Last year corporate espionage cost U.S. businesses $45 billion, according to the survey, Trends in Proprietary Information Loss Survey, by the American Society for Industrial Security (ASIS) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC). Fraud and theft involving everything from intellectual property to inventory, from cybercrime to corruption, are multibillion-dollar problems. Every organization is vulnerable. Risk is real, worrisome and unavoidable. Identity theft doesn’t just happen to consumers. It happens to corporations, small businesses, and it could happen to your company. As personal information becomes more accessible, companies must take precautions to protect against the misuse of that information.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) estimates that U.S. corporations lose $24 billion each year to information theft. Identity theft and unauthorized disclosure of private information has made paperwork protection more important than ever. How do businesses protect themselves against the growing threat of identity theft? Be sure that you are routinely shredding important documents with a paper shredder.