With the growing number of data breaches exposing personally identifiable information, businesses managing sensitive data should assume consumer information is available to fraudsters aiming to open or access accounts. Each new data breach has the potential to afford fraudsters the stolen personally identifiable information of your current or potential customers, allowing them to open new accounts or access existing ones. Fraudsters may have access to your current or potential customers’ addresses, Social Security numbers and date of births, or their usernames and passwords.
Fraudsters’ methods continually evolve to counter new fraud protection measures and with personally identifiable information, they could steal a customer’s identity or create a synthetic identity. Once a fraudster captures this information, if they are able to access a customer account or open an account, it creates a nightmare scenario with significant repercussions for the business and the customer.