Nitro PDF suffers massive data breach, exposing Microsoft, Google, Amazon documents
The Australian company behind the popular PDF software Nitro PDF has suffered a data breach that also impacts many other well-known organizations including Google, Apple, Microsoft, Case and Citibank.
As reported by BleepingComputer, Nitro PDF is used by over 10 thousand business customers and 1.8m licensed users. However, the company also offers a cloud service that can be used by customers to share documents with coworkers as well as with employees at other organizations.
In an advisory published on the investor relations section of its site, Nitro Software informed its customers that it had suffered a “low impact security incident” though no sensitive financial data was impacted, saying:
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“Nitro's investigation into the incident remains ongoing. There is no evidence currently that any sensitive or financial data relating to customers has been impacted or that any information has been misused. Nitro has elevated its monitoring and security protocols and has not identified any further malicious activity connected to the incident.”
Nitro Software data breach
Although Nitro Software claims that no sensitive financial data was lost as a result of the breach, the cybersecurity firm Cyble has revealed to BleepingComputer that the company's user and document databases as well as 1TB of documents allegedly stolen from the company are being sold online in a private auction starting at $80,000.
According to Cyble, the user credential database table contains 70m user records which contain the email addresses, full names, bcrypt hashed passwords, titles, company names, IP addresses and other system data from Nitro Software's customers.
For instance, the database reportedly contains 17,137 documents from Amazon, 6,405 from Apple, 137,285 from Citi, 32,153 from Google and 2,390 from Microsoft. There is also a great deal of information related to financial reports, M&A activities, NDAs and product releases included in the database.
TechRadar Pro has reached out to Nitro Software for a statement on the matter but we've yet to hear back at the time of writing. Hopefully we'll find out more on the extent of the data breach once the company's investigation into the matter comes to a close.
God of War coming to PC in January 2022, with DLSS support
God of War is making its way to PC, Santa Monica Studios announced this week, making one of the best PS4 games accessible to PC gamers and marking the latest PlayStation title to get a PC port.
The game is slated for a January 14, 2022, release, according to a post on the PlayStation Blog, and the game will feature DLSS and 21:9 screen ratio support, giving you another reason to get yourself one of the best ultrawide monitors out there.
"All of us at Santa Monica Studio have been humbled by the immense amount of support and passions fans of the God of War series have shown in the latest chapter of Kratos’ story since its release," Grace Orlady, senior community manager for Santa Monica Studio, said in the post. "As of August 2021, 19.5MM copies for God of War on PlayStation 4 have been sold through and we can’t wait to share that experience with a whole new group of players on PC."
In addition to DLSS and 21:9 support, the game will also feature true 4K resolution and unlocked framerates, so crank up your RTX 3090 and enjoy Kratos and Atreus's journey across the Nine Realms at the fastest framerates possible, making God of War on PC possibly the ultimate way to experience one of the greatest games ever made.
In addition, anyone who purchases God of War on PC will also have access to additional digital content, including:
Elementor launches Cloud Website tool for WordPress websites
Top website builder Elementor has launched a new cloud offering that includes a code-free builder and WordPress web hosting.
Elementor Cloud Website also lets web creators perform a number of actions including connecting domain names and running backups and restoring services from the 'MyElementor' dashboard.
Elementor says that registering a domain name is one of the hidden costs of website building, as a WordPress web hosting plan usually comes with hidden costs, Secure Socket Layer (SSL) requirements, storage limits, and other limitations, which can pose as a challenge.
Website building challenges
As a result, finding the best platform to build a website is crucial factor in building and maintaining an online presence.
Right now, there are many web creation platforms available, with the majority of them operating on their own closed CMS system that often ties people into one product with accelerating price hikes annually.
The company says Elementor Cloud Website means no additional installation or hidden fees, and users will have full ownership of their content.
All features that are currently available in the Elementor Pro plugin such as its 100+ widgets, kits, and templates, are included in the Elementor Cloud Website subscription. For those building a website with Elementor, its new tool comes pre-installed with WordPress CMS, Elementor Pro features, and the Hello Theme.
Elementor Cloud Websites come with SSL certification by DigiCert, but there's also an option to import external certifications too.
Every Elementor Cloud Website is automatically backed up every 24 hours, with the firm giving its users access to a code that grants access to the website while it's being updated.
An Elementor Cloud Website can be built and published for $99 per year, which includes 20GB of storage and a bandwidth of 100GB - and it is hosted using Google Cloud Platform.
It's time CEOs gave SEO the attention it deserves - here's why
CEOs likely know from their marketing departments that paid techniques are just one branch of their digital marketing efforts. In reality, the tactics for digital marketing constantly evolve in line with new tech trends, regulations, and audience preferences. With digital marketing changing faster than ever, business leaders risk relying on tactics that are no longer relevant in today’s digital landscape.
For example, in recent years paid social advertising has become more expensive while its effectiveness has dropped. This is due in part to an oversaturated market, with social channels established as the go-to marketing focus during the pandemic. In today’s search-first world, CEOs should recognize that organic search is a more viable, cost-effective option for customer acquisition, providing long-term benefits to their company’s digital presence - and acknowledge the role SEO plays in the success of this.
Most marketing teams are adept at on-site SEO. They understand the need to optimize content and consider keywords to create stronger online engagement. With recent search engine updates, however, technical SEO and website health have become increasingly important drivers in organic search—yet these factors are still often overlooked as necessary elements in marketing and conversion strategies. This oversight can be combated with a dedicated SEO department, but it is all too common for SEO teams to run in silos and not be integrated into the core business operation. This creates a disjunction between technical and marketing efforts, consequently hindering the effectiveness of website functions.
With the growing influence of technical SEO on search marketing efforts, running SEO teams in a silo is the wrong approach. To make the most of their online ventures, CEOs need to consider SEO and website health when making marketing, sales, and strategic decisions. Put simply, multiple departments will have a hand in SEO success, so it must be a collaborative effort that is baked into business processes from the C-suite down.
So, what is technical SEO?
To understand how organic search can be leveraged for meaningful revenue results, CEOs should be familiar with the basics of technical SEO and how it influences search engine results pages (SERPs). In short, technical SEO governs the overall search engine ranking, performance (speed) and user experience (UX) of a website. Naturally, Google wants their browser to be used as much as possible, so they promote websites that provide a great experience for users. Generally, this means fast websites with great content and well-considered navigation rank better.
Without technical SEO, the ‘look’ of a website might be great, but the crucial foundation beneath the content won’t benefit UX and will ultimately affect website authority and search rankings. Google ranks websites by crawling their pages and reading the site’s code to understand its worth and context. As an example, when an image accompanies site content, Google needs to be told the contextual relevance of the image. This is possible by describing it in hidden ‘alt text’ code. Furthermore, to benefit the user experience, those images also need to be compressed to save on loading time. These technical SEO factors show Google that a website is suitable for fast browsing while also telling it which search terms best suit the page.
While paid advertising might provide more instantly gratifying results, those results are only temporarily boosted. Organic methods win when it comes to longevity. After a paid campaign is over, the results cease as well. In addition, paid advertising costs typically increase in proportion to the amount of traffic being acquired. With technical SEO, every improvement made will create a more effective website going forward. These results continue beyond the lifespan of a paid campaign and come at a relatively fixed cost that is decoupled from the amount of traffic being acquired. When a page ranks higher in search results, it receives more traffic and lowers the customer acquisition cost (CAC).
(Image credit: Shutterstock)
Why data matters for better search results
SEO best practices change regularly because Google and other search engines are constantly updating their algorithms - so knowing how these updates will affect your search results and how your company’s website is performing against new ranking criteria is crucial. Gathering data on how your - and your competitors’ - websites are performing and how users are finding and experiencing them is imperative if you want to ensure search success for your business moving forward.
While recent technology trends have focused on Big Data and compiling huge volumes of varying data points, a 2020 study by research firm IDC revealed 68% of collected data is never used. A shift from generalized mass data collection toward BigOps, whereby data collection is automated across all business touchpoints to provide real-time analytics, shows how voluminous data can be used more effectively. Companies that use BigOps to hone SearchOps - the same automated processes applied to search and site optimization – will be better positioned to measure data.
Having solid, well-considered website data tools, automation, and operations in place allows the C-suite to better understand the role of SEO specialists and bolster their effectiveness by ensuring all internal teams have real-time, easy-to-understand insights into website performance and the impact this has on everything from customer acquisition to revenue. Empowering your teams with leading technical SEO tools can help boost effectiveness and cross-functional collaboration across multiple teams and ultimately make a real difference to your website performance and your bottom line.
The importance of SEO platforms and how to choose the right one
While CEOs might sign off budgets to invest in content SEO & technical SEO SaaS platforms such as Deepcrawl, they’ll rarely know much about how these tools are used. But there’s a real benefit to understanding the basics of what these tools provide.
SEO tools can provide deep insights into exactly how and why your website is getting the search results it does. These platforms can be integral when identifying and fixing poorly performing pages and can provide overarching website performance knowledge that will benefit multiple departments. Having a shared source of knowledge and data will help teams work together with better cohesion. With the increasing importance of technical SEO elements in overall site health and performance, SEO tools can help your web developers, UX designers, and marketing departments work in alignment from a single source to improve their collaborative processes and enhance your overall return on investment in SEO and website performance.
Furthermore, providing your team with an appropriate SEO SaaS platform can boost team efficiency and free up time for your staff, as many of the best SEO tools have time-saving automation that will decrease the need for labor-intensive manual checks on website code and architecture. With automation tools, best practices for search engine optimization are built-in and regularly updated to match the ever-changing ranking criteria we discussed above. Finding the right SaaS platform for technical SEO can help your company get the search results your brand needs to stay top-of-mind with customers and prospects, helping your internal teams align on objectives that are often at risk of being ineffectively siloed into individual departments.
Thriving in a search-first age
We’re in a search-first age. Almost all of us begin our personal and professional queries on Google these days, and brands that reach the top of the search results are better positioned to turn customer intent into brand awareness and sales. While paid ads can provide a temporary boost, organic search boasts longer-term and more cost-effective rewards. Meeting your customers where they are (and aligning your brand with the needs they are trying to meet in their online searches) has never been more important for businesses that wish to build their credibility, authority, and revenue.
With search established as a key driver for multiple business functions, CEOs stand to benefit a great deal from understanding SEO and developing an awareness of the tools that exist to provide knowledge, efficiency, and collaborative improvements for their teams. Investing time and effort into building out a strong SearchOps initiative within your business and identifying the right technical SEO platform can provide valuable insights for everyone in the C-suite and enable teams across your organization to succeed in the search-first age.
CEOs have a deep understanding of wider business ambitions and bigger-picture strategies that will all be influenced to some degree by search results—and as such, I would encourage more of us to get involved with technical SEO and website health efforts. Our digital world is changing rapidly and our choices as consumers are driven more than ever by search engines - with declining returns on investment in the digital advertising space, getting up to speed with the world of search offers a valuable advantage in the long-term.
If you're interested in improving the search engine optimization of your website or business, check out our roundup of the best SEO tools
