Tough new Massachusetts laws about data breaches that go into effect in January impact any firm handling personal data of Massachusetts residents.

Are you doing enough to protect your clients and your business from theft or mishandling of client private data? Are you absolutely certain?

According to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, more than 250 million records containing personally identifiable information have been compromised in the United States since 2005.

Some states, like Massachusetts, have strict guidelines for reporting data security breaches to clients. In other states, the rules are less stringent, but even so, no one wants to be responsible for potentially exposing their clients to identity theft.

Firms that accept credit card payments, whether online or off, have already had to consider the ramifications of breaches due to the many and much publicized hacks of credit card processing systems. But the new Mass law impacts any organization that has client private data of a Massachusetts citizen. That means professional services firms like accountants,  lawyers, investment advisors  and insurance brokers, who often handle information like Social Security number, driver’s license or state ID numbers, and financial account numbers.  That means any firm, regardless of location, that handles  data of Mass citizens.

You think you’re ready.

You’ve got  some security measures in place. Your IT  resources  have  deployed firewalls, anti-virus and anti-hacker tools to lock down  your computers. Everything seems under control. But are you sure?  Are the tools they’ve deployed really adequate to protect your clients and your firm from clever cyber criminals?

It’s not just hackers cracking into systems and stealing files. Employees  leaving work on desks, bringing work home or emailing data without encrypting it can expose sensitive personal information. No matter how it happens, the firm is responsible for informing its clients and that costs in time, money, and damage to the firm’s reputation.

Sure, it’s a cliche, but when it comes to safeguarding personal information, an ounce of prevention really is worth a pound of cure. Think about it. You take your car  in for preventative maintenance on a regular basis. Why wouldn’t you do the same smart thing for your business? Data breaches are preventable, and the first step to protecting your clients and minimizing your risk is to understand your vulnerabilities.

If your firm is among those impacted by the new Mass law, GuideMark offers three free tools to help you learn what you need to do to protect client information and comply with the law.

1. Our free self-assessment helps you gauge your vulnerability for a data security breach.
2. We’ve partnered with The McLane Law Firm to develop a free educational seminar where you can learn more about how to limit your exposure to data theft, protect client information and comply with the law. The next seminar will be held June 4^th from 10 am to noon at Trade Center 128 in Woburn.
3. If you can’t make the seminar, join us for a one-hour webinar at noon on June 11th that covers much of the same critical information.

We’re shifting the format of Business Forward from podcast only to a mix of blog posts, podcasts and perhaps even the occasional video.  We’ll still cover the companies, leaders and issues driving business success in today’s economy but we’re going to take a much deeper dive into the technology issues facing companies in a recession.

Firms want to remain competitive and continue to meet the needs of their customers. They also want to cut costs and conserve capital. How do we reconcile these seemingly contradictory goals?

One strategy, and the focus of GuideMark’s business over the next 12 to 18 months, is to look at ways to extend the useful life of your existing business systems.

What aren’t you using to full advantage? Is there hidden functionality within your current systems that would solve a business problem? Are there simple changes to business processes that would make your existing systems more useful?

We call this recycling your system investment. It’s about getting more value from the technology you’ve already paid for. You can find out more about the business systems audits we do for clients to develop a recycling plan at www.guidemark.com

Here on Business Forward, we’ll be writing about the key considerations in the process, sharing our observations about new technologies and identifying IT investments that may make sense even in a recession.

We invite your comments and contributions, and look forward to a lively discussion.

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No one sets out to create a hostile work environment, but once you hire that first employee, you must understand and comply with sexual harassment law. Linda Johnson, a labor relations lawyer from Manchester NH, joins us with information about preventing harassment in the workplace.

Links:
Guidelines on Maintaining a Harassment-Free Workplace (pdf)

Technorati Tags: sexual harassment, hostile work environment

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Probably the scariest hire for any entrepreneur is hiring the first sales person or sales manager. In the early days, we do everything ourselves, slowly adding staff to take on roles like finance and operations as the business grows. But many entrepreneurs continue to manage the sales effort well past the time they should, perhaps adding a sales person or two but stopping short of that critical step of bringing a sales manager on board. What are some of the signs that it is time to get out of “do it yourself” mode and trust a sales manager to spearhead this critical function for you? And how do you find the right one? Today, sales management and training expert Nick Miller joins us to answer these critical questions.

Links:

Clarity Advantage

Technorati Tags: Nick Miller, sales, sales recruitment

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At some point in its growth, whether it’s at 10- employees, 50 or 100, the company realizes that it needs a formal new hire training program. What’s the best way to go about it? Training expert Ronna Caras is here today to give us some guidance.

Technorati Tags: Ronna Caras, new hire training, training

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It goes without saying that all businesses want to avoid wage disputes, but wage and hour issues are often the cause of huge problems for growing small and midsized businesses that just aren’t prepared for them. Linda Johnson, the lead employment attorney at McLane, Graf, Raulerson & Middleton, a New Hampshire law firm, is here to give us some ideas on how to prepare our businesses to avoid wage and hour mistakes.

Top Ten New Hampshire Labor Law Violations (PDF)

Overview of New Hampshire Laws Governing Payment of Wages and Hours of Work (PDF)

Technorati Tags: human resources, employment law, Linda Johnson, McLane

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Our guest is Eli Szklanka, GuideMark’s managing partner responsible for development and client services. Last time Eli joined us on Business Forward, we talked about what small businesses need to do once they’ve outgrown their Excel spreadsheet and entry level accounting package as their principal business management tools. Not that we’ll ever eliminate spreadsheets.

Today, we’re talking about that next IT step - what to do when you’ve outgrown your initial business system investment, a problem that almost affects businesses as they make that transition from small and new to mid-size and more mature.

Technorati Tags: small business, information technology, business systems, GuideMark

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We know how important sales skills are for our sales people. But what about employees in other customer-facing roles, such as customer care and support? Are we maximizing upselling and cross selling opportunities with our customers when they contact us in the normal course of business? Training expert Ronna Caras joins us this week to share some of her proven techniques for teaching customer service and call center reps how to identify a selling opportunity.

Resources:

• Caras Training website
• For the Face of Your Business, the Caras Training blog
• Register at www.carastraining.com/freetools for access to several interesting “how to” articles including “10 tips to improve sales prospecting.”

Technorati Tags: sales training, upselling, customer service, Ronna Caras, Caras Training, sales skills, cross selling

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Small businesses don’t have IT departments. We do the best we can - recommendations from friends and colleagues, and reconnaissance missions in Best Buy or online. We probably run our business on some combination of Excel, an accounting package and some sort of contact manager. We know that as we grow - in fact to grow - we’ll probably need to do something different. The question is, when, and what do we do? How do we go about it?

To get some answers, today we’re talking with Eli Szklanka, the GuideMark Managing Partner responsible for development and client services. Host: Susan Getgood

Technorati Tags: business system, information technology, GuideMark, IT

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It may be cliché, but it’s also quite true: employees are often our most valuable asset. But raw qualifications for the job are not enough to ensure that our customers have the best possible experience with our company. You want to be certain that your customer-facing employees in sales and service roles are properly trained about your products, services and businesses processes. And more than just trained - you really want to be sure they are performing at the top of their game. The question is, how? Training expert Ronna Caras joins us today with some tips for small to medium business owners on what they can do to help their sales and service employees maximize customer satisfaction and company revenue.

Resources: For more valuable tips on customer service, coaching and developing training that sticks, check out Ronna’s blog, For the Face of Your Business. And for a glance at the headlines from a variety of small business-oriented blogs (including this one), we recommend Alltop Small Business.

Technorati Tags: customer service, Ronna Caras, training, business management, mentoring, coaching