You may have a strong desire to quit your regular job and start your own home based business opportunity but you are not sure how to get it started. You also may not be sure if you possess the basic entrepreneurial skills. Apart from the skills to manage the administrative and executive matters there are other abilities that are essential for the success of a home venture.To become a successful entrepreneur you need to have certain attributes, like longing for continuous learning, personal drive, enthusiasm and motivation. You will need some extraordinary skills to remain ahead of the competition and stand out from the crowd. What are these prerequisites? Let us find out.Communication skills:You should develop strong communication skills to be able to effectively conveying information not only to your employees but also to your customers. It is essential to hone your word power and interpersonal skills to succeed.You should build up and polish both verbal and written communication skills. The verbal skills will make it easier when you are going to make a presentation to your clients or talk to them over the telephone. An unprepared presentation or conversation may cost your home based business opportunity dear.Negotiation skills:Negotiation skills are closely related with communication skills. If you are not skillful at negotiations you cannot sell your product or service. A successful businessman should be able to negotiate. In the absence of persuading skills you will find it difficult to convince your customers to use your service or product.Planning skills:If your business staggers for want of proper planning and clear vision, it is going to be difficult for you to sustain. As someone who is in command of his/her enterprise you should be able to have immaculate strategic, administrative, organizational and financial planning skills, and also a clear and objective goal. Prepare a comprehensible road map to take your home based business opportunity to greater heights.You will soon crash and burn if you are a hotheaded and impulsive proprietor of your home venture. Appropriate management planning will keep you and your team less stressed and you will be able to handle your business matters on time and within your calculated budget.Apart from the above mentioned essential skills, you should strive to build up following abilities as well:
Time management – Manage your time in such a manner that you are able to have room for more productive business matters.
Leadership skills – If you want people to follow, you will need to develop strong leadership qualities.
Be imaginative – Your business ideas should be new, original and clever.
Discipline – Maintain discipline even if nobody is supervising you. Be strict with your work hours. A lethargic attitude is not going to take you anywhere.
Develop positive attitude – A positive attitude is essential to keep you going in difficult times.
Computer skills – It is necessary to develop basic computer skills for effectively conducting your business.
Telephone manners – Train yourself and your staff to learn adequate telephone etiquette to leave a good impression on your customers.
The above mentioned entrepreneurial skills are the prerequisites for growing your home based business opportunity.
Prerequisite Entrepreneur Skills For Your Home Based Business Opportunities
Tips For Choosing A Successful Christian Home Based Business
Maybe you have been laid off recently and are now looking for a christian home based business opportunity to work at home. No matter what the case, this article is sure to be very beneficial for you and those who also wish to work from home.With the internet being the backbone to find work at home opportunities, there will never be a shortage or options to consider. With options such as telemarketers, all the way to those which allow you to work straight from your computer and internet connection, the possibilities are endless on which may be right for you.While telemarketer work allows for convenient work hours, and the ability to stay at home and use your own personal phone, many who are good talkers choose this option. Same goes for internet based business opportunities where a computer and internet connection is the only requirement.Other such home based business opportunities can be of the transcriber variety. College professors often look for transcribers to to transcribe lesson plans from year to year. The same goes for doctors, and lawyers. Although many do not pay a desirable amount, this can be an option for little extra cash.One possibility which may interest those just looking for a hobby more than a big time paying opportunity is, filling out online surveys. With plenty of online survey type companies looking for individuals to fill out surveys for them, will pay per completed survey. Not much income can be generated with these, often only $1 – $2 for a completed 1 1/2 hour survey.Christian stay at home moms and dads more often than not, choose christian home based business opportunities which involve sales. Christian companies usually provide a website that takes care of the selling for you, so this makes it a preferred choice for many who wish to work at home while keeping the kids and family schedule the same.For those who are looking to just pass some time away while earning a little money on the side, it is always a good idea to come up with a list of activities that you enjoy to do. As you may discover while in search of opportunities, that there may very well be a business opportunity in your field of interest.Every now and then magazines, as well as newspapers will look for individuals to take pictures, or who are good copywriters. If you possess either skill, you may want to keep an eye out for ads in this area. Elderly business owners may put ads for such skills in wanted sections as well.
Tips to Secure Your Small Business Network
Just because your business is small, doesn’t mean that hackers won’t target you. The reality is that automated scanning techniques and botnets don’t care whether your company is big or small, they’re only looking for holes in your network security to exploit.
Maintaining a secure small business or home network isn’t easy, and even for an old hand in IT, it still takes time and energy to keep things locked down. Here are 10 of the most critical steps you can take to keep your data from ending up elsewhere, and none of them take much time or effort to accomplish.
Get a Firewall
The first step for any attacker is to find network vulnerabilities by scanning for open ports. Ports are the mechanisms by which your small business network opens up and connects to the wider world of the Internet. A hacker sees an open port to as an irresistible invitation for access and exploitation. A network firewall locks down ports that don’t need to be open.
A properly configured firewall acts as the first line of defense on any network. The network firewall sets the rules for which ports should be open and which ones should be closed. The only ports that should be open are ports for services that you need to run.
Typically, most small business routers include some kind of firewall functionality, so chances are if you have a router sitting behind your service provider or DSL/cable modem, you likely have a firewall already. To check to see if you already have firewall capabilities at the router level in your network, log into your router and see if there are any settings for Firewall or Security. If you don’t know how to log into your router on a Windows PC, find your Network Connection information. The item identified as Default Gateway is likely the IP address for your router.
There are many desktop firewall applications available today as well, but don’t mistake those for a substitute for firewall that sits at the primary entry point to your small business network. You should have a firewall sitting right behind where your network connectivity comes into your business to filter out bad traffic before it can reach any desktop or any other network assets.
Password Protect your Firewall
Great you’ve got a firewall, but it’s never enough to simply drop it into your network and turn it on. One of the most common mistakes in configuring network equipment is keeping the default password.
It’s a trivial matter in many cases for an attacker to identify the brand and model number of a device on a network. It’s equally trivial to simply use Google to obtain the user manual to find the default username and password.
Take the time to make this easy fix. Log into your router/firewall, and you’ll get the option to set a password; typically, you’ll find it under the Administration menu item.
Update Router Firmware
Outdated router or firewall firmware is another common issue. Small business network equipment, just like applications and operating systems, needs to be updated for security and bug fixes. The firmware that your small business router and/or firewall shipped with is likely out-of-date within a year, so it’s critical to make sure you update it.
Some router vendors have a simple dialogue box that lets you check for new firmware versions from within the router’s administration menu. For routers that don’t have automated firmware version checking, find the version number in your router admin screen, and then go to the vendor’s support site to see if you have the latest version.
Block Pings
Most router and firewalls include multiple settings that help to determine how visible your router and/or firewall will be to the outside world. One of the simplest methods that a hacker uses to find a network is by sending a ping request, which is just a network request to see if something will respond. The idea being if a network device responds, there is something there that the hacker can then explore further and potentially exploit. You can make it harder for attackers by simply setting your network router or firewall so that it won’t respond to network pings. Typically, the option to block network pings can be found on the administration menu for a firewall and/or router as a configuration option.
Scan Yourself
One of the best ways to see if you have open ports or visible network vulnerabilities is to do the same thing that an attacker would do – scan your network. By scanning your network with the same tools that security researchers (and attackers) use, you’ll see what they see. Among the most popular network scanning tools is the open source nmap tool). For Windows users, the Nmap download now includes a graphical user interface, so it’s now easier than ever to scan your network with industry standard tools, for free. Scan your network to see what ports are open (that shouldn’t be), and then go back to your firewall to make the necessary changes.
Lock Down IP Addresses
By default, most small business routers use something called DHCP, which automatically allocates IP addresses to computers that connect to the network. DHCP makes it easy for you to let users connect to you network, but if your network is exploited it also makes it easy for attackers to connect to your network. If your small business only has a set number of users, and you don’t routinely have guest users plugging into your network, you might want to consider locking down IP addresses.
The benefit of assigning an IP is that when you check your router logs, you’ll know which IP is associated with a specific PC and/or user. With DHCP, the same PC could potentially have different IPs over a period of time as machines are turned on or off. By knowing what’s on your network, you’ll know where problems are coming from when they do arise.
Use VLANs
Not everyone in your small business necessarily needs access to the same network assets. While you can determine and set access with passwords and permissions on applications, you can also segment your network with VLAN or virtual LANs. VLANs are almost always part of any business class router and let you segment a network based on needs and risks as well as quality of service requirements. For example, with a VLAN setup you could have the finance department on one VLAN, while sales is on another. In another scenario, you could have a VLAN for your employees and then setup another one for contract or guest workers. Mitigating risk is all about providing access to network resources to the people who are authorized and restricting access to those who aren’t.
Get an IPS
A firewall isn’t always enough to protect a small business network. Today’s reality is that the bulk of all network traffic goes over Port 80 for HTTP or Web traffic. So if you leave that port open, you’re still at risk from attacks that target port 80. In addition to the firewall, Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) technology can play a key network security role. An IPS does more than simply monitor ports; it monitors the traffic flow for anomalies that could indicate malicious activity. IPS technology can sometimes be bundled in on a router as part of a Unified Threat Management (UTM) device. Depending on the size of your small business network, you might want to consider a separate physical box.
Another option is to leverage open source technologies running on your own servers (or as virtual instances if you are virtualized). On the IPS side, one of the leading open source technologies is called SNORT (which is backed by commercial vendor Sourcefire.
Get a WAF
A Web Application Firewall (WAF) is specifically tasked with helping to protect against attacks that are specifically targeted against applications. If you’re not hosting applications within your small business network, the risks that a WAF helps to mitigate are not as pronounced. If you are hosting applications, WAF in front of (or as part of) your Web server is a key technology that you need to look at. Multiple vendors including Barracuda have network WAF boxes. Another option is the open source ModSecurity project, which is backed by security vendor Trustwave.
Use VPN
If you’ve gone through all the trouble of protecting your small business network, it makes sense to extend that protection to your mobile and remotely connected employees as well. A VPN or Virtual Private Network lets your remote workers log into your network with an encrypted tunnel. That tunnel can then be used to effectively shield your remote employees with the same firewall, IPS and WAF technologies that local users benefit from. A VPN also protects your network by not letting users who may be coming in from risky mobile environments connect in an insecure fashion.