Identity Theft Expert Speaker John Sileo » CSIdentity SAFE

Identity Theives Don’t Take A Holiday

Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 16:15:44 +0000

The month between Thanksgiving and Christmas is the biggest shopping time of the year. As we enter the season of giving there is one thing we should be stingy with – protecting our Identities!

Holiday madness, crazed shoppers and packed malls. While we are bustling from store to store and internet site to internet site trying to complete everyone’s holiday list, thieves and scammers are taking our distraction as a signal to strike. According to the author of Privacy Means Profit and identity theft expert John Sileo, “This is the easiest time of year for thieves to steal wallets, break into houses and profit financially from the season of giving without victims detecting it for a long time.”

With just three weeks until Christmas, now is the time to protect yourself and make sure that your Identity is safe from potential thieves. Just last month, Sileo was hired to speak to the Department of Defense and included some of the most important Holiday Safety Prevention Tips:

* Don’t trust your email. There are so many holiday scams by email that you should read everything with an enormous grain of salt. If someone is promising you something for nothing (free gift, free money, etc.), don’t buy it.
* Protect your home. Your greatest risk during the busyness is all of the extra people that come into your home. It makes it very easy to pocket a check book that’s on your desk or a brokerage statement in your filing cabinet. Especially during the holidays, lock it up!
* Use your credit card. Don’t use checks and don’t use a debit card, as they don’t give you nearly as much protection.
* Carry less in your wallet. It is too easy to steal a purse that is sitting at your feet as you pay or have lunch. The very best advice is to take your drivers license and one or two credit cards with you shopping.
* Watch your statements. Most forms of holiday identity theft can be caught simply by monitoring your checking, debit and credit card accounts frequently. Even better, sign up for automatic account alerts when any transaction occurs on your account.
* Give yourself the gift of Identity Monitoring, like CSIdentity.com.
* Shop on secure websites. Make sure that both the https:// and lock symbols appear in your browser.
* Be cautious in public. Don’t give your credit card number (or Social Security Number) over the phone if someone is within earshot. Shield your PIN number when entering it at an ATM or card swipe.
* Donate to known charities and only when you have initiated the gift. Don’t respond to phone calls for charity.
* Rotate your credit cards. After the busy holiday shopping season is over, call your credit card company and ask them to issue you a new card (you can tell them that you are concerned that your credit card number was stolen).
* Don’t advertise travel plans to burglars on Social Networking sites.

Distraction is the worst enemy when it comes to crime and the holidays. In addition to spending more money, we tend to be busier, more stressed-out and less careful than other times of the year. Identity thieves take advantage of this distraction to perform information extraction.

Identity theft expert John Sileo speaks around the world on identity theft, privacy, social networking exposure, cyber crime, social engineering and other forms of information theft. His clients include the Department of Defense, Blue Cross, FDIC, Pfizer and hundreds of organizations of all sizes. Contact him directly on 800.258.8076 or at www.ThinkLikeASpy.com.

Employee Background Checks

Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 17:45:12 +0000

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.

Insider theft, where one of your employees facilitates the breach, is a common source of this crime. And your risk doesn’t go away when your employees do. Over 60% of employees keep sensitive data after they have been terminated and nearly 80% of them stated that they knew it was against company policy. This includes everything from email lists and customer information to financial business information.

The incidents of insider theft can be easily reduced by applying proper employee background check techniques. My business is a great example of how effective background checks can be. I hired a business partner without performing even the simplest of verifications. That partner proceeded to use my identity to steal $300,000 from our customers. I would have seen his criminal tendencies had I just invested a few dollars in screening him properly.

Each year nearly 2 million applicants use false or stolen credentials and get hired. The Background Screening tool that I use to screen employees for my business is CSIdentity SAFE . Here’s what it does:

It validates the applicant’s true identity so that you know the background check record belongs to the person sitting in front of you.
It detects if the name or other personal data has been falsified
It determines whether the applicant has a criminal history under any assumed names or aliases
It conducts in-depth screening searches including criminal, driving, employment, licensing and education verification & more
It allows you to order, track and receive drug screening results online in 15 minutes
It lowers your data liability by making background checks available only to certain employees
It provides continuous monitoring of your employees record in case they commit a crime while on staff

In other words, SAFE gives you the tools to re-take control of the screening process so that you are notified of negative employee data even if they choose to hide it from you. Even after the employee has been hired CSIdentity SAFE continues to monitor their criminal record and will send you updates of any changes.

An employee background check is a step that most employers skip, but if done right it could save your company millions on potential data breach. Looking back on my personal situation, it was an expensive and painful mistake that could have been quickly and easily prevented.

John Sileo provides identity theft training to human resource departments and organizations around the country. His clients include the Department of Defense, Pfizer and the FDIC. To learn more about having him speak at your next meeting or conference, contact him by email or on 800.258.8076.