Identity Theft Prevention — News

Today's sessions through the eyes of IT Security journos Richard Chirgwin and Hamish Barwick at Auscert 2012.

Start-up Click Security launches today with a threat-detection product that analyzes and correlates intelligence gathered by sensors on network traffic and activity to provide real-time alerts or even automate defense response to network intrusions or other security threats.

Criminals in 2012 are increasingly targeting the accounts of business owners and executives as a way to facilitate financial fraud and CIOs can help protect their organizations against these attacks.

A former Internal Revenue Service employee this week got 105 months in prison for pleading guilty to theft of government property and aggravated identity theft in a case where the guy tried to get away with nearly $8 million in fraudulent tax returns.

The Australian Government's electronic answer to the nation's $1 billion identity theft problem -- the Document Verification Service (DVS) -- has processed 200,000 verifications, according to the Attorney General's Department (AGD).

Whether you celebrated National Identity Fraud Awareness Week (NIFAW) with a large identity cake or just shrieked 'Who Are You?' and other identity-inspired songs with friends over a beer or four, the campaign has run its course for another year -– and reminded those who were listening that we're still living in a world of trusting, naïve fools.

Destroying data to protect against fraud.

Prosecutors call it the biggest identity theft bust in US history. On Friday, 111 bank tellers, retail workers, waiters and alleged criminals were charged with running a credit-card-stealing organization that stole more than $US13 million in less than a year-and-a-half.

TAMPA --  Using a portable kit to be able to quickly analyze human DNA collected in the field for investigative and forensics purposes has been a long-time dream for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), law enforcement and the Department of Defense (DoD).

A 27 year-old bank cashier was fined £800 (A$1,226) yesterday for using her position at Barclays Bank to profile a customer who was the victim of a sex attack by the cashier’s husband.

When you leave your flat, do you leave the door wide open with your jewelry and valuables on the coffee table? When you visit a popular coffee shop, do you leave your iPad and smartphone on the table and go off shopping for an hour or two?

A former US Department of Health purchasing agent who claimed to be a victim of identity theft faces 10 years jail after pleading guilty to stealing $114,000 of government funds to purchase goods on Amazon.

Stories about lost wages aren't the only scary things being talked about in Sin City this week. The best security researchers and hackers from around the world have gathered in Las Vegas, and news about their work has been creeping out like a toxic flood.

Romanian law enforcement on Friday arrested more than 100 people alleged to be involved in a multi-million dollar US-Romanian fraud network.

If you use the Internet or own a credit card, the threat of having your identity stolen is omnipresent. Now, leading Internet service providers, financial institutions, and companies such as Sony are offering customers peace of mind with free identity theft protection. Other companies such as Debix are offering a free bare-bones version of ID theft protection to anyone online.

Democratic members of a Senate committee promised Wednesday to push hard for new online privacy protections and for legislation that would require companies to put security monitoring tools on their networks.

The user database of Groupon's Indian subsidiary, SoSasta, was published on the Internet and indexed by Google, according to an Australian security consultant.

The computer hacking group LulzSec said Saturday it had ended its campaign of cyberassaults on government and corporate websites and that it was time for it to "sail into the distance."

The quality of printing and design software available to the consumer is now so high that criminals are using the technology to start up their own document forging businesses, a parliamentary joint committee on Law Enforcement has heard.

Have we finally grown tired of Facebook? According to Inside Facebook, more than five per cent of U.S. users abandoned Facebook in May -- that's about six million people who have stopped "liking" the world's largest social network. Six million people jumping ship sounds like a lot, but when you consider that Facebook is on track to hit 700 million users any day now, it's not such a big deal.