Identity Theft Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Identity Theft - Assignment Example 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; 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. 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). 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