ID Guard

Identity thieves use people’s personal information to open new accounts and misuse existing accounts, creating havoc for consumers and businesses. Financial institutions and creditors are required to implement a program to detect, prevent, and mitigate identity theft.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the federal bank regulatory agencies, and the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) have issued regulations (the Red Flags Rules) requiring financial institutions and creditors to develop and implement written identity theft prevention programs, as part of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions (FACT) Act of 2003. The programs were to be in place by June 1, 2010, and must provide for the identification, detection, and response to patterns, practices, or specific activities – know as “red flags” – that could indicate identity theft.

Under the Red Flags Rules, financial institutions and creditors must develop a written program that identifies and detects signs or – “red flags” – of identity theft. These may include unusual account activity, fraud alerts on a consumer report, or attempted use of suspicious account application documents. These red flags fall into five categories

·         Alerts, notifications, or warnings from a consumer reporting agency
·         Suspicious documents
·         Suspicious personally identifying information
·         Unusual or suspicious activity on an account
·         Notices from customers, victims or identity theft or law enforcement authorities

As of June 1st, 2010 you must have the following in place:

·       You must have a written information security policy
·         You have to have an acceptable use plan
·         You have to have an incident response plan
·         The program must be administered by senior management and updated annually.
·         A compliance report must be generated annually.
·         The law does allow for the use of a third-party provider who has the ability to facilitate this mandatory compliance
           issues on your behalf.
·         In your plan you must check against the list of red flags

CIS can help you stay in compliance with the credit report requirements by offering you the ID Guard report.  This report will check every credit report you run for

        •        Fraud alerts
        •        Active duty alerts
        •        Credit freeze alerts
        •        Social Security alerts
        •        Address alerts
        •        Other alerts

Click here for an easy to read and convenient sample ID guard report. 

If you would like more information on the ID Guard report please click here