Showing posts with label protection. Show all posts
Showing posts with label protection. Show all posts

Monday, August 9, 2010

Strategy is as Strategy Does Which Do you Do?

Due to the nature of what I do in identity theft, a colleague convinced me, after 20+ years of others trying, to get my insurance license. “What did I say to convince you” she asked. "Good timing" was my answer. It involved making sure that having an insurance license made sense in furthering the strategies and goals of the company’s business model. Not simply for the sake of earning additional income. The knowledge acquired along the way helped me to better understand risk in a way I couldn’t before.

As a company that is built on growing other organizations, I state that you cannot grow what you don’t protect routinely. In today’s environment that has never been truer. There is a difference between strategizing your business model and strategizing your activities in the business. Which are you doing? Which one should you focus upon? Taking it one step further, are you sharing it with your employees?

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Our Nation Is Unprepared According to CSIS Study

Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) recently issued a study called “A Human Capital Crisis in Cybersecurity,” that highlights how the United States is facing a chronic shortage in cybersecurity experts. According to the study our nation is in a very weak position when it comes to cyber security and our nation is unprepared to defend itself against increasingly sophisticated online attacks.

And you wonder why identity theft is rising. Forty percent of privacy breaches are cyber related. It is not that your IT support is not good at what they do. It is because there is no fail safe method.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

ID Theft, Fraud, and Real Estate Transactions: Save a World of Hurt

The real estate process generally includes a buyer (or renter), seller (or landlord), financial officer, lawyer, and agent to execute the sale successfully. Within that process many more people become involved. Depending upon the deal, it includes a prequalified mortgage, credit check, offer to purchase (or rent), contract (or lease), mortgage application ($$$ paid in advance), title insurance, exterminator, homeowner’s insurance, closing, and recording the sale among it. The amount of people and sets of eyes that look at every detail of the transaction becomes an easy target for identity theft. [I have not even touched what happens after the transaction is completed … a conversation for another day.]

When you consider that eighty percent of identity theft occurs from negligence due to lack of knowledge or lack of care, and the fact that the sale is recorded for public scrutiny, it leaves every new homeowner and every old homeowner at much higher risk. Never mind the number of people that view the property in the process which may have access to enough information within view. (No one thinks of these things do they?)

This week alone, an IT guy employed by a major bank was arrested for bilking millions from both employees and unsuspecting consumers. What makes you think that identity theft doesn’t happen in real estate transactions?

Despite new laws governing how everyone in the chain of events must act with respect to the real estate transaction, there is no law that says you can’t recommend identity theft protection as a standard policy. What the feds want is transparency and clean lines of relationships.

Add a standard recommendation to every home buyer (renter) and seller (landlord) that they should consider identity theft protection. It will save a world of hurt later. Identity theft is a repeatable crime.

It will also demonstrate that the organization goes one-step beyond the FTC and State identity theft law to make consumers and landowners aware they are vulnerable and empower them with what they can do about it.

There is no statute of limitation for identity theft. If the buyer/seller decline to obtain services, then you have it as a matter of record. They can’t turn around and tell you that you didn’t advise them, making you criminally or civilly liable later. Think about it and then email me at services@m2powerinc.com to learn how to develop an identity theft and fraud program in your organization.