Is your business safe from identity theft? The estimated cost of identity theft to consumers, banks, credit card firms, stores and other businesses is to 3 billion dollars. As businesses, they can no longer be without good business practices and strong safeguards with your customers' personal information and your own information as well.
What can businesses do to prevent identity theft?
It's important for all business to protect the personal information of their customers, business data and secure networks to avoid being a target.
Having an alarm system will give you the ability to deter criminals of breaking into your business, keeping your data safe from theft.
Have a reliable alarm monitoring company who will assist you in your protection of your premises and assets.
Have good locks installed secured windows and shattered proof glass.
Store your paper documentation such as business records including customer data and financial data in locked filing systems at all times.
Store computerized back up data of all business information in a fire proof safe. Store a duplicate copy of back ups at a bank or contract with a business who specializes in protecting data storage.
Business records of any kind should never be thrown in to the trash or recycling bin where they can become available to criminals by simply dumpster diving. It only takes a criminal little information to commit identity theft.
Businesses that operate a home based business or small office can purchase an inexpensive shredder at any office supply store. Business with massive amount of paper can contract with a shredding service that will come directly to offices and shred the documentation at your location.
Be very cautious with the mail, this is a common source for criminals who have identity theft as crime of choice. Anything that has your name, address on it should be shredded, especially invoices and bills.
Solicitation phone calls can be a tremendous opportunity for identity theft. It can easy for someone to pretend to be a customer or vendor over the phone. Whether it's someone who wants personal information on a particular customer, vendor or employee, do not give any information over the phone without knowing for certain the caller.
In recent documentation provided by the Better Business Bureau, criminals have told police and FBI agencies how easy it is for them to get information from small businesses and personnel departments of large corporations by pretending to be someone they are not like a government agency, credit grantors or some other types of vendors. Criminals who are out to steal identities have come up with very professional and believable stories to get the information companies try to secure. So be very careful who you give information too.
With the amount of data that is share on a network inside a business it would be easy for someone to commit identity theft. Creating password protection policies and evaluating who should have access to sensitive data will be vital to a successful and information safe environment.
Remember to only share information to the appropriate people. Be cautious and help stop identity theft.
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