If Copiers Can Now Cause Identity Theft, What's a Risk Manager To Do?

By: Peter Marshall
Submitted: 2007-04-17 11:16:26
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What’s a risk manager to do these days? There’s a bogeyman hiding under every rock, and new rocks sprouting like weeds.I’ve previously written about the growing volume of data breaches (after the TJ Maxx disaster, no one needs any more primers), the mandatory corporate self-indictment now required by breach notification laws, the legal responsibilities and liability of corporate records-holders, and the resulting gigantic sink-hole of breach recovery costs.

The evolving problem that has to be keeping worried planners up all night, and tearing out their hair in the morning, is that ordinary, everyday developments in the products and services that are available to everyone in America create major threats of corporate data loss, and all of its attendant liability and costs.Here are just a few recent examples:

USB flash drives.This is to some extent old news, but definitely not a threat that has gone away.In all kinds of innocuous keychain shapes and sizes, holding up to several GB of data, they are a James Bond device if ever there was one.Slip one into a USB port, a few keystrokes, slip back into the pocket, on about your day… Magic – the data’s mine now, guvnor.

iPods.Really just little hard drives with a USB connector – and just as hard to try to keep out as flash drives, and often with far more capacity – 40 GB, 60 GB, etc.Whole databases can be copied and carted off forever by that innocuous temporary worker who was just brought in to help handle some extra data entry for a day, not to mention the impossible-to-trace or prosecute outsourced IT or HR worker in India or Bulgaria.Go ahead – let your daughter wear them to the dinner table if you must – but they’re a 100% no-no at the office, unless their wearer has signed agreements granting to the company the life and limbs of their firstborn if they do anything bad with data (a good idea to get those signatures in any case, iPod or not).

Carbonite – web back up service.Heard the ads for this service yet? – on some of the major national radio shows?Just set it and forget it – automatically backup up everything on your laptop, right to a secure web location.Yes – and what happens to that backed-up data, which included a lot of corporate work files, brought home for just one day, and oops!, automagically backed up – after the employee leaves your company? That’s right – it’s awfully hard to repossess THAT data, isn’t it?

Keyloggers.Another “oldie”, but in recent incarnations, used with vastly greater impact to steal corporate userids and passwords that provide access to corporate networks and databases, rather than just going after one ID at a time.For those who don’t know, keyloggers are tiny little programs, that can be copied onto your computer manually (perhaps from a USB flash drive, right?) or more usually, distributed like viruses, hidden in other files.They LOG your KEYSTROKES, letter by letter, and magically send the info off to waiting bad guys, who love to find hugely valuable login information hidden like gems amidst the chaff.And of course, all those highly secure, impossible to guess passwords show up right there in plain text.

Copy machines.You heard me – modern digital copy machines store the images of documents they copy long afterwards, so they are a fertile source for ID thieves.Old corporate machines are a treasure trove, as are those in law offices, accounting firms, and even public copy centers, often used to copy highly sensitive documents with no awareness of risk whatsoever.Ignorance of the law is no defense, and neither is ignorance of unsuspected threats.In this digitized world, beware!

Goodness!Now we have to look out for copy machines!Next they’ll tell us that eating peanut butter leads to identity theft…I suppose that can mean more business for the Defense Center, but candidly, we do not believe in raising hype, but in presenting a fair and accurate view, and applying our expertise to create innovative, effective solutions.Some days, it just seems like the hype has to work pretty hard to keep up with the facts.

Peter Marshall is the founder and CEO of The Identity Theft Defense Center (www.idtheftdefensecenter.com), one of the leading identity theft protection firms in the United States. Peter has a distinguished background as an executive and thought leader in HR, IT, and enterprise strategy. He was previously Director, Global Services at Siebel Systems, and CTO of Cipient Networks, where he was the inventor of advanced homeland security technology. He was Director of KPMG Consulting's eWorkforce practice, and a strategic consultant to Cisco Systems. Peter is a well-known author and speaker on topics related to HR, outsourcing, and leading-edge technology.

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