Despite the headlines proclaiming a high-street apocalypse, it’s rapidly becoming clear that bricks-and-mortar retail isn’t dead – it’s boring retail that faces the death sentence. With consumers spoilt for choice online, they need ever-more compelling reasons to set foot inside a store and the ace in the retailer’s pack is experience. E-commerce can usually beat…
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By Roy Reynolds, Technical Director, Vodat International When you think of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks chances are you conjure up an image of an overwhelming flood of traffic that incapacitates a network. This kind of cyber-attack is all about overt, brute force used to take a target down. Some hackers are a little smarter…
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A recent report by data analysts CGA and Alix Partners revealed that 15 restaurants are closing every week in the UK. This stat comes as no surprise to anyone in the restaurant trade as we’ve all watched the likes of Byron Burger, Strada, Prezzo, Carluccio’s, Gourmet Burger Kitchen, and Gaucho close restaurants. A mix of economic and political factors such as…
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Email security: how to deliver the right message to cyber criminals There’s one technology that we all continue to use that hasn’t evolved since the 1960s — email. Email was born before the Internet, making it nearly fifty years old. Despite the availability of newer messaging technology — texting, messaging apps, Slack, and video chat…
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Vodat has been singled out by judges at this year’s Stockport Business Awards, winning nominations for its innovative approach to digital networks and for its prowess in marketing. The firm is among an 80-strong batch of hopeful companies to enter this year’s awards and it’s up against stiff competition from local organisations such as…
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Revealed: the secret cyber scams targeting the hospitality sector By Bim Jinadasa We’re all aware of the risks around customer data theft in the hospitality industry. But the fact that such a wide range of sensitive information is held by hospitality firms — everything from credit card details to car registration numbers — hasn’t gone…
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GDPR bares its teeth as British Airways fined £183 million for data-breach We’ve had to wait a full year for the UK’s first GDPR data-breach fine, but it’s now clear the regulation isn’t to be taken lightly. British Airways has been slapped with an eye-watering £183m fine for what the Information Commissioner’s Office labelled ‘poor…
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Revealed: The seven deadly sins of in-store connectivity…be a saint not a sinner! Instore connectivity and customer-facing tech have now firmly entered the retail mainstream. If you’re in any doubt, just take a look at the findings from Vodat’s latest consumer research. We interviewed 1,000 UK shoppers to capture the nation’s mood when it comes…
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Ask anyone who they think is driving the in-store retail revolution and they’ll almost certainly point to the generation Z and millennial age groups. These are the younger shoppers, raised on a diet of Instagram, Amazon and Snapchat and they are now demand the same immediacy and intimacy from digital interactions when they venture instore….
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Why it pays to make your premises ‘Instagrammable’ Whether you like it, or not, the retail and hospitality sectors are increasingly being designed to be viewed through a smartphone lens. Savvy businesses realise the growing power of this intensely visual social media platform and are coaxing consumers to snap and share increasingly elaborate displays and…
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