Identity theft is now a pandemic, and a scourge for its victims. Is the federal government finally ready to fight back?

The Identity Theft and Restitution Act of 2008 was recently signed into law by President Bush. The new law is supposed to make it easier for the government to convict those charged with pursuing computerized identity theft. Supporters tout this legislation as allowing federal prosecutors to be more aggressive in cracking down on identity theft cyber crime. But will it work to protect millions of future victims?

The new law provides for the following:

1. Discarding the requirement that damage to a victim’s computer exceed $5,000 over a one year period before charges can be asserted for unauthorized access to a computer.

2. Eliminating the interstate jurisdictional requirement, thus allowing prosecution of those who steal personal information from a computer, even when the victim’s computer is located in the same state as the thief’s computer.

3. Allowing victims of identity theft to seek restitution for an amount equal to the value of the time reasonably spent to fix their problems.

4. Adding the charge of a conspiracy to commit cyber crimes. (The prior law only allowed for charges related to the actual crime, and made no provisions for conspiracy to commit the underlying charge.)

5. Adding the remedies of civil and criminal forfeiture to better allow federal prosecutors to combat cyber crime. Individuals found guilty of violating the act can be forced to forfeit both property used in commission of the cyber crime, as well as property obtained from any proceeds gained from the cyber crime.

6. Making it a felony to electronically damage ten or more computers no matter the value of the damage caused.

7. Making it a crime to threaten to steal or release information from an individual’s computer. (Prior law only permitted the prosecution of those who seek to extort companies or government agencies by explicitly threatening to shut down or damage a computer.)

It is intended that the new law will allow federal prosecutors to be much more aggressive in prosecuting identity theft criminals. Elimination of both the $5,000 damage requirement and the interstate jurisdictional requirement should make it easier for prosecutors to bring charges.

But will it really help?

The federal government has tried to keep up with identity theft for years with few results. If the feds are truly interested in stamping out the pandemic, it is with the enforcement of the laws, and not just new laws, that will turn the tide.

Still, there are encouraging signs that a wide ranging effort is being made. The IRS is helping out by allowing in this next year all but the last four digits of taxpayer ID numbers to be blocked out on 1099’s, W-2s, and other informational returns. There is privacy in that move.

But it is not over. Stay tuned for more on this battle.

The dreaded question asked daily by some poor small business owner who finds himself with a dead server or workstation and all of the company’s data gone forever. Like most people, we never think it will happen to us so we either choose to ignore the risk or the “I’ll get to that tomorrow” strategy. The sad thing is that having a solid back-up and recovery plan is fairly quick and easy to do and quite inexpensive when you think of the possible financial impact of lost data.

As a SMB you need to:

* Think and plan for disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity (BC) contingencies. Most people use these terms interchangeably when they are really quite different in levels of coverage and timing. A good DR plan should have you back up and running in 24-26 hours. A BC plan that is actually implemented and tested should have your business back online in less than four hours.

* Additionally, it is critical to weigh the risks against the benefits and costs to determine which strategy is best for your business but you need to do something before you find yourself asking “Now what?”

2008 is not even three-quarters of the way home, and already the Internet sector has seen some significant startups work their way into the public eye. An economic downturn and weak credit market have not kept these companies from continuing their quest to be “the next big thing.”

This young data analysis company looks to change the way we analyze information and predict future problems. The tech team at V-Kernel has developed a series of proprietary algorithms that collect and compute data from virtual machines (servers) and then determine whether or not there will be conflicts within that data in the future. The company will help businesses effectively use virtual servers to bill their clients more accurately.

With its groundbreaking Basecamp software already making project management easier for small businesses around the world, 37 Signals has set its sights on bigger and better things with its open source web application Ruby on Rails. Instead of piling on more and more features, 37 Signals keeps things simple, adding only basic features to their products that enhance usability. The company currently maintains only a handful of employees, but look for that to change as their software continues to grow in popularity.

The more serious sibling of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, LinkedIn helps individuals network with those within their industry or who need their services. Despite a much smaller user-base than Facebook, the company still forecasts revenue of $100 million per year (compared to $150 million for Facebook). With a redesign in place, watch for this company to make some serious movement in ’08 and beyond.

Slide is a tech company that is proud to play both sides of the fence. Developing widget applications for social networking destinations and their rival, stand-alone websites, Slide is like the weapons supplier in a battle that looks to rage on for years to come.

Taking the touch-screen into the 21st century is the goal of this two-year old startup company. Already known throughout the world for the groundbreaking work on CNN’s election coverage (the company designed the data-filled, eye-popping technology used by the anchors to deliver polling results) Perceptive Pixel has recently scored a top-secret contract with the Department of Defense. And although the terms of that deal are secret, the company itself won’t be undercover for much longer.

The Spanish start-up Fon is a firm believer in the axiom “give and you shall receive.” Tired of paying for WI-FI all over town, the company’s tech gurus have developed a system that allows home WI-FI users to “share” their connection with the world in exchange for free use of the overall network. If the Fon network becomes a world-wide affair like the company’s founders hope, that trade-off should turn out to be a sweet deal.

You don’t have to be crazy to take on Google at its own game…but it helps! Luckily, the team at Powerset is as ingenious as they are nuts, and have developed a search engine technology that utilizes real language to put search terms into the proper context within a sentence. That means more effective searching for the end user, and a more targeted advertising stream for businesses.

Loopt combines social networking with GPS technology to create an application that lets people know where their friends are and what they’re doing. You can even set alerts that announce when people on your friend list have closed to within a certain radius of your position. Creepy concept, but one that incorporates enough social media and blogging to make this company one to watch.

This fast growing maker of lithium ion batteries is revered among the “green” business community because of its partnerships with the top electric car makers in the world. Simply put, as the automotive world moves forward and becomes more fuel efficient, A123 will be there to power the journey.

Perhaps the most innovative start up to watch in 2008 is 23andme. For a small price of $1,000 this company will provide you with a detailed breakdown of your DNA. Everything you ever wanted to know about yourself will be there. It could be a boon for those individuals at risk for hereditary illnesses or those seeking more information about their origins. 23andme even plans a social networking hub to match you up with those who share your characteristics.

A good list isn’t just a random collection of people. It’s a list of people who have something in common. It may be their age-range/gender, professional affiliation, personal interests, level of income-you name it. If the people on your list have something in common that puts them in the target market for your business, then, bingo. You’ve hit pay dirt.

There are a number of ways you can put the power of a list to work for you as part of an effective overall marketing plan. You can use that list to conduct market research, the way Fortune 500 companies do. Or you could use that list as the basis for your marketing campaigns, utilizing direct mail, email or both.

With all the different ways that the power of a list can help to grow your business, using one only makes sense.

But how can you get your hands on a list that actually corresponds to your target market? Here are a few tips to help you get started.

1) Build One
Your website is a great place to start building a targeted list. That’s because there’s one important thing that all visitors to your website have in common-an interest in your products and services. It’s not hard to see why capturing their contact information can be key to the growth and success of your business.

One effective technique for building a list based on your website traffic is to create a free e-course or special report. When visitors sign up to receive this free information, they provide their email address. The e-course or special report is then sent directly to their inbox and their email address becomes part of your list.

This is a technique that has been incredibly effective for thousands of savvy entrepreneurs.

2) Exchange One
Maybe you know of another business owner who serves a clientele similar to yours with a complementary (non-competing) product or service. In which case, it might be beneficial for both of you to double the size of your list through a list exchange.

If you’re just getting started, and don’t have a list of your own just yet, there might be something else you could provide for your fellow entrepreneur. You might offer to provide a free ad for their business on your website or feature their products or services in a limited run of promotional materials for your own business. Both of these ideas foster the spirit of “win/win.”

3) Find One
The Dunn and Bradstreet Corporation (a.k.a., D&B) is among the leading providers of business information in the world. If your target market includes a certain profession and/or business clientele, you can use the massive database on their website to create a targeted list.

Entries to this site provide legal and trade names, physical and mailing addresses, geographical descriptions, product and industry descriptors, sales and number of employees, as well as up to 40 vital statistics. This information is often used by large corporations for marketing research services and finding prospective customers, because you can really hone in on the specific types of businesses you are looking for.

And, D&B offers modest subscription services for small business owners that include profiles of the top companies in a wide variety of industries. Their Industry Reports can really help you narrow down on sales prospects, in particular.

3) Buy One
When all else fails, there’s always the option of simply purchasing a list. There are a number of businesses online that offer extremely targeted lists, based on the target market you are trying to reach. Check out www.melissadata.com — one of the good ones. If your customers are consumers, they’ve got a variety of targeted lists you might find interesting, including people who have recently moved, recent graduates, people who are “about to move,” absentee homeowners, people with credit challenges, income groups, people with children, married vs. single people and more.

While buying lists tends to be expensive, it may be a worthwhile investment in the long-term health of your business. Before investing serious money in a purchased list, you should know more about your sales conversion rate so you can build a budget for list-buying that ensures a solid return on investment.

No matter which option you choose, remember - a good list is worth its weight in gold!

Sales are the life blood of any company. Especially in the early stages, a startup business must sell in order to survive. The primary responsibility of its founders is to deliver growth and increased revenues in order to reach profitability.

Some companies succeed even with slower growth, while others struggle while making faster revenue gains. The reason for this is predictability - the founders achieve what they say they are going to achieve.

When predictability is so highly valued, making more money than forecast may be perceived as being as bad as not reaching stated targets. Companies often increase their forecasts if they are having a better year than expected because they don’t want their year-end figures to be higher than predicted. Conversely, organizations also downgrade their forecasts if things are not going as well as expected. Basically, the executives of the company need to demonstrate that they are in control. This is no different to sales people: they must also demonstrate control over their forecasts.

Each month and, more importantly, towards the end of the quarter, the sales professional puts forward his or her best guess as to where he or she will be in relation to their target when the quarter ends. As part of this prediction they may well also name one or two deals that they believe are crucial to them. These are often, if not always, the largest deals they have.

The data is then taken from the corporate pipeline and fed to the sales manager, who will manipulate it and feed it to the sales director or VP of sales. In turn, the head of sales will manipulate it further and feed the data, as a forecast, to the CFO and CEO. If it is going to be a bad quarter, they’ll be told so.

However, thanks to a chain of manipulation and wishful thinking, the figures at this stage will appear less grim than they really are. This allows the VP of sales to explain that with a fair wind they should just be able to turn it around and make the number.

The psychology of what’s happening is simple. People want to keep their jobs and believe that admitting that they’ll miss their quarterly target is not the best way to do that.

Sales professionals need tools to help them to do their job. Unfortunately, the tools supplied by a company are often for the benefit of the company itself and not to the individual’s advantage. Even then, the tools are rarely fit for purpose and most will not be able to adapt to taking a checks & balance approach.

For instance, the pipeline is used as a management tool to make sure there are enough deals in the right places to meet target. In other words it becomes a reporting tool. These reporting tools are often misguided in their approach to the problem.

A pipeline’s primary purpose is to show you are in control. It gives you the ability to predict the outcome, even if that outcome actually falls short of your sales target. Prediction is only successful when it’s accurate. If you say you’re going to come out at 100% and you come out at 110% that’s not good. It may be good in revenue terms but it’s not an accurate prediction.

Introducing Focus from First Border! Focus is a visual opportunity manager that’s easy to use and even quicker to set up. In a matter of minutes you can input the deals you’re working on now and see how closing them will affect your sales commission. It was made for all for us bootstrappers with limited resources; a copy of Focus is about $200.

Better still, it’s built to let you drag and drop deals within the application to show you how winning or losing any specific deal will affect your target and the resulting commission. With a series of grids that show you immediately the status of each opportunity, you know at a glance which deals are the important ones to work on to make your number and which deals you don’t have a chance of winning. Now you can save valuable time and put more energy into winning those deals that really matter.

The result? More accurate forecasting and maximized sales.

Focus is for those in sales who maintain a portfolio of sales prospects and who would like to simplify the challenge of managing the different priorities presented by the complexity of opportunities.

Focus is a personal sales productivity tool that provides a simple, quick and easy way to help focus on and manage the right opportunities at the right time in order to maximise sales and earnings.

Unlike the traditional corporate tools that are designed to provide benefit to the company, Focus delivers benefit directly to the sales professional.

The simplicity of Focus is the visual way in which the opportunities are managed through the buying process. You can see at a glance the status of your business.

Focus: Dashboard - Visual Performance Indicator

The Dashboard changes when deals are moved. This provides immediate visual and numeric status of performance against target and commission for both the current and potential outcome. If you drag a deal into or out of the forecast you will immediately see the impact it has on achieving target and commission earnings. Scenario planning couldn’t be easier.

Focus has minimum data requirements! Quick and easy updates

The only information required to enter a deal is the customer name and the date the deal is likely to close. All other information is optional. Typically, most people can input all their leads and opportunities in less than 10 minutes. New opportunities can be added in seconds.

If you enter the value of the deal you can use the Dashboard to immediately see the impact that deal has on the outcome of your sales period. Also, further information can be added at any time, but only add further information to those deals that are important. Therefore, maintaining Focus is quick and easy.

Drag & Drop for quick and easy updates

Once a deal is in it is moved between grids by Drag & Drop… making it very quick and easy to move deals around.
Deal Information and Plans - For total control

Focus allows you to maintain full Deal Information and Plans for all your important deals. Qualification questions are built in and work on a traffic-light system for quick visual representation of qualification risk.

Deal Plans help you think through the opportunity by developing a series of questions that need answering. These questions help you progress the deal by highlighting your risk of losing due to lack of knowledge of the deal. By finding answers to the questions you make the deal more robust and increase your chance of winning. Deal plans also make it easy to communicate the status of the deal to others.

Reports - for easy sharing

Focus provides a series of standard reports for sharing of information. The reports can be saved in various formats allowing further changes to be made or adding the information to other documents very easy.

Filters - for easy review & sharing

Focus allows you to filter all opportunities across various criteria. You can filter by Customer, Private or Public deals, Partners, Co-Workers, Teams, Sectors, Close Dates and Sales Periods.

You can also see all the opportunities and with their corresponding deal plans. You may also wish to set up lead generation labels as Teams. You can then view your opportunities by lead generation source and share the progress of these leads.

This is just is just a starting point of all of the things Focus can do. For more go to firstborder.com and read more under products.

While you were sleeping the world changed. You might not know it for a few months or years, but new technologies were discovered or perfected, and those technologies will be refined into tools that will offer your business further growth and efficiencies. This process is almost as fixed now as sunrise and sunset. Those who deny technology has moved to the forefront of how businesses operate on a daily basis are being eclipsed by those embracing the advantages technology offers. To ensure your busy is the latter and not the former, ask yourself…

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“How can my business benefit from technology?”

The final answer to this question isn’t known until you actually implement a solution, but there are iterative answers that will lead to a positive outcome.

1. Know your business processes. This might seem redundant but it’s common that small companies know how to work the business but don’t know how the business works. It can be a time consuming process to document your procedures, policies, and work flows, but your business must drive technology decisions (not vice versa). Start with a simple outline of how you get from A to Z; that outline will be your guide when selecting the technology right for your business.

1. Prioritize your technology decisions. Your process outline will highlight areas of need for technology: phone systems, network security, e-mail, file sharing, and so on. Your goal with this step is to build a wish list of technology solutions (go crazy, wishes don’t cost anything) from which you can establish a schedule of which solutions you require now, later, and nice-to-have. And in all honesty, budget plays the most significant role in this phase; allot yourself a certain dollar amount and stick to that figure (give or take 10%). This will force you to focus on just that technology which will do the most for your business now and later.

1. Know what you don’t know. Don’t expect to know any technology by reading articles, books, or blogs. Technology is supposed to make your life simpler, but it takes complex technologies, such as advanced VoIP phone systems, to do that. Look in the mirror and tell yourself the truth about your technology aptitude. Now you’re ready to investigate the right solution for your business. This is where you Google to find resources; ask colleagues or competitors or friends for contacts; talk to manufacturer’s of the technology in which you’re interested. You’re looking for those who know the technology like you never will, but who will be able to translate that technology into benefits for your business. This is a leap-of-faith moment, but if the resource you find asks you more about your business than tells you about the solution, you’ve found the right resource. (Remember, business drives technology.)

1. Prepare the troops. Your employees will be the primary user of the phone systems, or any technology solution you implement. Let them in on the process as early as possible (outlining the process stage is about right). The input you’ll receive will be invaluable to determining a final selection. Once you have chosen a tool, put employees in charge of implementation (to a certain extent). You build rapport with the vendor this way that will be invaluable later when you require support or have follow up questions; you also empower employees to make the tool their own – it’s much easier to adjust technology than it is employees’ processes and habits. Your odds of a smooth and success install rise dramatically with a team-based approach.

This is a much abbreviated list of to do items when selecting a technology, but it touches on four vital points that will help ensure you benefit from implemented technologies.