Paresh Nanda

On May 12th 2017, a ransomware of WannaCry or Wcry started spreading like wildfire starting from NHS system in UK. It spread to dozens of hospitals from where it spread to 6 continents affecting more than 100,000 machines! It caused chaos at hospitals, schools and universities, manufacturing shutdowns, and overtime for cybersecurity professionals.  Reports have confirmed malicious activity in Europe where the attacks began, US, China, South Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam and Japan. Servers that weren’t updated after March 14 with the MS17-010 patch were affected; this patch resolved a vulnerability called ExternalBlue. It was a closely guarded secret by NSA but was leaked last month by a hacker group last summer. The most important part is that the ransomware did not spread because of people clicking on bad links as it is exploiting the vulnerability in windows OS and the only way to prevent it was to have the update. What is WannaCry Ransomware? WannaCry, like many other ...

My WhatsApp journey has been different from the majority. Initially like everyone I downloaded WhatsApp for just chatting with friends. One thing I realized that no matter how busy I was, I never skipped messages that contained stories. That made me think that there might be many people like me who will also enjoy reading stories. So I decided to share short and inspiring stories via WhatsApp. The response to the idea was good and soon around 200 people joined to receive stories on daily basis. The initial plan was just to share 101 stories in 101 days. But by that time, there were around 800 people in the list and they requested me to continue with the story initiative. It was difficult to send stories every day so I started sharing it on alternate days. Till now I have shared 190 stories and there are around 2,200 people who have signed up to receive them. I receive around 250 messages on personal chat (stopped counting unread messages of groups) on a daily basis. In th...

Google runs the world's largest and most profitably online ad network, but the lion's share of ad dollars still go to TV. The search giant is looking to change that by associating online ads with purchases in the real world — your purchases. Google has partnered with companies responsible for tracking purchase data, which gives it access to about 70 percent of all US credit and debit card transactions. This all comes off as a little creepy, but Google is adamant that it's not creepy at all. Right now, Google and other online advertisers lack the data to draw a strong connection between online ads and purchases in real life. Google has the tools to track what you buy online, assuming you remain logged into your account and choose to share your browsing data. Offline, Google can do little more than track your location to guess at what you're buying and peek at data from Android Pay. Google's hope is that offline purchase data will confirm that the ads you see on...

The Coming Death of Indian Outsourcing. I found myself on the receiving end of a deluge of hate mail on a scale that I have never encountered before or after. I am known as a relatively balanced, objective, and fair commentator on the state of the industry. I don’t sensationalize issues unnecessarily. This article, that I thought was sound in its logical analysis, triggered an immense defensive reaction. Let me familiarize you with my argument first, before we get to the issue on hand: India is riding high on outsourcing. Information technology and IT-enabled services will employ 4 million people in 2008 and account for 7% of gross domestic product and 33% of India’s foreign-exchange inflows, according to Nasscom, an Indian IT industry organization. The death of this industry is far from anyone’s mind. However, the reality is that wages are rising in India. The cost advantage for offshoring to India used to be at least 1:6. Today, it is at best 1:3. Attrition is scary. ...

You are your own Resource: Why Depend on HR? In recent times, while travelling, I found a number of conversations from strangers (among themselves) are surprisingly filled with references to HR. The other day when I was travelling from Hyderabad to Ahmedabad, the girl next to me was on her cell phone for almost 20 mts until the doors closed. I could hear the word “HR” several times loudly, filled with emotion. The other words in conversation slows down but whenever she uttered HR it was loud. In another group of youngsters, the other day at Pune airport were repeatedly talking about HR and having fun at them for doing some gafla in recruitment, posting and incentives. It looks today most people are concerned about HR and depend on them for recruitment, placement, offer letters, injustice done in fixing salary, change of jobs, pink slips, blue slips, no slips, transfers, vacation, change of boss, KRAs, incentives, accommodation, postings and so many things. In all this, HR see...

Sometimes you feel like quitting everything and do nothing. Depression plays an important role in that moment and you feel helpless. You can’t concentrate, you can’t think of anything else but only that one thing that troubles you and takes your half-life. People say move on, but you can’t. They don’t know what is going inside you as only you and you can feel the pain, see the rough patches in your path and fight with your own mind, body and heart. Nothing can release your stress. You just blame yourself for everything. Feel as if it wouldn’t have happened. You feel like crying, screaming out loud, shouting at the mistake, but nothing helps. It’s probably your biggest mistake of your life and the so-called “bad day of your life”. It becomes hard to believe the reality and your acceptance level reduces. You resist yourself from accepting the fact and the truth. You feel like going back to the past and rectifying the mistakes, but it’s life. Life has not given us the opportunity to...

Regulating the internet giants The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data The data economy demands a new approach to antitrust rules A NEW commodity spawns a lucrative, fast-growing industry, prompting antitrust regulators to step in to restrain those who control its flow. A century ago, the resource in question was oil. Now similar concerns are being raised by the giants that deal in data, the oil of the digital era. These titans—Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft—look unstoppable. They are the five most valuable listed firms in the world. Their profits are surging: they collectively racked up over $25bn in net profit in the first quarter of 2017. Amazon captures half of all dollars spent online in America. Google and Facebook accounted for almost all the revenue growth in digital advertising in America last year. Such dominance has prompted calls for the tech giants to be broken up, as Standard Oil was in t...

These days, one of the best ways to get a return on your investment in social marketing is to partner with influencers. The strategy is often referred to as “influencer marketing,” and it’s generating a lot of buzz because it works. Here’s the short of it: 1.    A creator has an audience with whom he or she has established trust. 2.    You partner with that creator to share your brand. 3.    Your brand gets exposure to a targeted audience through a vetted medium, which can result in sales, a lift in awareness, goal-completion, etc. You might be thinking, “I don’t know… this influencer marketing business sounds expensive.” Yes, if you want to partner with Taylor Swift, it will be. But the truth is… there’s much better value – at a fraction of the cost – elsewhere. Who Are Millennial Female Micro-Influencers? A new infographic from AdWeek neatly summarizes some of the key traits of female micro-influencers, whose prima...

Thinking about becoming a freelancer? You’re not alone. Many people around the world are sidestepping their fears, ditching the 9-to-5 lifestyle, and setting out to make money on their own off of their skills and passions. Now’s the perfect time to do so – the demand for creative freelancers has never been higher. According to CNBC, the number of independent contractors has increased by about 27% more than payroll employees over the past 20 years. A lot of that is thanks to gig work apps and freelance sites. I’m a fan of small-scale freelance businesses you can start for (almost) free from your bedroom or anywhere else, armed with just your passions and skills. I share ideas for freelance businesses with people everyday and I’ve started and had success with a number of them myself – from when I started blogging from my college dorm room in 2007 to when I launched my Digital marketing company, nandaparesh.com. Here are 55 of my best freelance business ideas for you – f...

Artificial neural nets have a remarkable capability of deriving meaning from complicated or imprecise data. This ability can be used for extracting patterns and detecting trends that are complicated for computer systems to understand. An artificial neural net is an information processing paradigm whose working is similar to the working of biological nervous systems. The key element of an artificial neural network is the novel structure of its information processing system. This structure consists of a large number of highly interconnected processing computing elements that work in unison to solve specific problems. Artificial neural networks can learn by example like the way humans do. An artificial neural net is configured for a specific application like pattern recognition through a learning process. Learning in biological systems consists of adjustments to the synaptic connections that exist between neurons. This is true of artificial neural networks as well. Artificial neural...

Think about this. In your entire lifetime, how much money has gone through your hands? Let me explain to you what I mean by this. Maybe you made $73,000 last year as a 23-year-old. And you got your first check at the age of 14 for $100.00. Add everything up from that first check until today. You’ll come up with a number. It could be $493,000 or $1.9 million or $6.3 million, depending on who is reading this. The question is how much is left in your wallet? Truly. How much is in your wallet? Not your credit card limit, but how much savings do you have left? If you’re unhappy with the answer, the reason is very simple. It’s because you don’t know how to play the money game. It’s as simple as that. So in this article, I get into the 12 rules of money. These are the rules of money that I’ve followed. They’re based on a lot of mistakes I’ve made because there was a point in my life where I made money and there was nothing left in my pocket. So what I’m telling you is based on my experi...

Electric vehicles were the livelihood of their salesmen, and a threat to people whose job was to maintain and run horses. You would expect salesmen to build a good reputation for electrics and the coachmen to badmouth them, but the opposite happened a century ago. When electric vehicles started becoming popular in the 1910s, they had to fight the bad rep unscrupulous salesmen had given them over a decade ago. The very early electrics were just not capable of competing with gasoline cars. They could not do anything strenuous, and were designed to run errands in cities where charging facilities were available. Telling walk-in customers honestly that the car they are looking at will not carry heavy loads, climb a hill, or go more than 20-30 miles without charging may earn you points in the church, but you are not going to close a sale that way. The salesmen, who had to worry about their immediate earnings, not the reputation of electric vehicles, promised buyers the moon. They e...