IIA presents international revenues seminar and survey

The IIA is hosting an event in the autumn aimed at helping organisations to better tap into international revenues using the internet. The IIA's International Strategy Working Group is organising the seminar, which is titled 'Growing international revenues using the internet'. In advance of the event, the IIA is seeking input from those interested in this area, and has put together a short survey for this purpose. The survey is available here here. For more information visit the IIA's International Strategy Working Group.

Irish shoppers stick with Google

Microsoft's revamped search engine is not making an impact among Irish online shoppers, according to the owner of children's clothing site PuddleDucks.ie. Microsoft launched its search engine Bing two months ago, but Google is still the search engine of choice among Irish shoppers, according to a PuddleDucks study of five Irish online retailers. Among this group, Bing has a 3 percent market share, as does Yahoo, while Google has around 92 percent of the market. "Google is still the overwhelming favourite for search among Irish online shoppers. The results also mean that getting good search results in Google is still the most important aspect of search engine optimisation for Irish internet businesses," said PuddleDucks owner Aedan Ryan. Read the press release on PuddleDucks.ie.

Social media policies are lacking

Most companies are finding social media effective for marketing, but few have strategies in place to manage such efforts. Social media marketing involves the use of sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter to start a 'conversation' with consumers. A US study by e-marketing firm MarketingSherpa found that the vast majority of those surveyed rated social media marketing effective at influencing brand reputation, increasing awareness and improving search rankings and site traffic. However, only one-third of larger firms had a written policy to manage brand communications, and a mere 13 percent of smaller businesses had one. "A lot of the time, brands will put up a corporate blog or Facebook profile and think that's social media marketing," said Lou Cuming of social media marketing agency DEI Worldwide. "You really have to continue to nurture the conversation, otherwise it just dries up - it's like having a one-way conversation, and if people aren't listening, it does damage to the brand." Read more on eMarketer.com.

Companies face criminal attacks

Criminal attacks are top of the list of threats facing organisations for the next few years, according to a new study by security body the Information Security Forum (ISF). The 'Threat Horizon 2011' report outlines the top 10 security threats for the next two years, with criminal attacks being the biggest problem. In particular, the report highlights the increasing problem of attacks from malicious insiders, as well as the trend towards "crimeware-as-a-service" (see Glossary below) offered by criminal gangs across the internet. The second leading threat is infrastructure weaknesses, followed by tougher statutory requirements. Mobile malware, Web 2.0 vulnerabilities and pressure from outsourcing services also feature strongly. For more on this story see www.v3.co.uk.

Here are some of the issues our forum members have been discussing in the last fortnight:

• Using search engines other than Google view thread
• Domains with relevant phrases view thread
• Multi-user blogging and CMS tools view thread

Webstore focus: Reducing cart abandonment

Are you prepared for disaster?

Case study: Radius Communications Ireland

Crimeware-as-a-service

Crimeware-as-a-service (CaaS) is one of the newer security threats that organisations have to worry about, as criminals become ever more sophisticated in their methods for stealing valuable personal data. The CaaS model means that criminals can avail of online cybercrime 'services' provided by other tech-savvy criminals. For non-technically minded criminals, this means they can carry out online crime without having to manage the technical challenges of running their own servers. Instead, they can buy access to a crimeware toolkit via a web-based service, which often comes with a 'service level' guarantee. The distancing of the criminal from the operation of the crime makes it harder for law enforcement agencies to catch them.

Trinity College Dublin, August 20
This Irish software show is a week-long international conference organised by IrishDev.com. OSS, Microsoft and Java technologies are on the agenda. Sessions will cover software and web technologies from design and architecture through to testing and deployment.

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