Identity Theft - Assignment Example

Identity Theft [Insert [Insert Unit and [Insert [Insert [Insert Identity Theft In your opinion, what would be your plan to review the case of identity theft toward the university professors? Why? The development and advancement of technology means that we have to live in an increasingly interconnected information age and yet it also poses a risk of security and fraud. The first approach would be to review the circumstances that made possible the professors’ identity theft in the first place and the compelling reasons for the perpetrators to commit the crime.

A useful approach is the Fraud Triangle which was developed by Cressey R Donanld. By reviewing the case in the fraud triangle context we will find out the motivating factor behind the crime commission; it postulates that in order for a crime to be committed such as the identity theft case; three elements namely; pressure, opportunity and rationalization must be in play. These are depicted in the figure below; Pressure Opportunity RationalizationAll these factors must be present for fraud to happen.

Completely stopping or eliminating either one of them will reduce the chances of fraud almost to zero.Pressure: This is what pushes a person to engage in an act of fraud and can entail a desire to pass exams in our case, social revolt or a financial challenge.Opportunity refers to the capability to commit a crime. Since very few crooks like being caught, they must act in a way that will ensure their activities remain untraceable. This becomes possible when weak internal controls and management practices exist that allow the fraudsters to sneak in and wreak havoc.

Lack of established procedures to anticipate, detect, and respond to attacks and violations creates an opportunity for frauds. This is one area where frauds and crooks have the greatest leverage and control and are always looking to find a loophole; maybe a weak encryption system.Rationalization: this is another key component for frauds, which allows a fraudster to reconcile her behavior with normally accepted concept of trust and common decency. The fraudster feels no guilt and in fact feels justified (Turner, Mock & Srivastava).

The fraud triangle is useful because it identifies why, what, where and who of the fraud. Once this is established then remedial measures can be taken.2. Do you think identity theft can be stopped? Fraud cannot be stopped; the pace of technological change and advancement gives it (fraud) an evolutionary nature and so the crooks will keep getting better and more sophisticated. There is however great opportunity more than ever to slow it down considerably to protect the masses and ordinary people.

The identity world will continue to experience this cycle where a smart organization comes up with a secure system to protect identity and an even smarter crook comes up with a way around the security measure (‘Consumer protection Division’, 2005).3. How would you propose to stop it or at least slow it down? The first step would be to take the basic measures, use passwords, use secure connections, and have anti spyware. By adopting the fraud triangle, measures can be put in place to anticipate, identify, and mitigate fraud through data encryption, using secure systems, installing firewalls and anti spyware.

A very good strategy would be to run information servers on open source operating systems such as Linux where the code and the kernel has been modified by a small ‘in-house’ team. Without the basic code and kernel, the frauds would have a very big problem accessing a system or network. Physical backups of identity or information databases should be encrypted so that should it fall into the wrong hands then it is almost worthless (Mitic, 2009).ReferencesFederal Trade Commission (2005). Take charge fighting back against identity theft.. (pp. 7-21). Arkansas: Consumer protection Division.Mitic, S. (2009) Stopping identity theft: 10 easy steps to security (pp.

3-12, 54-63). Berkeley, CA: NoloTurner, J., Mock, T., & Srivastava, R. (2003, January) An analysis of the fraud triangle Retrieved from http://aaahq.org/audit/midyear/03midyear/papers/Research Roundtable 3-Turner-Mock-Srivastava.pdf