Month: November 2018

November 20, 2018

Domain Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Blockchain isn’t exactly a household name in the digital commerce world – yet – but for those of us on the inside track it’s already well established as the next big thing in as far as grand-scale transactional computing is concerned. For those who aren’t familiar with it, we’ll explain briefly here; blockchain is a shared distributed ledger technology where each transaction is digitally signed to ensure its authenticity and integrity. From a ‘what does that mean for me’ perspective, it’s a new and very powerful means of upping security for digital transactions as well as ensuring pinpoint accuracy. Right, now that we’ve got the basic explanation out of the way we’re going to come at this from an angle that’s designed for those of you already very much in the know regarding blockchain. Here at 4GoodHosting, we’re like any leading Canadian web hosting provider in that a good many of our customers have ecommerce websites where secure transactions are an absolute priority. As such, blockchain can’t arrive in full soon enough and that’s why recent news from Microsoft is very promising. Microsoft is about to offer a new serverless blockchain development kit powered by its intelligent cloud platform – Azure. As of now it’s being called the ‘Azure Blockchain Development Kit’ and the aim with it is to facilitate seamless integration of blockchain with the best of Microsoft and other third-party SaaS offerings. The Principal Program Manager at Microsoft states that it will enable users to build key management, off-chain identity and data monitoring and messaging APIs into reference architectures that can be used to quickly build blockchain applications. It is expected to have 3 major capabilities: Integrating data and systems Connecting interfaces Deployment of smart contracts and blockchain networks It should enable organizations and individuals to connect to blockchain through user interfaces. The development kit will come ready with voice interfaces, SMSes, internet of things, support for mobile clients, device integration, virtual assistants, and bots. Voice and SMS interfaces for the purpose of tracking and supply chain solutions promise to be very useful for developers, and it will have support for Android and iOS mobile operating systems In...

November 12, 2018

Domain Related

Reading Time: 6 minutes

In all the recent hubbub about https, GPDR regulation and the like there’s been some degree of neglect for the importance of website loading speeds. Most people behind a website won’t need to be made aware of what bounce rates are, or that in general people tend to be just as impatient when it comes to viewing a website as they are for nearly everything else in their life. Page speed has been a part of the Google algorithm for many years, in fact it’s been a big deal for the better part of 10 years now. Here at 4GoodHosting, the nature of our business and the fact we’re a Canadian web hosting provider with our thumb on the pulse of the web hosting industry makes it so that we really grasp the importance of issues like these when it comes to website performance. We’re 10 months removed from Google starting to educate us all about how page speed is important for the user experience. The focus has of course shifted to mobile search in a big way, and again that’s quite natural given the way mobile is become the predominant search method. At the start of 2018 Google announced its ‘speed update’, saying that it would only affect a small percentage of sites that were offering a painfully slow user experience. Most people have gotten on board with it sufficiently over the last year, but for those who have yet to let’s spend today discussing how to test and improve website page speed. How To Test Your Site There’s choices when it comes to online services you can use to gain an understanding of how quick your site is. Google’s two are really all you need to consider here. First up is PageSpeed Insights, which provides you with a reasonably accurate overview of how your site is performing and some things you can do to improve it. What we’ve learned from it is that render blocking (a slow part of the page that stops the whole page from loading) is the culprit most of the time. This issue isn’t easy to remedy, but you have to do it. If...

November 5, 2018

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

The reality these days is that malware is constantly reinventing itself, and as such the threat to data storage never minimizes to the extent that we’d like it to. Indeed, data breaches have been a major issue for company IT departments for as long as they have been storing data. Nowadays, it seems there’s a new wrinkle in malware development and distribution that reminds us the threat is as present as ever and an inescapable reality. However, there is a new technology that is genuinely slowing the malware threat in countless industries, and data security stands to benefit from it considerably. Like any Canadian web hosting provider, we’re very attuned to the need for better security for big data, and especially so considering the ever-increasing level of sensitive and personal information being stored in large data centers. We tip our hats to those who have the expertise needed to counter the growth and advances of malware. The technology we’re talking about is machine learning, and more specifically artificial intelligence (AI) within it. Many insiders claim it will revolutionize the way we go about protecting data. As it is now, companies are frequently dealing with more and more attacks as their networks and the data volume they handle grows. Machine Learning From Antivirus Data One specific area within data security for AI shows especially strong promise. Traditional antivirus (AV) software used the specific signature of malware to identify it, but that method is not ideal for a number of reasons. By making small changes to their malware to alter the signature slightly, these hackers in many cases made it so that the malware could slip past AV software undetected. Current AI antivirus technology promises a far more sophisticated solution, despite not being AI in the traditional sense. By using machine learning (ML), this technology works by training a program with a large collection of malware data. Eventually it becomes able to recognize the characteristics of potential malware threats in general, and isn’t limited to only looking for signatures as the identifier of particular malware. This means that provided the programs are kept up to date with new malware to so that...