What is the second thing that a company should do when it discovers a data breach with personal information? Call CSIdentity and arrange for its wholesale ID theft protection service. (The first, obviously, is to fix the leak and make sure it doesn’t happen again.) The company announced a program called Global ID Protector earlier this month.
As part of their security service, they monitor more than 60,000 criminal websites and chat rooms where bulk IDs are traded. The idea is to leverage this expertise and provide a turnkey ID protection service that can be used for large-scale rollouts, such as in the case of the Sony Playstation breach earlier this year or when a company wants to offer such a service prophylactically for its own employees.
Here is what the consumer sees from their end with the service: once you enroll, you provide personal information that you want monitored, including credit cards, phone numbers and email addresses. The system can handle multiple entries for each item, although some of the resellers or implementations might only limit one phone number, address and credit card. When illegal activity is detected, such as the trading or selling of personal information, Global ID Protector will alert the consumer and provide instructions on how to prevent further exposure or fraud and take action to restore their identity.
An early reseller of this service for retail customers is security software vendor AVG, who incorporates Global ID Protector into their Premium Security software for $70. The version includes a variety of security features such as anti-virus and host-based firewall, was released in July, and is available for any recent Windows PC. Another is AT&T, who offers two levels of protection that range from $2 a month for basic online ID protection to $10 a month for full protection.
