Companies and institutions conduct employment verification in order to meet their business needs and ensure all of the information applicants provide is accurate. Hiring companies, landlords and financial institutions require employment verification mainly to verify a financial position based on information such as applicants’ current job, salary amount, job title or work responsibilities.
With the employment verification process becoming more and more technology-based, landlords, lenders and prospective employers can verify salary and employment history in a matter of moments. However, to ensure secure employment verification, it is necessary to establish if the security protocol for verification of employment requests keeps pace with the advances in cloud technology and artificial intelligence.
Employers, landlords and lenders may miss loopholes within their organization, exposing themselves to costly errors. To prevent this, they need to focus on areas where there is room for improvement and common security issues. The importance of secure employment verification can never be overemphasized, especially as it evolves along with technology.
What Is a Salary Key?
A salary key is supposed to ensure an applicant’s sensitive personal information stays private, allowing only approved lenders or employers to view salary and employment info. The 1970 Fair Credit Reporting Act was introduced to limit who can access a consumer’s personal info, and for what purposes. Many industries embraced this legislation, leading to the creation of salary keys and similar functions.
This is typically a six-digit code that an applicant gives to government agencies, lenders, and employees to review their employment and income information. These entities may use the information to understand the creditworthiness of employees or customers. With salary key codes, applicants can exercise control over who can access their income amounts, tax returns, and other financial information. They also allow businesses to ensure a certain level of protection. The process for getting a salary key varies depending on its purpose and the company providing the key.
There was a time when verification processes relied heavily on salary keys or their equivalents, but this comes with several risks and additional burdens for applicants. For example, they may end up getting a previously generated code and while information like a Social Security number can provide an extra layer of protection, the risks may persist. Also, the process of applying for the salary key code is often lengthy and complicated. Applicants need to create an account, generate the key, and send this and other information to the party requesting the key. If the process fails or the receiving party faces challenges with the information, they have to start all over again, resulting in home closing delays or other issues. Finally, salary keys have become less reliable over time, and now more secure authentication processes are taking place.
Avoiding Common Flaws to Ensure Secure Employment Verification
Employment verification is the cornerstone of strong and trustworthy relationships between companies and other institutions and applicants, but to prevent the risk of fraud charges, it is critical to maintain high-level security protocols. When it comes to establishing secure employment verification requests, two main vulnerabilities refer to failing to vet parties requesting information and insufficient security for the employment verification process.
When utilizing an in-house method, companies must consider several vital risks, including human error and fraud. Overwhelmed HR employees might overlook checking the credentials of the requestor and create an opportunity for unauthorized requesters to phish for sensitive data in order to commit fraud or sell private data on the dark web. As a result, companies can be open to litigation.
Furthermore, companies put less emphasis on employee data and prioritize customer, vendor and product information, thus leaving their organization vulnerable to hackers who specialize in obtaining employee information to commit fraud. Once they face the consequences of failing to establish secure employment verification, they learn the hard way how important it is to have appropriate security protocols in place.
Secure Employment Verification with Reliable Third-Party Vendor
Employment verification is crucial in the process of protecting companies and other institutions from fraud and excess risk. Outsourcing employment verification requests to a reliable third-party vendor ensures having a robust compliance framework in place, thus preventing data breaches that lead to serious consequences, such as recovery costs, notification costs, loss of goodwill and potential litigation.
Compared to manual employment verification which may involve a higher risk of error and fraud, possible delays and inaccuracy of data, automated verification is timely and streamlined, reduces the risk of error, ensures reliable data and meets compliance requirements. However, to maintain a secure employment verification, a third-party verification system should provide custom reports, employee protection, verification letters that resemble the company letterhead, a multifactor authentication, a thorough credentialing process for verifiers, and reduced risk of litigation, lost data and loss of reputation.
Making the employment verification process seamless and cost-effective, and shifting the role from a company personnel to an industry expert is reason enough to consider outsourcing as the best fit. Ensuring secure employment verification and following proper protocols help prevent data breaches and reduce liability, freeing companies and other institutions from the time, effort and risk of doing it in-house.