Image: Arvind Balaraman

Did you know that there are many types of businesses that are strictly regulated and controlled by the government?

(Once there was a lady whose great idea was to make croutons from her house. Needless to say, that didn’t last long when the inspector heard about it.)

If you think you’ve got an idea that’s going to make you big money, there might be a reason why everyone else isn’t doing it and that reason could be related to the law.

Examples on of when you may need a license:

FOOD LICENSE: As I mentioned above if you are going to sell food, you will need to license and register for hygiene and safety inspections. For many reasons most local government agencies are especially strict if you plan to handle food especially raw meat. Food licenses aren’t too hard to get provided you are willing to have your kitchen and products inspected at regular intervals.

DAYCARE LICENSE: An in home daycare will need a license. There are all sorts of courses to take and regular inspections to go through. If you ever wonder why there’s a shortage of in home childcare providers it’s because it’s so hard to keep up with the rules and make a profit.

ALCOHOL LICENSE: You will need a license if you plan to serve alcohol. Getting an alcohol license for your home, unless it’s for some kind of special event and the drinking is just incidental is pretty much out of the question. Alcohol licenses are subject to appeals from people who live near you. So unless your whole neighborhood is ok with it you may have trouble.

MEDICAL LICENSE: Anything medical will probably need a license. When I say medical, I mean doctors, dentists, opticians, and even vets. You might think it is a great idea to turn your home into an animal hospital, but you need to be qualified and licensed. Of course, if you’ve previously been a doctor, dentist, or whatever, then you shouldn’t have too much trouble getting licensed to do the same thing from home.

This just covers some of the most common businesses that need licensing. The best idea is to check your local laws and make sure your home- or small  business is properly licensed.

Web Server Guardian Anti-Virus Edition

I don’t want to alarm you but this message is really important! Your online business could be the next victim of this terrible virus. If you’re in a hurry, please just go straight to:

Web Server Guardian

Recently,  Jonathan Teng an online business owner,  got three of his web servers infected by a terrible virus called Gumblar. I’m not sure if you already heard about it or may be you’re one of the million victims out there but let me tell you quickly what happened to Jonathan’s sites.

In just 2 days, Gumblar spreads throughout his 3 web severs and infected 117 of his websites. His entire web business was severely hit overnight! He lost thousands of dollars in potential sales over a 6 day period.

Everyone browsing his sites using Chrome and Firefox got an alert message saying: “Warning: Visiting this site may harm your computer!”

(And those who were using other browsers didn’t get that message and got their PCs infected as well.)  Though he incessantly argued with his web hosting providers to help clean his sites, they didn’t care much about it.

First, here is a video showing how the Gumblar virus works

The video below shows that Websense Security Labs’ software has detected that the Fox Sports site has been compromised and injected with malicious code.

Fox Sports is a division of the Fox Broadcasting Company.  It specializes in the latest sports news and world sports updates. Fox Sports has an Alexa ranking of 330.

Their research shows that the site has been injected with two pieces of malicious code. One of them is the latest Gumblar campaign, and the other redirects individuals to a malicious web site, whose link was unreachable at the time of this alert.

The software has also detected that thousands of other web sites have been compromised by the latest Gumblar campaign. The Gumblar uses PDF and Flash exploits to run malware in order to control a victim’s computer. In addition, a script is executed to download malware.

Now, how bad was it for Jonathan’s sites then?

• He suddenly wasn’t making money at all from his sites.
• Years of hard work evaporated in a matter of days!
• His sites were blacklisted by Google and other search engines.
• His sites were propagating the virus to other PCs.
• His credibility was suddenly at stake and he was labelled a virus spreader!

That was one of the toughest nightmares he ever faced. You can watch how frustrated he was when that happened and also how he managed to secure everything back for good:

Web Server Guardian

This makes me realize how volatile our web businesses are! It could be making you a ton of money today, but in just a blink of an eye, they could be completely wiped out the next day!

This can happen to me and… this can happen to you as well!

I’m not wishing for this to happen to anyone of us but, prevention is better than cure! Taking precautionary measures to secure our web businesses is a real must if you do not want all our hard work gone into smoke! So I urge you to watch how Jonathan managed to solve this problem by using the Web Server Guardian and how you can do the same for your online business!

Check it out here:  Web Server Guardian

Note:  Jonathan Teng will also offer you a way to get hacker protection for your server or web sites, so watch out for that one too!

Originally posted 2010-02-04 15:59:18.