Unsecured Storage = Identity Theft
In 2006 thieves hit three San Antonio, TX hotels, stole stacks of credit card receipts and used the receipts to create phony credit cards. Over 17,000 guests of these hotels were exposed to potential identity theft. The full article from the San Antonio Express News is available here.
One of the hotels apparently reported the receipts stolen in fall of 2006. However, it wasn’t until February of 2008, when the DEA recovered receipts during a raid, that the ID theft case was realized. How many guests, whose receipts were in this mix, had been battling to recover their credit before this?
The article doesn’t talk about where the documents and receipts were stored. It doesn’t say whether the hotels noticed the theft immediately. It doesn’t say whether the hotels have changed their storage or destruction procedures for receipts.
Any business that has customers has an obligation to protect their customers’ private information. Just because the utility closet has room for seven years worth of sales receipts and customer files, doesn’t mean that’s the best place for it. Those three hotels have most certainly spent much more on damage control and recovery from this event than they ever would have spent on secure offsite storage or certified information destruction.
As you audit your own business practices it’s good to remember Ben Franklin’s quote “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” and don’t wait until document storage becomes a crisis. Before you run out of space, before someone accesses information without permission, before you waste a week of man hours searching for a file, consult with secure document management professionals. It will end up saving you time, money and space.
(Photo by ben_onthemove Flikr)