Let’s face it: we all lead busy lives with days that feel scheduled out minute by minute. With advancements in technology comes smart home products to add to your household for maximum efficiency. Here’s our ranking of the best home automation ideas that you can add to your household in 2022. 

Smart Lights to Match Your Daily Life

Is there anything worse than coming home to a dark and empty house? Long gone are the days of fumbling and trying to find your light switch when you walk in! With smart lights, you’re able to automate your schedule to make sure your lights come on and off exactly when you need them to. Here are our best home automation ideas for smart lights:

• Create a sunrise and sunset by automatically lighting or dimming your lights
• Automate your smart lights to turn on when you enter a geofence
• Turn all your lights on and off through your phone

Enjoy Vacations Stress-Free While Your Home is Lit Up

Another one of our best home automation ideas is to set your smart lights while you’re on vacation. Instead of your home look dark and empty from the curb, you can automatically set up a schedule, even if you’re thousands of miles away!  Whether you’re on a beach or in Europe, your home will look lived in.

Programming Your Smart Thermostat to Your Schedule

How often do you sit at your desk and realize you didn’t adjust your thermostat before heading out? When you upgrade your thermostat to a smart thermostat, you’re able to change your home’s temperature from your phone. Not only is this one of the best home automation ideas for 2022, but it’s also a great way to save some money on your electricity bill. 

Set your thermostat to follow your daily schedule, or let your thermostat figure it out for you! Not sure how that looks? Here’s our recommendation for a thermostat schedule:

• Adjust temperature when you wake up
• Turn off when you typically leave for work
• Turn back on around the time you normally come home
• Adjust for bedtime 

Not only will your thermostat do it for you automatically, but you’re able to adjust the temperature and time if your daily schedule changes. 

Automate Your Home Security With a Click of a Button

Upgrade your home security system by automating it to fit your lifestyle! There are a few different ways you can level up your security through automation. Here are some of the best ways to do it: 

• Switch to keyless entry locks. Not only can you ditch your keys, but your smart lock can automatically lock when you’re out of your home or can be set on a timer. 
• Utilize a home security app that allows you to lock and unlock your doors with a click of a button
• Install motion sensors that send real-time notifications to your phone

Utilize Amazon Alexa For Daily Life

While Alexa is a great go-to source for quick jokes, simple questions, or playing music that’s stuck in your head, you can also automate it to work with your schedule. You can set alarms throughout the day, control your lights or set up routines. 

Alexa Routines

Set routines with your Alexa to set up your day. You can create a morning routine with alarms, turning on lights, or even automatically playing the morning news. Upgrade your morning routine with this great home automation! 

You can also set nightly routines, such as dimming the lights at a certain time, playing calm music, turning on your security system, or even reading you a bedtime story. 

Look Towards Smart Solutions For Your Daily Life

Living in a smart home is a great idea to advance your life. Not only will you feel like you’ve just stepped out of an episode of “The Jetsons” but you’re able to automate daily activities. Say goodbye to menial tasks, and step into a tech-friendly future with the best home automation ideas. 

Many professionals need to present their work to clients or other audiences at some point, and they worry about capturing their attention. Plain presentations make people lose interest and can cost you a contract. Many presentations miss their mark by not highlighting the essential information hard enough.  

A common problem in unimpactful presentations is an overload of data and statistics. The information can be unappealing if you do not present it in a way that stands out. Having figure-based information to present doesn’t mean that you can’t make your deck appealing. You can still capture the attention of your audience with data.  

Adopt particular strategies to help data stand out during a presentation and connect well with your addressees.  

Change the Formatting 

Data in spreadsheets makes a lot of sense because each has a specific output. However, it may be challenging for a third party to decipher the information at a first look. The way you format the data may not be the right fit for conveying it to your audience.  

Unlike you, who had several days to interact with the data, the audience only has a few seconds or minutes to figure it all out. Attempt to make the process easy for them to avoid losing their interest. For example, having a table with plenty of numbers may be challenging for some people to interpret. A pie chart visually showing the proportions of data may stand out better.  

If you lack the time or expertise to figure it all out, you can hire excel experts to help you format data as you want. Such professionals know how to maneuver data and present them in various formats on spreadsheets.  

Give a Real World Example 

People usually relate to the information they receive that concerns their situation. You are probably presenting to a client looking for solutions to a problem they are facing in business. To help illustrate the data, give your audience a real-world example of the data in action.  

Research shows that problem-centered learning is an effective way to help people retain information. The ultimate reason for collating and analyzing data is to provide insights for decision-making. Many managers and business owners lack the patience to try and figure out how your data relates to their business issues and would rather see it instantaneously.    

You can provide simulations of how your output will help along a decision process or satisfy an emerging market challenge. If possible, provide case studies of how such information has proven critical in solving problems.   

Keep It Top Level 

When you want to deliver particular messages to your audience, there is a temptation to have a lot of information in your presentation because you feel it is critical. Such an approach is counterproductive as the message recipients tire and switch off. You are better off presenting high-level information. 

Avoid bogging your audience down with too much detail. Research shows that great presenters use fewer words and slides. Try and keep the data presented to only the most essential, top-level items. You can always give your audience a takeaway document with more detailed data if they are interested in learning more.  

The most important aspect of information delivery is to command attention. You can get an opportunity later to deep dive into other details. The tip especially applies if you are introducing the information to an audience. 

Make It Visually Stimulating 

Appealing visuals and color displays attract most people. The aesthetic appeal of your presentation will catch the attention of your audience and compel them to focus on the information you are conveying. Make your presentation stimulating with aspects like colors, imagery, video, text design, etc.   

If you feel challenged by your creative imagery skills, you can use a graphic designer. However, you can also do a lot of fun content styling and formatting in PowerPoint or Google Slides. Search for relevant imagery on the internet until you identify one befitting your needs. Be sure to highlight or bold what you want people to understand.  

Have an Interacting Element 

Interacting with audiences during a presentation enhances message intake and the likelihood of buy-in to your proposition. These sessions allow you to adjust to feedback and change your delivery style as you move along.  

Make your presentation as interactive as possible. One way to increase engagement is to ask your audience a question and have them take a poll revealing their answers. After analyzing the answers they provided, expose the correct data and allow them to see how close or far off they were.  

The audience interactions also encourage them to feel like they are part of the process instead of just observers. If in a pitch, such feelings increase the likelihood of getting buy-in from the prospective clients and a closed sale.  

Stand Out in Your Presentation 

Presentations are about the style of delivery as much as the content. Many times incisive content falls flat because of poor delivery. After you master your content, work on your delivery mode for presentation success. Ask for feedback to help you better yourself before the actual session. 

Contract lifecycle management is managing the contract’s life cycle as you use it in the business. It is a process that ensures that the contract business and its stakeholders are aligned to achieve desired business outcomes.

You can use it in any scenario where there is an agreement between two parties. For example, there is an agreement between an employer and their employees or between a company and its suppliers.

It helps companies manage their contracts, employees, and vendors in an organized manner. It ensures that the company’s contracts are up-to-date with the latest information, new vendors are added and removed when needed, and that you assign projects efficiently to your employees.

Many companies use contract lifecycle management to make sure they can keep track of the contracts they have signed with their vendors and employees. It also helps them make sure that they have all the information about these contracts at hand to work efficiently.

Here are specific ways that contract lifecycle management can contribute to your business’ success.

Standardize the process from start to finish

Contract lifecycle management is a tool that can help a company to standardize the process from start to finish. The business must standardize the contract management process to help with business success.

Contract lifecycle management is helpful for companies when they need to recruit talent and when they want to retain it. It helps them stay on top of their employees’ expectations by providing them with feedback on their performance or by giving them clear goals that they have set for themselves.

The contract lifecycle management also helps with managing the contract itself. Companies can track the time spent on a project, what they’ve finished, who did it, and how much time they spent on each task. You can use this information for billing purposes, analytics, or quality assurance.

Reduce the need for manual tasks

Contract lifecycle management is a process that automates the contract management process. It can reduce the need for manual tasks in this process and provide better visibility into contracts and their statuses.

Contract lifecycle management can be a tedious process that requires careful monitoring and timely responses. However, it is necessary to ensure the success of a business.

It reduces the need for manual tasks, which can be time-consuming and prone to human error. Aside from that, it avoids mistakes by providing a centralized repository of all contracts related to an organization.

Simplifies tracking and monitoring

With CLM software, you can improve your business’s tracking and monitoring of contracts, contract approvals, and renewals.

The benefits of using contract lifecycle management are many. For example, it provides a centralized location for all contracts, simplifies the contract approval process, and allows easy access to all contractual information.

Tracking and monitoring seem like a relatively simple job, but it can be tedious over time. With CLMs, it becomes a lot easier to do so you can still do the job in a good enough quality without tiring yourself out.

Eases collaboration

Companies that use contract lifecycle management are more successful than those that don’t. It is a way to streamline the entire collaboration process between different departments, and it is a crucial step in business success.

Contract lifecycle management is a system that manages all the contracts that a company has with its partners, clients, and vendors. This system includes negotiating contracts, preparing them for execution, and executing them after all parties have signed them.

Improved revenue

The contract lifecycle management software is a valuable tool for any company. It can help manage the contracts and streamline the contract management process, eventually leading to better revenue.

Contract lifecycle management is a process that ensures that you’ve managed all the agreements between the company and its clients in a timely and organized manner. It helps to reduce risk, mitigate disputes, and improve customer satisfaction.

Due to these benefits, it becomes much easier to close deals with a potential customer.

Simplify the process of personalizing contracts

Contract lifecycle management is a process that can help companies maintain a healthy contract portfolio and reduce the risk of violating any laws or regulations.

It starts with identifying the legal and regulatory requirements for specific contracts. The company then needs to map these requirements to the existing agreements. This step will help them determine which contracts need to be updated and those that require you to draft from scratch.

The contract lifecycle management process should also include an assessment of risks associated with each contract, such as breach of confidentiality, data security, and intellectual property rights infringement.

A CLM can help simplify these complicated parts of managing a contract. It doesn’t take as much time as it usually would, especially since you have different agreements with different customers.

Effective risk and compliance management

Contracts are an essential part of the business. They are a legally binding agreement between two or more parties, and they help the company protect itself from legal risks. However, it is not easy to manage contracts with all their complexities.

Effective risk and compliance management are one of the main benefits of using contract lifecycle management software. It helps companies identify risks early to avoid any potential negative consequences later on.

Saves money and time by eliminating delays

Contracts are an essential part of a business. You can use them to protect the company and its employees from risks while also providing a clear roadmap for how things will happen. The contract lifecycle management process can help companies save time and money by eliminating delays in the contract process.

The contract lifecycle management process starts with defining the project’s scope and determining what type of contract is needed. After this, contracts are drafted, reviewed, executed, and managed throughout their life cycle. These steps can be tedious and lengthy, so CLM software is a welcome approach to ensure there are no delays.

Boost customer trust and brand reputation

Another benefit of investing in CLM is that it can help organizations boost customer trust and brand reputation by making sure that they are not violating any contract terms.

This process can help reduce the risk of being penalized for violating the contract by a third party. It also helps ensure no gaps between what the company promised and what they’ve delivered on those promises.

Wrapping up

Contract lifecycle management is not something you want to overlook, especially when you’re starting to deal with several contracts all at once while running your business. It will make you more efficient, but it can even improve your reputation with clients, which can generate even more business for you. If you can, consider investing in CLM software today.

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks have become rampant over the last couple of years, primarily because of the pandemic. Many people are working from home and accessing online services throughout the pandemic. 

In a report from NETSCOUT, about 10 million DDoS attacks occurred in 2020. It primarily targets remote and other essential services that are often used to make it through the lockdown. 

Industries hit hard by these attacks are healthcare, e-commerce, and streaming services.

What is a DDoS attack?

In a nutshell, a DDoS attack involves bombarding an IP address with substantial traffic volumes. So, if the IP address points to a web server, legit traffic can’t reach it, and your site becomes unavailable.

A flood attack is another type of DDoS attack. Groups of servers are flooded with requests which need processing by victim machines. It’s often generated in huge numbers by scripts that run on compromised machines that are part of a botnet. As a result, it exhausts the server resources of the victim, such as the memory or the CPU. 

As networks become more and more diverse, now is the time for network observability. What is network observability? It’s the ability to answer questions about your network quickly and efficiently. 

A DDoS works in the same principles except that malicious traffic comes from several sources but comes from one central point. Since traffic sources are distributed worldwide, DDoS attack prevention is more complicated than preventing DDoS attacks from a single IP address. 

Fortunately, you can avoid these attacks. Here are some of the best practices for preventing them and protecting your business: 

1. Make a DDoS response plan

Do you know what you’ll do in case of a DDoS attack? How do you respond? Having a definite plan right from the get-go will allow you to react quickly and efficiently whenever your network is being targeted. 

Creating a response plan can take some planning. The more complicated your site infrastructure, the more detailed your response plan is. Regardless of the size of your company, your goal should include the following:

• Systems checklist
• A professional response team
• Clearly defined notification and escalation procedures
• List of internet and external contracts which should be informed about the attack. 
• Detailed communication plan for stakeholders.

2. Keep security infrastructure up to date

Your network is as strong as your weakest links. You need to know of legacy and outdated systems in your infrastructure since these can be entry points for attacks once compromised. 

Your data center and systems should also be up to date. It will help if you patch your web application firewalls and network security programs that you might have. Also, when working with an ISP or hosting provider, a security and data center vendor for implementing advanced protection capabilities is an excellent idea. 

Don’t put all your eggs in the same basket. Your data centers should be placed on different networks to ensure that all your data centers aren’t in the exact physical location and on various data centers. You need to ensure that these aren’t places wherein traffic bottlenecks in your network. 

3. Identifying your network’s traffic

Every organization’s infrastructure has internet traffic patterns, so you need to know yours. Once you know the typical traffic pattern of your organization, then you have a baseline. 

Doing so ensures that you can quickly identify the symptoms of a DDoS attack if any unusual activity happens. 

4. Always look out for the warning signs

Again, DDoS attacks come with classic symptoms. The most common symptoms are intermittent site shutdown, spotty internet connectivity, and disconnection. 

But the problem is that these warning signs are pretty similar to other issues that you might be having in your system, like a slower internet connection and viruses. 

If these problems become prolonged and severe, your network will likely suffer from a DDoS attack and utilize proper prevention actions. 

5. Use a cloud-based service provider

Cloud providers are offering high levels of cybersecurity. It includes firewalls and monitoring software protecting your business assets and networks from cybercriminals. It also has much greater bandwidth than most private networks. Therefore, it’s unlikely going to fail with increasing DDoS attacks. 

Similarly, reputable cloud providers have network redundancy, duplicating systems, data, and equipment. Therefore, if your services become unavailable and corrupted because of an attack, you can quickly switch to secure access on your backed-up versions. 

6. Sufficient server capacity

Since many DDoS attacks work by overwhelming network bandwidth, overprovisioning bandwidth is one way to counter this attack. 

Therefore, you need to ensure that your server capacity can handle several heavy traffic spikes by adding bandwidth. 

Doing so ensures that you’re ready for any unexpected surges of traffic that are caused by these attacks. Although it won’t completely stop a DDoS attack, it will provide a couple of extra minutes to prepare your defense before all of your resources are used up. 

7. Practice good cyber hygiene

You should also engage in the best security practices. It includes regularly changing passwords, securing authentication practices, knowing when to avoid phishing attacks, etc. 

The more minor the errors you’ll be committing right from the get-go, the safer it will be for you if there’s an attack. 

Over to You

Considering how complicated and devious attacks are, you’ll hopefully follow these best practices to prevent DDoS attacks effectively. 

Doing so keeps your web property secure and that you’re more than ready to fight off any of these attacks. Good luck!

Air sanders play an essential role in getting the best results for any woodworking project. Hence, selecting the best quality product is highly important. But, apart from that, you also need to take special care of the products for better service quality and longevity. In fact, the quality sanders will help you get the best finish as well. 

Following are some tips that can help you take care of the air sanders well. So, please read below to know how to do it properly. 

Check the RPM

Some orbital sanders are specifically designed to work at 10,000 RPM and 12,000 RPM. But, if you don’t take care of it, then the RPM will reduce with age. So, it is best to check the RPM of your sander regularly. Hence, you can use the Tachometer to know about its speed. So, if the sander is not spinning with the correct RPM, you can go for some oiling primarily. 

Detect the Air Pressure 

Secondly, air pressure is also one of the essential things to maintain in the sanders. In case there are any sanding marks or swirls, then it’s time to check the air pressure. If the air sanders get the right air pressure, you can get the right RPM. Thus, you can use different tools to check the Air pressure and fix the problem in a swift manner. 

Maintain the Backup Pads 

Now, people tend to ignore this tip that reduces the longevity of the sanders eventually. So, if the backup pads degrade, you need to replace them with new ones. Hence, if you don’t do that, then you will not get the right finish. So, you need to use proper techniques and clean the backup pads properly. In this regard, replacing them within every 3-4 months is necessary. Also, notice if you are getting the right results to understand if any further action needs to be taken. 

Oil the Equipment Regularly 

Regular oiling is highly important if you want the air sanders to work properly. With extensive use, the speed can reduce drastically. As a result, it will cause uneven scratches and poor quality of work. So, if you don’t do oiling in a timely manner, it will cause friction which will not be good. Therefore, oiling them regularly can help you get the best results in the long run.

Types of Air Sanders

Now, let us understand different types of air sanders that you can select for different purposes: 

Random Orbital Sanders

This kind of sander holds the sandpaper in a circle shape; it vibrates properly. In this way, it reduces the chances of any swirl marks. In addition to this, this machine offers speed control and is much quieter than other sanders. 

Detail Sander

This one might be a little noisy but lightweight compared to the other options. This is ideal for any smaller projects through which you can get into tight spaces and corners. 

Belt Sander

A belt sander is an aggressive tool. It has a 3-4 standing belt. They are best for smoothening large surfaces like wooden floors. You must choose a model that has a built-in compartment for dust collection. 

Drum Sander

The Drum sander is a highly aggressive tool that needs careful handling. It is used for vast areas that require heavy sanding. Hence, it is mainly used to remove the bevels of prefinished flooring, etc. 

Edge Floor Sander

This is a comparatively strong sander that is used for smoothening the edges or corners. To use this, you need to lean it at a specific angle which will help in reducing the damage. 

Conclusion

These are some important tips that you need to know to improve the quality of air sanders. Also, make sure to check the sanders regularly to enhance their longevity.