Employees are at the risk of losing both their personal data as well as that of the organizations’ and can be subjected to damages on both fronts. Businesses today are waking up to the call of cyber safety and are orienting their employees to detect and report identity theft, at the right moment. Irrespective of the nature of business, size of organization and geography of operations, the organizations must prepare their employees towards upkeep of cyber hygiene, at work.
Internet scam prevention training to report identity theft
In order to report identity theft, employees must be aware of the circumstances when they must act on vigil. A basic internet scam prevention workshop must cover:
- Email protection and safety, protection of passwords and other confidential information
- Familiarization of whaling frauds and CEO scams, where a simple identity theft of the name and email id of the employee can help scammers misrepresent their senior officials
- Coordination with the IT infrastructure and technology department for data encryption, malware detection and back-up of confidential data
- Developing alertness against phishing mails that can lead to identity theft and financial fraud. Employees must double check mails from the IRS, banks and other authorities before responding.
Various ways to report identity theft
In the corporate scenario, bureaucracy may delay the attempt to report identity theft, which will work very well for scammers. Many organizations have embedded objective tools to report identity theft without any delay:
- A whistle blower forum that protects the identity of the complainant will help employees to report suspicious activity of their peers, superiors without apprehension
- Employees can report identity theft directly to banks and financial institutions in case of data hijacking of sensitive data, in order to effect an immediate freeze on financial accounts
- The business must either outsource or build a contingency team for malware detection and incident response to hacking attempts for identity theft
- Top executives in charge of financial accounts must get their computers and mobile devices regularly checked for malware
Taxation time proactiveness for employees
The notorious W2 scams and online taxation frauds are offshoots of identity fraud. Employees must proceed to report identity theft when the following events occur during taxation time:
- There are phishing mails attempting to get hold of W2, which contains valuable personal identity information, including social security number, salaries and tax amounts withheld.
- In case of HR executives, taxation time is time for vigil and alertness, since the taxation records of employees must be protected from identity theft
- Employees must be trained to ascertain the authenticity of software used for self e-filing of tax returns
- Any query from IRS, regarding suspicious tax return filed, must ring warning bells to report identity theft
- In addition to employees, the business itself is under phishing attacks during taxation time. Scammers may mislead the finance executives by email spoofing of IRS, citing query, refund procedure etc. and may try to elicit confidential details.
