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ID THEFT AT SCHOOL
MSN.com, 08/14/13
One way to prevent ID theft is for schools to limit the sensitive information they get from students. That means not collecting Social Security numbers. Students Share schedules and they walk to class on the first day of school. Students' Social Security numbers can be vulnerable and don't necessarily need to be given to schools, experts say.
Classes, books and dirty looks aren't the only potential problems students face when heading back to school in the flurry of gettig kids enrolled fillng out forms and moving into dorms, it's easy for a student's Social Securty number to fall into the wrong hands. Armed with a child's Social Security number, identitity thieves can open new lines of credit and bank accounts, forge checks and blame other crimes they've committed on your little one, reports the National Science Foundation.
If it sounds farftched, it's anythig but. The Federal Trade Commission reports that approximately 6 percent of reported identity theft cases - more than 16,000 each year - are for victims under age 20. A 2011 study by ID Analytics found the number for minors to be much higher, at 140,000 victims annually.
One way to prevent theft from occurring is for school districts to limit the amount of sensitive information they ask for, says Steven Toporoff, an attorney with the FTC's Privacy and Identity Protection division. "In many instances, schools do not need Social Security numbers for students," he told MSN News, adding that parents can frequently opt out of providing that information. "It's certainly not required by federal law and in many states- it's not required by state law."
By Clair Meyer, Security Magazine, 3/2013
How many key cards does it take to open a door in Hennepin County, Minnesota? Thanks to Kirk Simmons, just one.
Hennepin County’s 100-plus buildings used to have multiple access control systems, which led to a single worker needing – depending on job functions – seven or eight access control cards, plus an ID. Simmons, Security Manager for Hennepin, is working to reduce the number of badge designs from 17 to two or three, so that access cards function as ID cards, consolidating the amount of equipment at large.
Like every public administration, managing ID/access badges in municipal security comes with significant challenges. For one overarching security division, badging thousands of employees in several hundred different facilities can prove complex. According to Walter Chan, Supervisor of Corporate Security in the City of Toronto, there is no one-size fits all, cookie-cutter template to government ID/access badges.
“I oversee access control and access/ID management infrastructure in more than 1,000 city-owned and operated facilities – from daycare centers, animal shelters, long-term care homes, court services to critical infrastructures like water and wastewater facilities, a consolidated data center, Toronto’s City Hall and Civic Centres,” Chan says. And those facilities offer different types of City services, so the ID/access badges not only need to be functional, but badges should enhance and integrate the delivery of those services.
“Corporate Security works with the various City divisions to come up with badge designs that work within their operational environment, so it’s more likely that employees will actually want to use their access badge and wear it while they work.
“We work with the divisions to understand the types of people requiring access to their facilities and for how long,” he says. “For example, we have some divisions, like Toronto Water, that operate with a large contingent of contractors, while the Long-Term Care Homes have a large contingent of volunteers – while we try to streamline the access/ID management processes, the actual badge designs may differ.”
However, while Simmons is consolidating the number of card designs, he is trying to diversify the uses of that single badge.
“We’re working with IT to add time reporting, fax and printer access, and possibly even using IDs as pay-cards in the cafeterias,” he says. “We want employees to treat it like a piece of equipment, not just a badge. It might increase card costs, but it will add convenience.” He adds that while he is not 100 percent clear on what those added functions might be in the future, he wants a card that will be scalable and integrated to achieve maximum convenience value.
Simmons is also working to reduce the security department’s workload by divvying up some of the card-issuing responsibility to the departments. Each major department has a “card contact” that manages access control input, but the security department still prints the cards. Departments work as individual businesses, Simmons says. If security were to be single-handedly re-badging all of Hennepin County, he adds, the department would need several new staffers. But the decentralized program keeps costs down, increases department ownership and keeps thousands of phone calls out of the security department eve
