EXPERTS SAY THE NEED FOR FRAUD-PREVENTION VIGILANCE IS GROWING: According to a recent Bureau of Justice Statistics re- port, almost 12 million people, representing 5 percent of people age 16 or older in the U.S., experienced at least one attempted or successful incident of identity theft during a recent two-year period. • MOAA freelance writer Latayne C. Scott interviewed Frank Abagnale about six key dangers and what you can do to stay protected. • The interview has been edited for length and, in some cases, clarity.
PERSONAL VULNERABILITIES
I think the biggest change [in the past 10 years] has been the pervasiveness of the Internet and how it has changed the ways that we interact within society. As more and more people have turned to the Internet as a primary means of gathering, sending, and analyzing data — especially data that can easily be mis- used like personal and financial information and other types of confidential documents — there is an ever- growing abundance of data that is being sent into the ether, of which we have little to no control as to where it ends up. This opens the door to the thousands of criminals, hackers, and other mali- cious entities that are developing new ways to capture this informa- tion and monetize it. Plus, since the transfer of data now takes place nearly instantaneously, the speed [with] which data can be disseminat- ed and dispersed makes organized containment all the more difficult. The days when hackers were
merely interested in obtaining your bank and credit card accounts are long gone. Given the amount of data that is now available online and the relative ease [with which] a skilled person can obtain it, thieves can now take over virtually every aspect of your life without you ever knowing.
58 MILITARY OFFICER DECEMBER 2011
I’m not sure you can really profile an identity theft victim. I see a greater occurrence of identity theft with the young, often college-age [people], because they usually have good credit and they usually aren’t trying to obtain loans, credit cards, etcetera, while they are in school. For the iden- tity thief, this means [the victim is] not checking [his or her] credit on a regular basis. Many times the wealthy find themselves to be victims. Ironi- cally, often the wealthy don’t pay a great deal of attention to [their] credit card statements, credit reports, bank statements, etcetera. They may only be interested in the bottom line but not notice the details of transactions, etcetera. Finally, the elder- ly are always a group victimized by identity theft.
DOCUMENT SECURITY
Among the biggest threats to document security is the multifunction peripheral [MFP], more commonly referred
to as your “all-in-one” printer. These handy devices are staples in nearly every office environment. Unfortunately, and as a rule of thumb, the more advanced the MFP, the greater the threat to document security. That’s because these devices typically store the documents you are print-
ing, scanning, or faxing. This makes the printing/faxing process much faster and enables popular documents to be easily recalled. However, the fact that your documents are being saved by the MFP can also open the doors to criti- cal — and even classified — information becoming compromised. Just think of all the information printed and processed by these ma- chines each day — personal data, confidential reports, financial account numbers. Once processed, these [enter] the machine’s memory and could be available to anyone. It is very important organizations ensure MFPs have the same level of security as other devices that handle sensitive data.
INTERNET VIGILANCE
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