Kemesa: Solving the identity theft problem

cybercrime revenues, this relatively new crime is big business — so big, in fact, that cyber criminals are aping executives when it comes to sales, marketing, and risk management in the world of online treachery, according to a report released by networking giant Cisco. “A lot of techniques they are using today are not new; it is really about how they may be doing some of the same old things,” said Cisco chief security researcher Patrick Peterson. “The novel thing is that they have taken the Harvard Business School, General Electric board room business training and applied it to their old techniques” (see 15 July 2009 HSNW).

The U.S. government agrees, and says that more must be done to combat the lucrative trade in malicious software, which threatens sensitive government networks and personal data. Philip Reitinger who, as head of the U.S. National Cybersecurity Center, is in charge of DHS’s cybersecurity operations, warned in March that the spread of so-called malware like botnets — software that hijacks computers to mine sensitive data — now constitutes an “underground market economy” that is spreading attacks. “There is an entire community of people who are involved, organized crime is involved. Hackers now not only assemble botnets, they sell botnets. There is an underground market economy behind that. We have seen lately some of the risk to national government capabilities from botnet attacks,” said Reitinger (see 18 June 2009 HSNW).

Personal e-safety
For consumers who shop on the Internet the precise revenue figures of cybercrime are of little interest. They are aware of the fact that the growing reliance on digitalized records, and the growing popularity of e-commerce, have been accompanied by a concomitant growth in data breaches and identity theft. South Florida-based Kemesa (for “Keep me safe”, www.kemesa.com) says it has the solution. Its product, Shop Shield®, replaces personal and financial information with anonymous, untraceable data each time a consumer makes a purchase online, pays a bill, or registers at a Web site.

The company says — and security experts agree — that the ideal solution to the online identity theft problem is to not transmit personal information to Web sites in the first place: no e-mail addresses, passwords, phone numbers, billing information, credit card number, not even your name should be necessary. With Shop Shield, personal information can not be stolen because it is never revealed during the online transaction