The President’s Identity Theft Task Force released their report and website on Tuesday with 31 recommendations to help reduce identity theft and fraud cases. This report has overarching recommendations such as consumer education and harsh punishments for criminals. I believe that some of these findings will eventually trickle down the grapevine and affect auditing guidelines of banking regulators. Most banks are doing many of the items listed on the report and GLBA audits should ensure that customer data is being adequately secured. But I did see some recommendations on the Task Force report that might create some extra work for banks….....

1) Reducing the unnecessary use of Social Security numbers (You’re not sending TIN’s through e-mail, are you?)
2) Guidance may be published soon to make disclosures of compromised customer information more uniform. This will need to be incorporated into Incident Response Plans.
3) General consumer education; maybe brochures or even Webinars could be posted on websites about protecting personal data from identity thieves.
4) Increased authentication mechanisms which may include additional verification at the time of account opening. You didn’t think Multi-Factor Authentication for Online Banking was going to be enough did you?
5) Increased training for private sectors needing to assist identity theft victims. Banks may need to keep materials relating to compromised customer accounts for investigative purposes or assisting law enforcement agents.
6) A uniform Identity Theft Report Form will be created that may change authentication procedures or account openings.
7) Another recommendation from the report mentions, “Initiating discussions with Financial Institutions on countermeasures to identity theft.� So be ready to get some additional input from regulators on fraud countermeasures, or attending mandatory training sessions for BSA or security officers.

There are some really great initiatives that the Task Force proposes, especially about trying to make it easier for victims to recover. I just hope the FTC can follow through and get these strategies in place ASAP before identity thieves get ahead of the curve….again.