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While the majority of identity theft schemes prey upon individuals, small-businesses and organizations are increasingly becoming targets. Business identity theft is a serious threat, but it mostly flies under the radar simply because companies are embarrassed to discuss.
Although most companies are protected by copyright, patent and trademark laws, smaller companies lack the higher IT security measures that large companies have. According to recent studies by Javelin Strategy & Research this makes them 25% more likely to be victims of business identity theft over larger businesses. Not only do small businesses and business owners typically have larger lines of credit open than an individual, but they are unlikely to detect the fraud for six to eight months making them a prime target.
Posted in Fraud Detection & Prevention, Identity Theft Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: Business Identity Theft, BusinessWeek, identity theft expert, John Sileo, small business, Workplace ID Theft
CSIdentity SAFE
Great employees are hard to find, but without the right employee background screening process, deceitful candidates are even harder to spot. Hiring dishonest employees puts your sensitive and confidential business information at risk and could cost you millions if stolen or damaged.
According to The Ponemon Institute, an independent research foundation, the average cost of data breach to a victim corporation is $6.75 million. In 2008, the lowest reported cost of data breach was $613,000, while the highest was just under $32 million. Given that the average cost per stolen record is $202, one missing laptop with 2,500 customer or employee records on it would come with a data breach recovery bill for a half a million dollars. And that doesn’t factor in loss of stock value, brand damage or customer defection that results from having your breach in the news.
Posted in Product Reviews by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: background check, background checks, background screening, CSIdentity SAFE, Data Breach, employee background check, employee background checks, human resources, Identity Theft Speaker, identity theft training, SAFE
Laptop theft and mobile data theft (tape backups, iPhones, BlackBerries, USB drives) account for nearly half of the cases of serious corporate data breach and workplace identity theft. Your corporation’s data breach protection will be significantly improved by educating your staff on the following mobile data best practices:
Before you save sensitive data to any mobile device, it is your responsibility to:
- Determine if your organization allows you to remove the data in question from the office in the first place. Are you allowed to save that database, Excel file, Word document, customer list, employee record, intellectual capital, etc. on your laptop, thumb drive or other mobile device?
- Decide if it is absolutely necessary to remove it from the more highly-controlled and secure environment of the office. In many of the major cases of reported data breach, the data stored on the mobile device did not actually need to be there in the first place.
Posted in Identity Theft Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: Best Practices, Data Breach, Data Breach Protection, Identity Theft Prevention, Identity Theft Video, Laptop Protection, laptop theft, Workplace ID Theft
I had an amazing experience last week. I was lucky enough to share the stage with the very energetic Suze Orman (thus the self-promoting image to the left) at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. But Suze Orman wasn’t the amazing part, despite being a very dynamic woman. And I wasn’t the amazing part.
Our Warriors in Transition were the amazing part. They are in transition because they’ve sacrificed their limbs and eyesight and hearing and sanity and dignity defending our country in Afghanistan or Iraq. And it was the honor of a lifetime to meet some of them.
Posted in Business Life by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: John Sileo, Perspective, Suze Orman, Transition, Walter Reed, Warriors in Transition, Wounded Warrior, Wounded Warriors
“It lies at the core of a great deal of what we do protecting our financial security, our personal security, and our reputational security,” Chertoff said. “And what I’m referring to is how we manage and protect our personal identities because I’m going to submit to you that in the 21st Century, the most important asset that we have to protect as individuals and as part of our nation is the control of our identity, who we are, how we identify ourselves, whether other people are permitted to masquerade and pretend to be us, and thereby damage our livelihood, damage our assets, damage our reputation, damage our standing in our community.” — Michael Chertoff
Posted in Identity Theft Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: chertoff, Identity, National Security
We are obsessed with finding and leveraging our strengths, and it makes us boring.
For example, Marcus Buckingham, an intelligent, dynamic and well-spoken best selling author (with a lot of strengths), tells us to Go Put our Strengths to Work. One of his premises, as discussed in his article What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differntly, is Imbalance. In discussing why more women are less happy than ever, he says it’s because they are too focused on balance:
… when you are balanced, you are stationary, holding your breath, trying not to let any sudden twitch or jerk pull you too far one way of the other. You are at a standstill. Balance is the wrong life goal. Instead, do as these women [the self-proclaimed “happiest” ones in his survey) did, and strive for imbalance. Pinpoint the strong-moments in each aspect of your life and then gradually tilt your life toward them.
Posted in Business Life by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: Marcus Buckingham, Performance, Strengths
I promised a down-loadable file of identity theft prevention tips during an identity theft seminar I gave for Walter Reed Army Medical Center yesterday, sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense. But first, I wanted to thank everyone at WRAMC for hosting both me and Suze Orman. Thank you for the wonderful turnout (1500 of you!) and thoughtful questions. I was invited back to your installation by Colonel McHugh, so I look forward to seeing you again.
As promised, here is the condensed version of identity theft prevention tips that will help you immediately begin the process. I have also included a clickable version below.
Hooah!
John
Posted in Identity Theft Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: identity theft prevention tips, identity theft seminar, walter reed financial readiness
Identity Theft is a huge and growing problem. According to the recent 2009 Identity Theft Fraud report by Javelin Strategy & Research, victims increased 22% in 2008 to 9.9 million. When businesses are involved, the companies face billions of dollars in theft, millions of dollars in fines and, perhaps most important, the loss of customer trust.
The large impact that identity theft has on individuals lives and corporations’ bottom lines has made inexpensive biometrics look attractive for authenticating employees, customers, citizens, students and any other people we want to recognize. The most recent debate is on whether the pros outweigh the cons. (To see some of the materials that influenced this article, please visit George Tillmann’s excellent article in Computerworld).
Biometrics uses physical characteristics, such as fingerprints, DNA, or retinal patterns to positively verify individuals. These biological identifiers are electronically converted to a string of ones and zeros and stored on file in the authenticator database.
Posted in Fraud Detection & Prevention, Identity Theft Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: "Identity Theft, Authentication, Biometric, Biometric Identity Theft, Biometric Security Risks, Biometrics, Business Identity Theft, Finger Prints, John Sileo, Retinal Scan, Verification
We’ve gone soft; we fear honesty. I think we even fear being honest with people more than we fear people being honest with us. Honesty has become synonymous with ugly confrontation, rather than just being, well, honesty.
Yesterday, a good friend emailed me a two sentence note reminding me that I hadn’t done something that I’d promised I would do. What I had promised is immaterial to this post, but that I had promised to do it, and then failed, is very important. I gave my word to a good friend, and then ignored my promise. And he had the guts to remind me. In fact, he’s laughing at me right now that I even consider his reminder to be a big deal, because to him it would be phony not to remind me. That’s who he is. And he’s a better friend for it. And in no way could what he did be called confrontational. Direct, yes. Honest, yes.
Posted in Business Life by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: fear, Fraud, honesty
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