Showing posts with label Business Development. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Business Development. Show all posts

Tuesday, 10 May 2016

Neil Mathew is an American Entrepreneur and Real Estate Developer

Neil Mathew is an American entrepreneur and real estate developer. By the age of 23, he founded a company that provides luxury amenities to the wealthiest around the world.  He marketed and contracted his luxury goods to various hotels, tech companies, designers, celebrities, and many other elite clients. In 2015 Neil Mathew was appointed as a brand ambassador for a British luxury brand company called Manor of London; a company that is based in the United Kingdom for its quintessential British brand of bespoke and fully customization high-end luxuries.  
    
                            

Neil Mathew New Jersey continues to achieve his success in business with his unique concepts showing how he stands out from his competitors with his approach and policies. Neil Mathew has partnered with major players and provided luxury amenities to Faces of Luxury INC, MPH Club Aviation and other various vendor companies. Neil also focuses on residential sectors specializing in the development of single-family and multi-family projects. He oversees the planning, designing and constructing of housing renovations.  

Mathew is a passionate supporter of a non-profit organization called The Water Project. He and his brother raised money to provide clean drinking water for small rural areas in Sierra Leone. His passion in contributing to charities came from his family that always supported various charities and families in India. At only 26 years old, Neil Mathew is just getting started.

Monday, 21 December 2015

Juniper Revised the List of ScreenOS Versions than Previously Believed

The networking equipment manufacturer announced last week that it found, during an internal audit, two instances where rogue code was added to its ScreenOS operating system without authorization. The code could be used by attackers to gain privileged access to Net Screen firewall devices and to decrypt VPN connections.

[ Roger Grimes' free and almost foolproof way to check for malware. | Discover how to secure your systems with InfoWorld's Security newsletter. ]
The company said at the time that ScreenOS versions 6.2.0r15 through 6.2.0r18 and 6.3.0r12 through 6.3.0r20 were vulnerable, but an analysis by researchers from security firm Rapid7 revealed that not all listed versions are vulnerable to both issues.

"We were unable to identify this [authentication] backdoor in versions 6.2.0r15, 6.2.0r16, 6.2.0r18, and it is probably safe to say that the entire 6.2.0 series was not affected by this issue (although the VPN issue was present)," said HD Moore, chief research officer at Rapid7, in a blog post Sunday.


In the 6.3.0 series, the authentication bypass code, which relies on a hard-coded master password that works for any account, was confirmed in 6.3.0r17 and 6.3.0r19, but not in 6.3.0r12 or 6.3.0r14. Based on the release dates of these versions, the backdoor was added sometime in late 2013, HD Moore said.

Late Sunday, Juniper updated its advisory to clarify that the impact, as far as number of versions is concerned, is more limited than initially thought. The administrative access issue only affects Screen-OS 6.3.0r17 through 6.3.0r20, while the VPN decryption issue affects ScreenOS 6.2.0r15 through 6.2.0r18 and 6.3.0r12 through 6.3.0r20, the company said.

In late December 2013, the German news magazine Der Spiegel published a catalogof software and hardware implants used by the U.S. National Security Agency that was leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The catalog described a technique code-named FEEDTROUGH that could be used to persistently install two software implants -- BANANAGLEE and ZESTYLEAK -- on Juniper NetScreen firewalls.

"FEEDTROUGH operates every time the particular Juniper firewall boots," its description reads. "The first hook takes it to the code which checks to see if the OS is in the database. If it is, then a chain of events ensures the installation of either one or both implants."

FEEDTROUGH is probably not connected to the backdoor found by Juniper now, because the leaked NSA catalog itself predates the addition of the rogue code in late 2013. However, it does indicate that Juniper knew for almost two years from public reports that its devices were targeted by at least one intelligence agency and raises the question of why the company didn't discover the security issues sooner.

This only complicates the questions about who added the rogue code and how it was done, which the security community is hoping Juniper will eventually address.

Juniper NetScreen users should upgrade their devices to the newly released Screen-OS versions 6.2.0r19 or 6.3.0r21, or should install a backdoor-free version of the firmware they're already running, which Juniper also made available. These re-releases have the original version numbers followed by the letter b.

The likelihood of attacks is high, especially since the backdoor password is now public.

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Thursday, 10 December 2015

Neil Mathew New Jersey | Understanding Business Development

Business Development is a mysterious title for a little discussed function or department in most larger companies. It's also a great way for an entrepreneur or small business to have fun, create value and make money.
Good business development allows businesses to profit by doing something that is tangential to their core mission. Sometimes the profit is so good, it becomes part of their core mission, other times it supports the brand and sometimes it just makes money. And often it's a little guy who can be flexible enough to make things happen.

Examples:
  • Starbucks licenses their name to a maker of ice cream and generates millions in royalties.
  • A rack jobber like Handle man does a deal with a mass marketer like K Mart. K Mart gives them room in the store to sell records and gets a cut, Handle man does all the work.
  • AOL buys AIM instant messaging software and integrates it into their service.
  • Years ago, I licensed the rights to Isaac Asimov's Robot novels from a business development person at his publisher and turned the books into a VCR murder mystery game which I licensed to a business development person at Kodak, a company that was experimenting with becoming a publisher. (Isaac made more from this project than he did from many of his books).
  • Best Buy offers extended warranties on appliances you buy. They don't provide the warranty, of course, a business development person did a deal with an insurance/service company to do it and they share the profit.
  • The Princeton Review built a huge test prep business, but only by licensing their brand to a series of books which did the lion's share of their marketing for them.
You don't see business development from the outside, particularly all the potential deals that fail along the way. Many companies, though, spend millions of dollars a year looking for deals and then discovering that they pay off many times over. Others, particularly smaller competitors, are so focused on their core business that it never occurs to them to consider partnerships, licensing, publishing, acquisition and other arrangements that might change everything. Harley Davidson probably makes more money on business development than they make on motorcycles.
The thing that makes business development fascinating is that the best deals have never been done before. There's no template, no cookie cutter grind it out approach to making it work. This is why most organizations are so astonishingly bad at it. They don't have the confidence to make decisions or believe they have the ability to make mistakes.
Think about the Apple Nike partnership on making a device that integrates your iPod with your sneakers. This took years and cost millions of dollars to develop. Most companies would just flee, giving up long before a deal was done and a product was shipped.
Here are some tactical tips on how to do business development better:
  1. Process first, ideas second. If you're going to be bringing new partners and new ideas into your organization, you need a process to do it. Professionals don't, "know it when I see it." Instead, professionals think about the abilities of their company and strategies necessary to bring ideas in, refine them and launch them. Great business development people don't waste time in endless meetings with random vendors or hassle about tiny details up front. Instead, they have an agenda and a project manager's understanding of what it means to get things done. They don't keep the process a secret, either. They share it with anyone who wants to know. Someone needs to say, "here's how we do things around here," and then they have to tell the truth.
  2. Who decides? Because every great business development project is different, it's incredibly easy to get stuck on who can say yes (of course, everyone can say no). Professional business development people intentionally limit the number of people who are allowed to weigh in and are clear to themselves and their potential partners about exactly who can (and must) give the go ahead. Don't bother starting a business development deal unless you know in advance who must say yes.
  3. Courtship, negotiation and marriage. Every deal has three parts, and keeping them straight is essential. During the courtship phase, you win when you are respectful, diligent, enthusiastic, engaging, outgoing, and relentless in your search to make a connection. Do your homework, research people's backgrounds, learn about their kids, visit them--don't make them visit you. Look people in the eye, ask hard but engaging questions, you know the drill. Basically, treat people as you'd like to be treated, because the people you most want to work with have a choice, and they may just not pick you. Hint: if you skip the courtship part, the other two stages probably won't come up.
  4. Buyer and seller. If you've ever pitched a product or service to a business, you know how soul-deadening it can be. The buyer works hard to make it clear that she's doing you a favor, and you need every dog and every pony available at all times (and you better be the cheapest). But business development doesn't have this dichotomy. Both sides are buying, both sides are selling, right? So talented business development people never act like jaded buyers, arms folded, demanding this and that. Instead, from the start, they seek out partners.
  5. Enthusiasm is underrated. Business development people are exploring the unknown. That means that there's more than cash on the table, there's bravery and initiative and excitement. The best business development people I've ever worked with are able to capture the energy in the room and amplify it. They'll build on the ideas being presented, not make them smaller.
  6. Close the open door. I regularly hear from readers who are frustrated because a big company wasn't willing to hear a great idea they mailed in. Here's the thing: there isn't a shortage of ideas. There's a shortage of execution. That means that successful business development teams look for proven partners and organizations with momentum. A key part of that is the decision to say no early and quickly and respectfully to people who don't meet that threshold.
  7. Call the lawyers later. A business development deal that never happens is one that's sure to cause no problems. While the legal clarity you need is important, there's plenty of data that shows that ten page NDA agreements and onerous contracts early in the process don't protect you, they merely waste your time and energy.
  8. Cast a wider net. The Allen and Co. annual gathering is a dumb place to choose a merger partner. Limiting the number of potential partners to people you've met at a trade show is also silly. Business development (when it works) creates huge value for both sides, so better to be proactive in searching out and soliciting the organizations that can make a difference. Here's a simple way to widen your net: start a blog and go to conferences to speak. Describe your successful business development projects to date and let the world know you're looking for more of them. How many amazing partnerships could the Apple store launch? How many great books could Starbucks highlight? Not only don't they do this, they hide. Don't hide.
  9. Talk to the receptionist. This is huge, and so important. When a great partner shows up at your doorstep, do you know? Here's a test: call your organization (pretending to be from some respected organization), describe a business development opportunity and ask who can help. If you're not immediately transferred to your office, you've failed, right? Make it easy for the right people to know that you're the right guy.
  10. Hire better. How do you decide who to put in this job? I'd argue that glibness and charisma aren't as important as strategic thinking, project management and humility.
  11. Structure deals with the expectation of success. The only real reason to do business development deals is because when they work they're so powerful. Andrew Tobias put his name on a piece of software that ended up earning him millions of dollars. It's easy to get hung up on all the bad things that could happen, but keep your focus on how the world looks when you get it right.
  12. End well. Most of the time, even good business development deals fall down before the end of the negotiation process. If a deal doesn't come together, say so. Acknowledge what went wrong, thank the other party and end well. If it does come together, track the integration and stay involved enough to learn from what works and what doesn't. I'm still waiting to hear from people who said they'd get back to me "tomorrow" fifteen years ago, but I'm losing hope... Ending well not only teaches you how to do better next time, but it keeps doors open for when you need to come back to someone who you should have done a deal with in the first place.