These days, the fraud economy has matured to a point where it is run like a global marketplace, with specialists for every aspect of fraud – from identity thieves to the consumers of stolen identities.
All data breaches have two things in common: the need for prompt resolution and the need for a robust preparedness plan.
In a recent report, Ernst and Young noted that stronger breach notification requirements are among the top privacy trends for 2011. Governments around the world are enacting or tightening regulations around breach notification, and within the U.S., individual state laws around data breach notification have had a tremendous impact on data security.
With numerous different breaches affecting so many people as of late, millions of consumers are receiving emails from trusted brands noting that customer emails (and perhaps other information) have been compromised, so consumers should be wary of future emails that may appear to be sent from them.
According to the Identity Theft Resource Center, there were 54 banking-related data breaches in 2010, down from the 62 breaches reported in 2009 but nevertheless accounting for 4,853,708 exposed records. Most breaches were related to insider theft, cyberattacks, and card skimming stacks; other top breaches related to missing paper documents, stolen or missing hardware and accidental breaches.
According to Ponemon Institute’s Second Annual Survey on Medical Identity Theft, we estimate that more than 1.49 million Americans have been targeted by this crime. With an average cost per victim of $20,663 the total national economic impact of medical identity theft crimes is more than $30 billion.
More than 1500 tax scams reportedly target consumers and businesses through hundreds of thousands of scam emails; many use phishing to fool anxious taxpayers into visiting a scam website or providing personal and financial data in order to comply with tax filings. Protecting yourself starts by getting smart about common scams.
Today's headlines trumpet yet another high-profile medical data breach, this time through Health Net. This corporate catastrophe reminds us of the increasing hazard of medical fraud, which is the most expensive and time consuming to resolve of all types of identity theft . The second annual National Study on Medical Identity Theft, fielded by the Ponemon Institute provides further insight into this pervasive problem and how it affects consumers.
Gift cards are a growing market for businesses and should be treated as valuable sales currency, with the same risks of consumer fraud and internal misconduct that are posed by credit cards. Developing robust safeguards , proper auditing and early detection and reporting of abuse are critical to protecting a program that is popular with customers and profitable to retailers.
