Preventing Identity Theft in Your Business : How to Protect Your Business, Customers, and Employees [Hardcover]

Judith M. Collins (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 17, 2005

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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“plenty to spark introspection and debate” (Accounting Technician, 25^th September 2005)

From the Inside Flap

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.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 245 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (March 17, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 047169469X
• ISBN-13: 978-0471694694
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,517,616 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Neither Useful nor Interesting!, January 4, 2006

By 

Loyd E. Eskildson "Pragmatist" (Phoenix, AZ.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Preventing Identity Theft in Your Business : How to Protect Your Business, Customers, and Employees (Hardcover)

The main problem with this book is that the author has an 18-year background in industrial and organizational psychology - not particularly relevant to an issue that is primarily IT connected! Thus, her focus within the book includes a good deal of employee testing - for intelligence, interpersonal skills, etc., and then a very bland, unnecessarily broad, textbook approach to reducing exposure.

Collins claims that most identities are stolen from businesses by a few dishonest employees - not via "dumpster-divers" or online hackers. Perhaps. She also VERY BRIEFLY covers phishing (Internet and telephone), gobus payroll checks, and outsourcing payroll processing, as well as inherent difficulties in pursuing identify theft - involvement of numerous jurisdictions, shortages of investigative staff.

Topic is very important - however, it would be much better addressed through a reformed practitioner who has kept up to date.

4.0 out of 5 stars Keeping the customer and employees identity safe, May 13, 2009

By 

lean_bot (Orange County, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Preventing Identity Theft in Your Business : How to Protect Your Business, Customers, and Employees (Hardcover)

Notes taken while studying for CPE credits by fcpas.org

copyrighted 2005

p2 Eye opener several sections detailing facts on why identity theft may never be completely eradicated.

p50 The author offers a "Seal of Information Security" upon a business completion of the exercises included in Part II & Part III of the book.

Additionally, this book includes an email address and telephone number for the ID Theft Crime & Research Lab to assist with questions.

The book offers some recruitment techniques as far as employee selection which in most cases include assessments tests. There is an emphasis integrating employee feedback and reward systems.

Chp 19 includes a footprint on how to set up web site security assessments for customers and employees.

Chp 23 reveals the background for the HIPAA database and the types of information gathered and the "accessibility given to hundreds of organizations that also have access to the database."

Overall, this book is a 5 but I gave it a 4 since after stopping on Chapter 19 there are approx 135 hours of "building blocks" tasks that must be performed to maximize the benefits of protecting a customer from identity theft. This is not an obstacle but IMHO the expectations would be that the building blocks would have to be done on a continuous basis while performing the normal business tasks. I think this could be mitigated in a large organization but in a small one this could be a barrier.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Useful Guide on how to implement an identity-theft protection program, July 4, 2006

By 

Rolf Dobelli "getAbstract" (Switzerland) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Preventing Identity Theft in Your Business : How to Protect Your Business, Customers, and Employees (Hardcover)

Based on research conducted at Michigan State University, this step-by-step, practitioner's guide shows you how to implement an identity-theft protection program. Author Judith M. Collins includes useful background information about the types and frequency of identity thefts and identity crimes. She emphasizes the steps your company can take to prevent and remediate identity theft. She also provides a chapter on "best practices" for customers and advises companies to include these best practices in their marketing materials. If your company is serious about dealing with identity theft, we recommend this book as an extremely useful guide.