ID Analytics Introduces Data Breach Analysis Services
ID Analytics has introduced Breach Analysis Services for enterprises - "the only solution on the market that can determine with a high degree of accuracy whether a data breach is truly a source of identity theft or related harm" according to the company.
As a result, more and more organizations include ID Analytics Breach Analysis Services in their breach response plan. In addition, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) recommends breach analysis as a preferred solution for federal agencies after large data breaches. Congress also recently passed legislation authorizing data breach analysis as part of a standard suite of responses the Department of Veterans Affairs should deploy following a data breach."If your organization stores any sensitive personal information on consumers, preparing for a breach is essential," said Mike Cook, ID Analytics' chief operating officer and co-founder. "The affordability of our Breach Analysis Services combined with the ability to determine whether a data breach is truly a source of identity theft, make it an ideal solution for organizations that experience a breach and have to map out next steps in a timely and effective manner."
ID Analytics Breach Analysis Services analyze compromised identities within ID Analytics ID Network™, a continually updated cross-industry identity fraud prevention system of three billion identity elements. If misuse of identity information indicative of identity fraud is detected within the ID Network, ID Analytics provides a list of affected individuals to the organization so that it can deliver victim assistance directly to those who need it. Unlike other solutions on the market, Breach Analysis Services covers the entire affected population and no consumer action is required to be protected.
Sophisticated analytics working within the ID Network enable ID Analytics to examine how identities behave across organizations, pinpointing suspicious behavior. By observing connections across identity-related events— for example, the opening of new accounts or credit cards after the date of the data breach —ID Analytics is able to quickly identify the source and the location of criminal misuse. For example, if two previously unrelated individuals affected by the same breach appear to suddenly live at the same address or share the same phone number, it would be uncovered in the analysis. ID Analytics is the only company able to distinguish between identity theft linked to a breach and identity theft resulting from some other cause.
"The President's Task Force on Identity Theft has noted that every year about 3.6 percent of the adult population reports being a victim of some form of identity theft," said Cook. "That means 3.6 percent of data breach victims will suffer identity theft unrelated to the data breach. Without Breach Analysis Services from ID Analytics, organizations will end up paying identity theft remediation costs where they actually bear no responsibility. By using our Breach Analysis Services, these same organizations can determine which of their constituents were victimized by identity theft directly related to the breached information, allowing them to provide the needed assistance and protection."
Once ID Analytics receives a file of the breached data from an organization, it compares the data in the file against the ID Network, consequently issuing either certification that no misuse has been found, or, issuing a harm report with details on the affected individuals. As part of its Breach Analysis Services, ID Analytics is also able to assist with prompt notification to data breach victims and can offer victim assistance to any individuals suffering from identity theft as a result of the breach. ID Analytics also actively monitors the compromised personal information for misuse for a period of one or two years as determined by the organization.





While promising, there are several issues for potential enterprise customers of this or similar services to consider carefully:
1) Does the company REALLY want to restrict it's support to individuals that it put in danger, to just those records captured by ID Analytics's scanning service?
The basic response and guidance to exposed people is fairly costly AS A BASELINE... It is quite cheap, relatively, to provide recovery assistance to those individuals in the exposed group who experience an ID theft in the next year. So even if ID Analytics's service was 100% accurate, it might be much wiser to provide help to anyone in the exposed group.
2) More important, it is IMPOSSIBLE for any such service to be 100% accurate. There are trillions of records where information may be manipulated for ID fraud, and no such scanning service can reflect changes in all of them. Delays are also a major problem, as is simple inaccuracy.. Experts say that almost 80% of credit reports have some error, and about 25% have serious errors.
So an enterprise could make a serious mistake by denying assistance to individuals unless their ID theft was detected by such a service -- and might well be liable for civil and criminal action, if they are wrong, and the ID theft was indeed due to their exposure.
Peter Marshall
CEO, Identity Theft Defense Center
https://www.idtheftdefensecenter.com
Posted by: Peter Marshall | March 18, 2007 at 07:11 PM