National Protect Your Identity Week

October 18, 2011

This week is National Protect Your Identity Week (PYIW), October 16th to October 22nd, 2011, so consider promoting this to your workforce.  Over 8 million consumers were victims of identity theft in 2010, so the odds are that your employees may have been a casualty of that statistic.  An employee that is dealing with identity theft is feeling financially stressed and distracted, and may be taking time during the workday to try to deal with the situation – leading to lost productivity.  Even worse, if the employee is a victim of medical identity theft, your group health plan could be impacted by false insurance bills from their imposter.

Here are my 3 suggestions to promote National Protect Your Identity Week:

  1. Host a shredding party at work.  Invite your employees to bring in their old bank statements, credit card statements, or any other documents that contain personal information.  If you don’t have a heavy duty shredder at the office, you can usually find shredding events locally by searching online.
  2. Distribute the FTC’s Consumer Alert on Medical Identity Theft: How to Minimize the Risk in your employee newsletter this week, or make it a part of your health plan open enrollment kit.
  3. Post a PYIW game on your intranet for employees to make it fun.  Check out The Case of the Cyber Criminal Game or Mission:Laptop Security Game provided free from www.onguardonline.gov ,the federal government’s website to help you be safe, secure and responsible online.