Preventing Identity Theft in Your Business is a reliable guide to help protect companies, their customers, and their employees from the growing problem of identity theft. Real-life examples show managers and executives how to identify business, customer, and employee identity theft, how these crimes are committed, how best to prevent them, and overall, develop an honest company culture. It also covers how to manage this threat in business reorganizations such as mergers, acquisitions, globalization, and outsourcing.

Judith M. Collins (East Lansing, MI) is Associate Professor of Industrial and Organizational Psychology at the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University. She is also the Director of the Michigan State University Identity Theft Partnership in Prevention.

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PREVENTING IDENTITY THEFT IN YOUR BUSINESS

How to Protect Your Business, Customers, and Employees

Companies that engage in financial transactions are bound by law to establish and enforce information security programs to prevent identity theft. The shortcoming of current laws is that they specifically address information technology (IT) security-the security of computers and networks. But computers do not steal identities. People do. Recent studies indicate that at least fifty percent or more of identity thefts are committed inside the workplace by a few dishonest employees who steal the social security number, credit card numbers, banking information, or other numbers from their coworkers and customers.

Preventing Identity Theft in Your Business is the first book to address identity fraud from the business perspective. It helps employee-manager teams develop a set of security standards using step-by-step instructions written in plain, easy-to-understand language. Identity theft expert Judith Collins offers practical guidance on how to spot identity theft, as well as how to prevent it from ever occurring. Using techniques culled from industrial and organizational psychology, the management sciences, and the field of criminal justice, the methods covered here are inexpensive, comprehensive, and universally applicable to all businesses, regardless of size, type, or geographic location.

Written to help companies build effective corporate policies that protect the identities of their employees and customers without impacting budgets and business operations, Preventing Identity Theft in Your Business explores:

* What is an "identity"?

* The legal requirements for business

* How to tighten your business borders

* How to recruit your employees for security

* Socializing newcomers to the honest company culture

* The e-business Web site

* E-commerce best practices for customers

* HIPAA: Security for healthcare companies

* The security standard checklist

* The checklist of team prerequisites

* The security focus-group interview

* One company's short- and long-term strategic plan



Any company can become compliant with all current and upcoming laws in six months or less with Preventing Identity Theft in Your Business.



About the Author

JUDITH M. COLLINS, PHD, is Associate Professor of Industrial and Organizational Psychology in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University (MSU), where she teaches information security management. She is also Director of MSU-Business Identity Theft Partnerships in Prevention and the MSU Identity Theft Crime and Research Lab, established in 1999 to work with businesses, law enforcement, and victims of identity theft. She publishes in academic journals, has been a guest on national and local television and radio shows, and is the subject of more than 100 newspaper articles. She is a frequent speaker and conducts law enforcement training throughout the United States.