News Article Writing – The Basics of Writing News Articles

Here are the things that you must consider when writing news articles:

1. Choose your stories. Write something that is current and newsworthy. Depending on your beat, you can cover stories about entertainment, politics, sports, economy, etc. Just make sure that they’re the latest news in your field and that they’re worth your readers’ time.

2. Gather information. You need to research your stories thoroughly before you start writing your news articles. This is usually done by interviewing people who are directly involved with your stories. Sometimes, you will also need to use traditional books to effectively inform your readers.

3. Presentation. Present your information in such a way that your audience would want to read them. I recommend that you choose an angle that will grab your readers’ attention so you will not have a hard time getting these people to read your copies.

4. Language. It’s not wise to experiment on the language to use when writing your news articles. Stick with the basics. Write using the language of your readers and those words that they can easily understand. Remember, these people are usually pressed for time so you better make sure that they’ll be able to understand your stories without the need to read your articles over and over again.

5. Keep it short. It will work to your advantage if you learn the art of telling your stories using few words as possible. It would help if you widen your vocabulary by simply learning a word or two everyday. The shorter your news articles are, the better.

Website Security Tests Protect Against Application Vulnerabilities

More than four out of every five (85 percent) U.S. businesses have experienced a data breach, according to a recent study by Colchester, Conn.-based law firm Scott + Scott, putting millions of consumers’ Social Security numbers and other sensitive information in the hands of criminals.

If a website’s server and applications are not protected from security vulnerabilities, identities, credit card information, and billions of dollars are at risk. Unfortunately, firewalls do not provide enough protection.

Firewalls, ids, ips Are Not Enough

Attackers are well-aware of the valuable information accessible through Web applications, and their attempts to get at it are often unwittingly assisted by several important factors. Conscientious organizations carefully protect their perimeters with intrusion detection systems and firewalls, but these firewalls must keep ports 80 and 443 (ssl) open to conduct online business. These ports represent open doors to attackers, who have figured out thousands of ways to penetrate Web applications.

Network firewalls are designed to secure the internal network perimeter, leaving organizations vulnerable to various application attacks. Intrusion Prevention and Detection Systems (ids/ips) do not provide thorough analysis of packet contents. Applications without an added layer of protection increase the risk of harmful attacks and extreme vulnerabilities.

Extreme Vulnerabilities

In the past, security breaches occurred at the network level of the corporate systems. Today, hackers are manipulating web applications inside the corporate firewall. This entry enables them to access sensitive corporate and customer data. The standard security measures for protecting network traffic do not protect against web application level attacks.

Owasp’s Top 10 Web Application Security Vulnerabilities 2007

Open Web Application Security Project (Owasp), an organization that focuses on improving the security of application software, has put together a list of the top 10 web application security vulnerabilities.

1. Cross Site Scripting (xss)
2. Injection Flaws
3. Malicious File Execution
4. Insecure Direct Object Reference
5. Cross Site Request Forgery (Csrf)
6. Information Leakage and Improper Error Handling
7. Broken Authentication and Session Management
8. Insecure Cryptographic Storage
9. Insecure Communications
10. Failure to Restrict URL Access

Web Application Security Consortium Most Common Vulnerabilities Report

The Web Application Security Consortium (Wasc) reported the top five web application vulnerabilities by testing 31,373 sites.

According to the Gartner Group, “97% of the over 300 web sites audited were found vulnerable to web application attack,” and “75% of the cyber attacks today are at the application level.”

Web application vulnerability assessment

From the information above it’s clear that most e-commerce websites are wide open to attack and easy victims when targeted. Intruders need only to exploit a single vulnerability.

A web application scanner, which protects applications and servers from hackers, must provide an automated internet security service that searches for software vulnerabilities within web applications.

A web application scan should crawl the entire website, analyze in-depth each & every file, and display the entire website structure. The scanner has to perform an automatic audit for common network security vulnerabilities while launching a series of simulated web attacks. Web Security Seal and free trial should be available.

A web application vulnerability Assessment should execute continuous dynamic tests combined with simulation web-application attacks during the scanning process.

The web application scanner must have a continually updated service database. A website security test should identify the security vulnerabilities and recommend the optimally matched solution.

The vulnerability check has to deliver an executive summary report to management and a detailed report to the technical teams with the severity levels of each vulnerability.

It is recommended that the detailed report include an in-depth technical explanation of each vulnerability as well as appropriate recommendations. The website security test will conduct subsequent vulnerability scans and generate trend analysis reports that allow the customer to compare tests and track progress.

Business Owners Should Hire SEO Consultants for Business Online Presence

Smart business owners understand that they need to have a business online presence in order to not just survive, but to grow in this economy. As more and more consumers turn to the internet to search for products and services, the old paper directory books like The Yellow pages are on their way out.

In fact, the younger generation doesn’t use the Yellow Pages at all. And why would they when they have the world literally at their finger tips via computers, lap tops, and now, smart phones.

Many people know it’s important to get have a business online presence and are hiring web designers to build websites for them. And it’s a good start. But not all, in fact hardly any, web designers are SEO savy. In fact, many of them don’t know the first thing about how to optimize a website for the search engines.

And so business people are left with websites that don’t make it to the first page of Google, or even the tenth or the hundredth page. And therefore, they are not getting found and their businesses are not getting new customers.

That’s where SEO consultants come in. SEO experts know how to get websites to rank high in search engines. SEO consultants have spent years learning about search engine optimization (SEO) and all the skills needed (including keywords research, on-site and off-site SEO, and link building) to get high rankings in search engines.

And it’s fairly easy for SEO consultants to get locally focused keyword terms ranked high in search engines. There’s no worry about competing against global or national competitors. Instead, the competition is limited to a local market, which is fairly easy to achieve for anyone with basic skills in search engine optimization.

And now that Google has come out with Google Maps (which attaches a map location to each business) it’s vital that business people claim their own business location on Google maps. It’s also important that they know it’s FREE. There are some very unscrupulous people out there who are calling businesses and “offering” to get them on Google maps for a “mere” $500 or more bucks. Shameful!

SEO consultants with any sense of honor and kindness would use the Google maps as a way to build trust with businesses by offering to set it up free for them. Something as simple as setting up Google maps for businesses can be used to get a foot in the business owner’s door, and help to build a working relationship.

The powerful SEO skills that internet marketers and SEO consultants possess are very important tools that business owners should be utilizing. SEO consultants can help business owners make their way through the confusing maze of online marketing and help create a highly visible business online presence.

Getting high search rankings from Google and other search engines is difficult, and it’s a complicated process that takes expertise in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). But with the help of SEO experts businesses can see huge and growing rewards from online exposure.

We have been doing professional SEO and internet marketing for over 4 years and understand what it takes to get pages ranked high in the search engines. We know how to create websites that are keyword-rich and optimized for the search engines. We can help you with your online presence and help you get found by customers wanting and needing your services.

Guide to Making Money Online for Beginners: Don’t Let the Internet Overwhelm You!

Finding the right “guide to making money online”…

Trying to find the right “guide to making money online” for beginners can be a newbie’s nightmare if you listen to all the “buy now” crap that bursts across your face when you’re scanning the internet just to learn. The trick is to learn step by step how to earn money online, and follow that guide to a tee without getting sidetracked down a different avenue.

Why? Because the internet is full of different ways to make money online, and every one of them requires persistence! So if you find yourself drifting from one method to another, you’re really just wasting your time and not getting anything done.

Your guide to making money online must first be aligned with the way you like to market…

There are several ways to market online, from practically free to extremely expensive. The thing you must remember is that the less money you spend, the more time you must prepare to devote to marketing.

Now, this isn’t such a bad idea when you’re looking first for a step by step how to earn money online guide, because, no matter how you cut it, you are in for a learning curve!

So my recommendation is to start learning without spending a fortune, because that way you can learn as you go and have fun with it.

Fun? How is learning how to earn money online for beginners fun?

Think of it as a video game. When you’re first learning, you’re just taking in a lot of information and finding the right strategy for you. And, once you’ve nailed it, you can sit back and let the jackpot deliver your success!

So what’s the first step in my guide to making money online?

If you begin with a blog, your immediate cash outlay is very minimal. This way, you can practice your writing and video skills little by little. Don’t wait until you “know everything” before you start.

Nobody knows everything, and marketing online is always a learning experience for all of us. The internet is just a means to exchange information for all of us, once you learn something, when you share it, you immediately are viewed as “the expert” in anyone’s eyes who simply does not happen to know that one thing that you know!

And, you might have just learned it today and started blogging about it… and whala! You have just made a sale because somebody sees you as the expert!

What’s the best guide to making money online for beginners? Blogging is a fun way to learn how to earn money online!

Once you get the hang of blogging, you can branch out from there. YouTube marketing is another “free marketing” strategy, and linking your blog posts to your YouTube videos is a great way to get more exposure and bring up the authority of your blog.

Just take it step by step towards successful online marketing. As Marin Luther King Jr. said, “You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step in faith”.

Before you know it, you’ll be knowledgeable on how to earn money on autopilot, and the best part is when you can help others achieve their success as well; that’s truly rewarding!