Business Identity Theft

Most of the posts on this blog deal with data breaches that may lead to ID theft and scams leading to personal/individual identity theft. However, this is by no means the limit in regards to identity theft. A business can have its “identity” stolen just like an individual can. In fact, for the identity thief, targeting a company rather than an individual can be much more profitable. After all, a business will have a higher credit limit since a company will need to make more large purchases than one consumer would. Needless to say, identity thieves sophisticated enough to pull it off will be targeting this bigger payoff.

Scammers are more likely to target small businesses that will not have the budget or resources to protect its accounts and sensitive customer information that a larger company will. But since even a small company will have a high enough credit limit to be worth a thief's time, fraudulent charges will be more likely to blend in with other company purchases, especially if the scammer is purchasing software or other products that would not look unusual to an accounting department. A scammer can also steal a business's identity by posing as that company and ripping off customers.

Like individual ID theft, business identity theft can be devastating to a company as well, but for different reasons. Obviously, identity theft will affect the business financially, but it can also do major damage to the company's reputation, especially when the fraud is being committed in the company's name. Recovering from identity theft is a difficult process, whether you are an individual consumer or a company.