IDENTITY THEFT
LOSS PREVENTION
What do businesses have that identity thieves want to steal?
The answer is simple . . . information assets.
The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse has documented that over 165,000,000 records have been compromised from government agencies, businesses, schools, and other organizations since January 2005! According to a Javelin Strategy & Research Survey in February of 2007, the total one year amount of identity fraud in 2006 was $55.7 billion.
What is confidential and sensitive information? A simple explanation of Confidential and Sensitive Information may be any one piece of information with a person's or company's name beyond the information that you would find in a phone directory or on a business card.
How do identity thieves use this stolen information? There are six common forms of identity theft. They are:
Financial
Driver's License
Medical
Criminal
Social Security
Terrorist
In the event of a security incident, most businesses experience bad publicity, loss of employee and customer trust, loss of market share, loss of competitive edge, possible class action lawsuits, potential fines, penalties, and in some cases imprisonment.
Nearly 85% of all victims find out about their identity theft case in a negative manner. Only 15% of victims find out due to a proactive action taken by a business.
Most thieves still obtain information through traditional rather than electronic channels. In the cases where the method is known, 68.2% of information was obtained off-line versus only 11.6% obtained online.
The total one-year fraud amount in the United States was $56.6 billion in 2006.
The average time spent by victims to restore their identity is about 600 hours and over $92,000.
For More Identity Theft Info Visit:
Privacy Rights Clearinghouse
A nonprofit consumer organization with a two-part mission — consumer information and consumer advocacy — in regards to technology affects personal privacy
A Chronology of Data Breaches
A look at every major (and many minor) breach of data security resulting in direct compromise of personal information.
"While most media reports of identity theft stress the consumer angle, by most accounts 50 to 70 percent of ID theft occurs in workplaces and that figure may grow as the nature of ID theft shifts from simple rip-offs to complex efforts to defraud." —Peter Krass, CFO IT, March 15, 2005
