How to Find and Identify Fraud in the Hiring Process

David Hair, Product Manager | Posted on


 

According to the Federal Trade Commission, employment- or tax-related fraud — when a criminal uses someone else’s Social Security number and other personal information to gain employment or to file an income tax return — made up 34% of all fraud reports in 2017. It’s considered the most common form of data theft. Why? An increase in data breaches.

Candidate and Hiring Fraud Explained

Data breaches expose sensitive personal information including SSN, driver’s license, medical and/or financial records for millions of consumers. This combined with advancements in graphics technology, has made it easier for a deceptive candidate to falsify a government-issued ID and assume another person’s identity.

The Identity Theft Resource Center collects fraud reports from consumers. According to its most recent data, the number of data breaches reported for 2017 was 1,579, a 45 percent increase over 2016. Businesses continued to suffer the majority of breaches and more than eight times the number of Social Security numbers were exposed in 2017 than in 2016.

Identity Fraud vs Resume Fraud

Identity fraud is more than simply exaggerating credentials on a resume. Identity fraud means that someone is using another person’s social security number, fake identification, and other personal information to obtain a legitimate job.

Resume fraud is shockingly common: two out of three employers have encountered an applicant lying on their resume. This type of fraud wastes expensive recruiting resources, denies job opportunities to qualified applicants, and can expose a company to potential employee fraud and brand damage down the road. However, resume fraud is easier to detect than identity fraud. Most background check providers can verify specific details like an applicant’s degree, graduation date, job title, and salary.

When an identity thief uses a victim’s name and social security number to gain employment, the employer reports the wages to the IRS for income tax purposes. When the IRS discovers employer-reported wages from both the thief and victim, there is a mismatch with what the victim filed and it appears they didn’t report all of their wages. This type of fraud is much more difficult and time-consuming to detect, and often takes months or years to catch. It’s also a lot more prevalent than you’d think.

A 2017 report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found the IRS failed to identify 497,248 victims of employment-related identity theft, even though criminals electronically filed tax returns with evidence showing they used the victims’ Social Security numbers to gain employment.

How to Prevent Identity Fraud in the Hiring Process

Don’t Skip the Background Check

Even the most convincing looking documentation could easily be fake, and if you’re taking any credentials or documents at face value, you might already be at risk. The more sophisticated the fraud and the higher the position, the more damage and cost there is likely to be, and it’s significantly harder for the authorities to catch someone if they have no idea who they are chasing.

Background checks can be an excellent resource to help find red flags that may indicate false documentation. These kind of checks can be even more telling when information isn’t found, such as missing employment history, lack of social media presence, and so on. Criminal background checks are also necessary, but a good identity thief will likely pass with flying colors.

Identity-Based Detection

Identity-based systems can help detect employment fraud. They expand fraud detection significantly beyond the traditional rules-based system by accessing national repositories of identity information.

Identity-based detection is powerful because it does not treat self-reported data as the truth. For example, a common rule in many rules-based filters is to match the name, SSN and address from the presented information with the name, SSN and address on-file. This rule ensures that an applicant’s self-reported data aligns with the other information held by the agency. But matching data does not confirm an individual’s eligibility. However, because this type of fraud takes so long to detect, common fraud schemes may involve fabricated or false identities that have been nurtured through multiple filings over the course of years.

Where Technology Comes In

Recruiters rely heavily on technology, and so do job applicants. In fact, the very thing that streamlines the online job application process is the same thing that makes it easy to use stolen identities to apply for jobs. One of the newest technologies available to the private sector is identity verification with biometrics.

Biometric recognition technology relies upon the physical characteristics of an individual, such as fingerprints, voiceprint, pattern of the iris of the eye and facial pattern, in identifying an individual, offering positive identification that is difficult to counterfeit. This will also increase traceability of nefarious individuals or stolen identities.

Facial recognition is an automated method to record the spatial geometry of distinguishing features of the face. Different methods of facial recognition among various vendors all focus on measures of key features. The advantages to facial recognition include the use of commonly available technologies, such as phone cameras, no contact required, and it’s easy for humans to verify results. It’s also recordable, as the characteristics of an individual cannot be collected without their consent.

Many companies offer some sort of identity authentication for the hiring process, but biometrics is still new to the private sector. Companies like Cisive have gotten ahead of the game and offer the Human Resource industry’s first identity authentication solution, IDVerityTM is a state-of-the-art technology that forensically authenticates a candidate’s identity by validating the authenticity of their government issued ID and compares it to a candidates’ self-photograph taken on their mobile device.

The solution combines artificial intelligence (AI) technology including ID verification that authenticates the ID and identity verification using biometric facial recognition, liveness detection and live verification experts, to provide a complete solution to verify the real-world identity of a candidate. The balance of AI and human review is a critical component to keeping employers globally compliant.

All employers need to guard against insider threats, especially those perpetrated by persons using a fraudulent identity.

To learn more about Cisive’s IDVerity solution or to request a demo, contact us at 1-866-557-5984 or email info@cisive.com.

 

 

David Hair
Product Manager, Cisive

Cisive Unveils IDVerityTM — Ground Breaking Identity Authentication Technology for the Human Resources Industry

Debbie Caporusso | Posted on

Cisve is excited to announce the launch of IDVerityTM, a real-time identity authentication solution for the Human Resources industry.   IDVerityTM is the first line of defense in the background screening process and should be a foundational tool that employers use to manage the ever increasing risk of fraud and impersonation.

Data breach activity skyrocketed in 2017, exposing sensitive personal information including SSN, driver’s license, and medical and/or financial records for millions of consumers.  This combined with advancements in graphics technology, has made it easier for a deceptive candidate to falsify a government-issued ID and assume another person’s identity.  Coupled with the growing insider threat to businesses and compliance requirements in regulated industries, employers must add “Know Your Candidate” programs to their existing “Know Your Client” (KYC) program to protect their company, employees and customers.

IDVerityTM is state-of-the-art technology that forensically authenticates a candidate’s identity by validating the authenticity of their government issued ID and then comparing it to the candidates self-photograph taken from their mobile device. The solution combines artificial intelligence (AI) technology including ID verification that authenticates the ID and identity verification using biometric facial recognition, liveliness detection and live verification experts  to provide a complete solution to verify the real-world identity of a candidate. The balance of AI and human review is a critical component to keeping employers globally compliant.

This is the same technology used by law enforcement, border controls, and the TSA today, and follows the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) standards for Identity verification.

“Employers need to guard against insider threats, especially those perpetrated by persons using a fraudulent identity,” says James Owens, Cisive’s CEO and president. “The IDVerity solution will allow our clients to verify a candidate’s identity and reduce their risk exposure in a dramatic new way.  We are excited to introduce this ground breaking technology that will undoubtedly transform the candidate onboarding process.”

The Benefits of IDVerityTM

  • Accelerates candidate onboarding
  • Mitigates the risk of fraud and impersonation
  • Simple to use mobile app delivers a fast and secure candidate experience
  • Deters applications by fraudulent candidates
  • Easily incorporated into your existing onboarding processes
  • Meets due diligence and Know Your Candidate/Client (KYC)/Anti-Money Laundering (AML) requirements
  • Largest worldwide support of government issued IDs – Supports 300 different ID documents available in more than 3,000 different formats issued by over 200 ISO listed countries and territories

Know who you are hiring.  For more information on IDVerity or to receive a demo, call 1-866-557-5984 or visit www.cisive.com/identity.

For more information on the importance of identity authenticatoin in the hiring process, read Cisive’s informative white paper The Case for Identity Verification in the Hiring Process.

 

Identity Verification – The First Line of Defense in the Background Screening Process

Doreen Koronios | Posted on

Recruiting top talent is a critical component to the success of any company.  Human Resource professionals undergo lengthy measures to ensure they have the right candidate for the position.

How do you know if a candidate is who they say they are? 

Identity fraud is the fastest growing crime in the U.S. In the last 10 years, there have been over 7,500 data breaches of millions of records, exposing personal identifiable information (PII) such as SSN, driver’s license, medical or financial records.  The recent Equifax data breach, exposing over 143 million American consumers, exemplifies the magnitude of the problem.

Given the large number of data breaches exposing personal identifiable information (PII) for millions of consumers, combined with advancements in graphics technology, it has become easier for a deceptive candidate to assume another person’s identity and falsify a government-issued ID. Coupled with the growing insider threat to businesses and compliance requirements in regulated industries, employers must “Know Their Candidates” to protect their company and employees.

Accurate identification and identity data are keys to helping protect your company from the ever increasing risk of fraud and impersonation.

 Ripple effect of data breaches

In February of 2017, a hacker created a job seeker account in a popular job board and then exploited a misconfiguration in the application code to gain unauthorized access to certain PII of other job seekers (user names, dates of birth and Social Security Numbers). The hacker was able to breach the job board system in ten states.

The multiple effects of this type of data breach are broad and include:

  • Financial cost to the breached entity
  • Financial impact to the breached individuals
    • Direct or indirect theft
    • Damage to credit
    • Identity theft
  • Financial impact to:
    • Creditors
    • Merchants
    • Other consumers
    • AND employers

What’s a company to do?

Candidate authentication is the first line of defense in combating identity fraud and related criminal activity, and should be the foundation of an organization’s candidate background screening process.

Employers now have the availability of ground breaking identity authentication technology that forensically authenticates a candidate’s government issued ID and compares it to the candidate’s self-photograph using biometric facial recognition to authenticate their identity.

Implementing this technology as the first step before the background check will help to catch fake IDs and combat the increasing risk of fraud exposure and impersonation.

Identity Authentication technology combines machine learning ID verification and identity verification, along with biometric facial recognition, providing a complete solution to verify the identity of your candidates.

A successful and efficient Identify Authentication program relies heavily on the candidate experience.  A simple mobile enabled process for capturing the candidate ID and self photograph will help streamline identity verification and accelerate time to hire.

Worldwide support for government issued IDs

For global nationals and companies that hire employees with international government issued IDs, it’s critical that the technology you implement be able to support varying types of government issued IDs throughout the world. The time and cost savings benefits of onboarding candidates with secure identity authentication cannot be overstated. If a fraudster provides false information that is not uncovered in the background research, the background check results will be inaccurate. As background checks become more ubiquitous, there are people who know that when fraudulent personal data is not discovered and corrected it becomes difficult to positively match identifiers in criminal records. The front-end potential of an ID authentication process is a high impact event for companies.

The government issued IDs used in front-end ID authentication contain correct dates of birth which assist in the identification process. In addition, if there is a criminal record involved in the background check, the photo ID will help in determining if the criminal record is a match with the Department of Corrections photo.

To learn more about issues involved with identity fraud and cutting edge identity authentication technology available to protect your company, download Cisive’s new White Paper, The Case for Identity Verification in the Hiring Process.