How you react to the crime if it happens in a business under your control could mean the difference between losing a lot of money, losing your business or jail time.

The FTC and other government agencies are enforcing the laws that are concerned with IDT. Identity Theft is so out of control that the government is placing the burden on business owners now to safeguard the Non-Public-Information (NPI) of customers and employees.

Non Public Information (NPI) lost under the wrong set of circumstances may result in: Fines up to $1,000,000 per occurrence, up to 10 years jail time for executives, and removal of management.

Why should small businesses and corporations, be concerned with FACTA, HIPAA, and GLB? Why does Identity Theft matter?

                                                     The Cost to Businesses

Employees can take up to 600 hours, mainly during business hours, to restore their identities.

According to CIO Magazine, The Coming Pandemic, Michael Freidenberg, May 15, 2006 ..."When it comes to cleaning up this mess, companies on average spend 1,600 work hours per incident at a cost of $40,000 to $92,000 per victim.

Businesses Are being held Liable, Civilly and Criminally

The Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA) applies to every business and/or individual who maintains, or otherwise possesses, consumer information for a business purpose.

               You, the employer, now have direct financial liability for identity theft under FACTA.

On June 1, 2005, a new provision of FACTA went into effect. This provision says that any employer (even if you only employ one person) whose action or inaction results in the loss of employee or customer information, can be fined by federal and state government, and sued in civil court.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) estimates that an identity is stolen every 3.2 seconds, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If you are a manager, an owner, or even the accountant, you should be very concerned.

Even if you did nothing wrong with respect to safeguarding the information, the FACTA Law allows you to be named as a defendant.

The Administrative Simplification provisions of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA, Title II) required the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to establish national standards for the security of electronic health care information.

This final rule specifies a series of administrative, technical, and physical security procedures for covered entities to use to assure the confidentiality of electronic protected health information.

The Financial Modernization Act of 1999, also known as the "Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act" or GLB Act, includes provisions to protect consumers’ personal financial information held by financial institutions. There are three principal parts to the privacy requirements: the Financial Privacy Rule, Safeguards Rule and pretexting provisions.

The GLB Act gives authority to eight federal agencies and the states to administer and enforce the Financial Privacy Rule and the Safeguards Rule.

These two regulations apply to "financial institutions," which include not only banks, securities firms, and insurance companies, but also companies providing many other types of financial products and services to consumers.

Among these services are lending, brokering or servicing any type of consumer loan, transferring or safeguarding money, preparing individual tax returns, providing financial advice or credit counseling, providing residential real estate settlement services, collecting consumer debts and an array of other activities.

Such non-traditional "financial institutions" are regulated by the FTC. Financial Instutions are not just 'banks' anymore.

The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) requires that commercial web sites obtain parental consent (under most circumstances) prior to the collection of any personally identifiable information from children whom they know to be under the age of 13.

• In addition, COPPA requires that web sites that collect personal information from children under the age of 13 provide parents with:
• notice regarding what information is collected, how the information will be used, and with whom the information may be shared.
• the ability to prevent further use of the information collected about the child and prevent any future collection of personal information from the child. the ability to access and review their child's personal information.

COPPA also limits the amount of personal information a web site can collect from a child. Web sites may not collect any more personal information than is necessary to participate in a given game or activity.

How much will it cost you to defend yourself, defending each employee, or client's case seperately?

Fines levied by the FTC and other government entities could potentially damage your reputation to the point of closure of your business.

Betsy Broder, assistant director of the FTC’s newly formed Division of Privacy and Identity Protection says she understands that most small businesses cannot be expected to hire a full-time privacy specialist, but she adds that all businesses must be able to show they have a security plan in place.

"We will act against businesses that fail to protect their data. We’re not looking for a perfect system … But we need to see that you’ve taken reasonable steps to protect your customers’ information."

• Ignore them?
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I’m Sure You Have a few questions such as;

How is this product going to help me protect and grow my business? I have not needed this product up until now, so why should I even consider it?

Let's look at just one aspect. See our website for in depth explanation of the plans.

Maybe you have a problem with debt collections. How many a month? Let’s say 10? How much would it cost you a month in 10 collection letters written by your attorney? $50.00? $150.00?

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