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Five Ways to Fight ID Theft

What's more valuable than your own good name? ID theft is the fastest growing white-collar crime in the country. What's a CSO to do?

"It's just so much easier and cheaper than going around to people's mailboxes and stealing credit card applications," says Dave Jevans, chairman of a new industry association called the Anti-Phishing Working Group and a marketing senior vice president at Tumbleweed Communications. "And it can be done long distance."

Consumers can protect themselves by staying informed about the latest Internet scams, by removing their Social Security numbers from their wallets, by shredding sensitive trash and the like.

But there's only so much one person can do. In another case Otero worked on, criminals took out second mortgages on victims' homes to the tune of $8 million. All the victims had purchased cars from the same auto dealership in the previous year, leading police to believealthough they never proved itthat an employee of the car dealership was selling customers' personal information. The victims had done nothing more, it seemed, than apply for auto loans.

"Most of the time, it's beyond the consumer's control," says Mari Frank, an attorney who made a name for herself as a consumer rights advocate after having her identity stolen in 1996. Her imposter ordered her credit report online, then used her good credit to take out new credit. More than seven years later, there's still an edge to her voice when she speaks of the incident. "People want to put the blame on the bad guy, but the bad guy can only do what he can do when it's facilitated by others," she says. "The companies that have our personal and financial information are the ones who are in the position to prevent this."

More specifically, the CSO is in the position to prevent this. Here are five ways any CSO can make a difference.

1 Practice good data hygiene. Got employees? Then you have information that could be used for identity theft, and nothing will help as much as just being good at your job in the first place. We're talking data hygiene 101: firewalls, background checks and security policies. "The reason that a CSO should be concerned over identity theft is because it fits in with so many other elements of a good security program," says Richard Lefler, the former vice president of worldwide security for American Express.

For instance, he says, background checks might help keep criminals from infiltrating your human resources department, where they could access employee records. Shredding policies could keep Dumpster divers from getting their mitts on sensitive customer data. And audit trails would help you determine the source of a possible problem if law enforcement spotted a trend that traced back to your company.