Identity Theft America: The Public May Never Know It Was Part Of A Data Breach

June 27, 2007 - PRLog -- There have been 145 data breaches so far in 2007 from financial institutions, universities, retailers and governmental agencies producing over 58,000,000 at-risk records for potential identity theft. The most significant factor in determining whether those at-risk receive notification is financial - according to the Ponemon Institute study published in November, 2006, the average cost of dealing with a data breach rose to $182 per person. Lower the cost per record of a data breach and notification, and this factor becomes workable, so that these millions of people receive appropriate notice.

IDSafeBIZ from Identity Theft America has attacked this financial consideration head-on, by allowing businesses to participate in a membership program that pre-plans for an actual data breach event. The program provides a complete written response plan if the member company experiences a data breach and locks in the cost to respond at $2.00 per person, which includes mail notification, call center, fraud alerts, services for those affected and more.

"IDSafeBIZ is a complete solution which protects consumers at an affordable price and protects the integrity of the business," says Sally King, president of IDT Alliance, Inc., a nationally recognized marketing and consulting organization working with many of the nation's leading financial institutions.

Bills to create a unified breach notification law for all 50 states have been introduced but not passed at the Federal level. Without a federal mandate, few states have adopted laws that require consumer breach notification, with some only requiring firms to notify consumers if there is a "reasonable likelihood of harm" to the individual, with the term "reasonable likelihood of harm" open to subjective interpretation by the breached firm. While the breached organization pays the response cost of the breach, the fee is likely passed on to the consumer in the form of increased cost, taxes or tuition. A federal data breach notification law could be a double-edged sword.

Sometimes an indirect issue opens the public to risk - for example, a firm shipping an insured, encrypted disk containing 200,000 personal records with a well-known overnight delivery service may unexpectedly discover the delivery service has mislaid the disk. A federal law requiring breach notification might cost a company millions of dollars and put the firm out of business; it is also possible lack of a federal requirement of breach notification might result in a poor reaction to the data breach by the company, which impacts the company in a myriad of other ways: loss of customers, slowing the firm's growth, loss of vendors and contracts, to resulting in a business closing.

"At minimum, companies should evaluate all available options," adds King. "With a cost-effective solution such as IDSafeBIZ within reach, it makes smart business sense to implement a solution before a crisis happens."

Learn about IDSafeBIZ at http://www.IdentityTheftAmerica.com

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Identity Theft america is a national Identity Theft Recovery Service and a Turn-Key Data Breach Idcident Response Program.

Website: www.identitytheftamerica.com