Preventing Identity Theft in Your Business

APPENDIX ITHE INFORMATION PROCESS: DEFINITION, DESCRIPTION, AND ILLUSTRATION

DEFINING THE INFORMATION PROCESS

Processes refer to the input-throughput-output of information that identifies employees or customers as this information is processed in a department, that is, the sequential job tasks processed while performing a job. Customer and employee information, or personal identities, are assets that can be secured by securing the information processes—the sequence of job tasks performed on the information (identities).

A process, for example, may be the sequence of tasks required to fill work orders or medical prescriptions, to conduct financial audits, to prepare employee payroll checks, to process credit card applications, or to open retail accounts for on-credit purchases. In each of these instances, the job tasks require names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and other personal information. Without these items of identifying information, there would be no job tasks to perform: The jobs exist to process them.

DESCRIBING AN INFORMATION PROCESS

This example (taken in part from Chapter 8) of an automobile leasing process is taken from an actual case in which corporate managers in a large automobile manufacturing plant lease automobiles for their own personal use. In this international corporation with hundreds of thousands of employees worldwide, as many as 100 or more of these and similar applications are processed daily.

The process begins when an application from ...