For cell phone users, and that includes most everyone these days, there are myriad choices in plans beyond the hundreds of phones themselves. Anytime minutes. Off-peak minutes. Domestic roaming charges. International roaming charges. Minutes overage fees. Text messaging plans. Data plans. Limits and slowdowns on data plans.

From day one, people told me that security should be proactive and not reactive. At ASIS International 2011 this month, thousands of security professionals will talk business, budgets, technology, threats and the need to keep one step ahead. One step ahead of whom and what is the challenge that makes reactive the unfortunate fallback.

This issue of Security magazine features the most influential people in security. An annual spotlight, the list boasts the best and brightest. But anyone can be influential, one way or another. Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another, said Napoleon Hill, the author of many success books. A Time magazine poll of the most influential people recently found Filipino boxer Manny Pacquiao on top. If you know him from the boxing ring, his influence spread wider last year when he won a seat in his country’s Congress — and won it by a landslide.

Who would have thought that if we put on an international terror trial in Chicago with a cast of bad guys, including a self-confessed two-timing spy, secret documents, a shady Chicago businessman and testimony of alleged involvement by Pakistani ex-military officers in the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 170 people including six U.S. citizens, who would have figured that no one would show up for the trial?