Understanding & Preventing Corporate Identity Theft
Since the beginning of the Information Age, personal identity theft has flourished. Fraudulent transactions concerning big amounts of money are reported by thousands of people because unauthorized people have accessed accounts illegally.
This crime has now extended to corporate identity theft. Just as the name advocates, corporate identity theft is the misuse of a companys identity for personal use.
Corporate identity theft comes in several forms: using a business name on an online merchant account, finding sensitive information in trash bins, hacking into a corporation’s website to steal or corrupt date, or designing a website with a similar domain name to steal traffic that would have gone to the legitimate company.
Taking Preventive Measures
All of these forms of corporate identity theft are preventable through various measures.
Maintenance of the website is most critical; in the age of the Internet, most identity theft takes place online. Have IT staff monitor website access regularly, and include an email address on the home page for end users to report any uncommon occurrences. For example, there have been cases in which a company website was hacked and pornographic material distributed through it. Obviously this was a major embarrassment for the companys professional image. In order to prevent traffic stealing, a good practice would be to regularly check for similar domain names, or register commonly misspelled variations to prevent others from doing so.
Another cause of rising corporate identity theft is that of misplaced paper documents. Misplaced hard documents are another cause of rising corporate identity theft. Shred all paper documents to percent sensitive data from being stolen.
Finally, secure your personal networks by regularly updating virus protection software, strengthening firewalls, adware and spyware blockers and changing passwords periodically. Develop a policy about World wide web use and speak with your employees about it. By surfing the Internet during work hours, your employees might be putting the integrity of the company at risk by accessing sites with spyware or adware.
Following these guidelines will ensure the greatest chance possible of avoiding corporate identity theft. No matter how secure an organization may be, there’s always an ingenious criminal who can think of a way to infiltrate. Never take for allowed the infallibility of existing computer software or company policy. Always keep up-to-date with methods of protection, because potential identity thieves are certainly innovating constantly.
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