Kroll Fraud Solutions Blog – A Dialogue on Data Security

Businesses shoulder something of a “double burden” when protecting sensitive information. They must protect the company’s Unique Business Identifiers (UBI), as well as the Personal Identifying Information (PII) of individuals such as employees, customers, students, and other stakeholders. Protecting UBI preserves the company’s ability to thrive and reduces the likelihood that it will be exploited for financial gain. Protecting PII from the threat of unauthorized use is also vital to the company’s livelihood.

This should be easy to implement as practically every business, regardless of size, performs some type of background screening of job applicants. More and more, it’s thought of as an essential tool – checking a person’s history can unearth a tremendous amount of useful information.

To be truly effective, however, a screening program must be thorough – and that means nationwide searches, not just by local jurisdiction. Otherwise, the check may fail to reveal things like felony convictions, if, for example, the employer only checked records in the cities that were listed on the job seeker’s resume instead of the entire country.