadgets list and paste the Feed URL you have selected inside the text box.

Click on Continue, and you only have to configure the parameters, then Save changes to see the results.

That's it! Enjoy :)

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Add a forum on your Blogger blog with Nabble

Forum is a platform where visitors can interact with each other and discuss different hot topics. There you can add desired topics for getting comments and diverse suggestions on them. If you have a good traffic, then you can place questions on daily basis for the potential visitors to answer, thus your forum simultaneously converts itself into a huge frequently asked quesions section "FAQ". Forums will provide your visitors an open social atmosphere to express their useful ideas and share other's ideas.

In this brief tutorial, I have explained simple steps to add a forum to your Blogger or blogspot blog. So let's get started!

How to Create a Forum With Nabble

To implement a forum we will use Nabble, in my opinion, one of the best free options. We go to Nabble page and there, we will create an account (keep in mind that this account will be the moderator of the forum).
And once we have everything set (it also has a wide variety of customizing options), go to Options -> Application -> Change appearance:

There, we can also edit the CSS of the forum and other things...

Now we have to give the structure of a real forum, i.e. organizing it by categories. To do this click on the Options menu, select Application, then click Change application type:

Then choose the Forum category and save your changes.

To finish, we only have to create categories and for this go back to Options, this time select Structure and then choose Create a new sub-forum:

Fill in the details of the category and that's it, you will have your forum running.

The rest are small details, like sort categories (Options > Structure > Manage sub-forums), customize your avatar and your signature (YourNickname > Account Settings), change permissions (Options > Users > Permissions), etc.

Now for integrating the newly created forum to your blog, you must go to Options - Embedding options and copy the javascript code.

Embed the forum in a Blogger page

Login to your Blogger Dashboard, select your blog, click the Pages link on the left sidebar and create a new Blank Page

Once there, get in the HTML mode.

Paste inside the empty box the code that we copied earlier, and if everything went well, we should see our brand new forum for our blog!

I hope this tutorial was helpful to you and you will begin using this great service.

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Breaches: Holding Retailers Accountable

Vermont's Settlement with Merchant Could Set Bar for Others

By Tracy Kitten, October 10, 2013.

The Vermont Attorney General's $30,000 settlement with a breached retailer is significant because it demonstrates that states can play a role in holding retailers accountable for losses associated with card fraud, one banker says.
As a result of this case, more banking institutions may ask state attorneys general to conduct investigations after card fraud is linked to a retailer, says Marjorie Meadors, who oversees card fraud prevention for Louisville-based Republic Bank & Trust, a community bank with $3.2 billion in assets. That's because attorneys general enforce state laws, which may call for timely breach notification and establish security requirements, including compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard.

 

Meadors says many banking institutions, including her own, usually report fraud incidents to local and federal law enforcement authorities, rather than state attorneys general. "Maybe we should pursue the breach angle with state agencies in the future," she says. "Some additional fines from the state agencies would further encourage smaller merchants to take a closer look at how they are updating their [point-of-sale] software."

Actions in Vermont

Last month, the Williston, Vt.-based grocery chain Natural Provisions agreed to pay a $15,000 fine to settle allegations that it failed to promptly notify customers of a breach dating back to 2012. Natural Provisions also agreed to spend $15,000 on security upgrades to its point-of-sale system.
According to Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell, Natural Provisions' lax security contributed to the breach that resulted in tens of thousands of dollars in fraud losses linked to compromised cards.
"When banks traced the fraud back to Natural Provisions, the store was informed that it was the likely source of the fraud," Sorrell states in a notice about the settlement. "Under Vermont law, a company must notify the attorney general within 14 days of the discovery of a breach, notify its customers within 45 days, and quickly take steps to remedy the breach. Natural Provisions failed to meet these standards. After it first obtained information that a security breach might have occurred at its store, it did not commence taking remedial action to resolve the security vulnerability for more than a month."
The attorney general's notice also notes: "Some consumers had their credit cards compromised, had cards reissued, and had the new cards compromised after use at Natural Provisions."
In the settlement with Natural Provisions, Sorrell claims Natural Provisions failed address, in a timely manner, security weaknesses that allowed its payments network to be compromised and an undetermined amount of card data was stolen.
Natural Provisions did not respond to Information Security Media Group's request for comment.
But Assistant Attorney General Ryan Kriger says the reason for the enforcement action from the state was Natural Provisions' failure to immediately fix the problem once it was brought to the store's attention.
"It took them more than a month to start taking any steps," Kriger tells Information Security Media Group. "They were notified and did't take steps. We in the Attorney General's office didn't find out about it until even later than that."
Kriger says many small business struggle to maintain adequate POS security, and in Vermont the AG's office has worked with numerous businesses to assist them after a breach. In the case of Natural Provisions, however, so much time passed that the state felt enforcement action had to be taken, he says.
"Hopetufully it will make other small businesses realize this is a serious matter," Kriger says. "As a small business, you need to be thinking about security; you need to have a plan in place; and you need to follow the law. ... State AGs are in best position to enforce more security with these local businesses."

Vendors' Responsibilities?

Meadors of Republic Bank & Trust says breaches at smaller retailers, such as Natural Provisions, which processes approximately 5,500 payment card transactions per month, are relatively common. But it's not just the retailers that are to blame, she contends.

Some [POS] software companies are not properly educating their merchants about the risk and the need to keep the software updated and patched," Meadors says.
"We have been told that often the software companies or their resellers are not sending out patches or updates, even when the merchants have paid for them. It will probably take some merchants bringing lawsuits against their software providers to get any action."
Another recent retailer breach, which was traced back to a POS software vulnerability, affected numerous small merchants in Kentucky and Indiana in early 2013. That software vulnerability led to a malware attack that exposed hundreds of debit and credit accounts in and around Louisville, Ky. (see Retailers Attacked by POS Malware).

Setting an Example

Dan Mitchell, a data security attorney for Maine-based Bernstein Shur, says Vermont's actions against Natural Provisions likely were meant to set an example.
"The interesting thing about this one is that the Vermont breach notification statute has a set deadline by which data breach notification has to be provided," Mitchell says. "There are only a handful of states that have a specific amount of time for notification. And Vermont only recently amended their breach notification statute in May 2012. Prior to that, they had similar requirements like other states that did not specify the 45-day rule."
Given the publicity this case has gotten, other states could soon follow Vermont's lead and amend their breach-notification statutes to include timelines as well, Mitchell says. "I don't think other states are going to look at this and say Vermont is being really strict and unrealistic."
The lesson for other merchants, or any entity that processes cardholder data, is that security has to be taken seriously, Mitchell adds. "If they are transacting data, then, regardless of size, they could potentially do a lot of harm if they are breached. They need to be secure."
David Navetta, who is the co-founder of the Information Law Group and co-chairman of the American Bar Association's Information Security Committee, notes: "What is unique in this case is that it involves a relatively low-profile company. Many regulators are generally less aggressive with smaller organizations because they realize that some of these smaller companies face technical and resource challenges when it comes to security."

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