The importance of employee identity protection during COVID-19 and beyond

Courtesy of InfoArmor

You likely know that COVID-19 brought on a significant spike in fraud, but did you know certain types of identity theft can be more damaging than others? Given the current pandemic, it’s worth noting that identity theft involving medical records can be particularly challenging to overcome. 

For one thing, it’s expensive: the average case carries a cost of $22,346. Medical identity theft also poses alarming health risks. If false information from fraud winds up in a victim’s health records, the results — such as delayed treatments or misdiagnoses — could be life-threatening.

The healthcare industry is a common target for cybercriminals. In fact, the Identity Theft Resource Center reports that of all industries, the healthcare field experienced the second-highest rate of breaches in 2018.

This means that healthcare hacks were a serious concern even before COVID-19. Luckily, by partnering with InfoArmor, you’re already taking steps to protect your clients and employees. Read on to learn more about this type of fraud — and the pros of offering PrivacyArmor as a benefit. 

Traditionally, medical identity theft happens when a thief gains access to a person’s healthcare or medical accounts. From there, the imposter may seek care in someone else’s name, make insurance claims on procedures that never happened, defraud government programs, or use phony credentials to order medical supplies or drugs. 

If your employees are targeted in such a scheme, they could wind up footing the bill for treatment they never received — or worse, their medical files could be altered without their knowledge. 

What’s more, the rise of synthetic identities may mean more cases of medical identity theft are flying under the radar. For example, a synthetic identity grown from a healthy person’s PII might go years before being detected. In that time, many fraudulent procedures, treatments, and pharmaceuticals could be ordered and claimed, building a false but legitimate-looking medical history.

PrivacyArmor’s key features — such as 24/7 fraud remediation, Social Media Monitoring, and Credit Monitoring — were designed to safeguard our members from a wide range of threat scenarios. Here are five of the ways we address medical identity theft in particular: 

1. Our solutions meet and exceed the latest accreditation requirements. 

You can’t control the security practices of the hospital systems and healthcare networks that serve your employees. But you can protect enrollees from medical identity theft with an identity and privacy protection benefit that takes security seriously. That’s why InfoArmor maintains SSAE-18 SOC2 Type II accreditation, updating our certification every year.

2. When medical identity theft does happen, we own the recovery process.  

It’s one thing to alert someone to a problem with the security of their data. Solving that problem can be a bigger challenge. When an employee has their identity stolen, we assign them a dedicated Privacy Advocate to help with recovery. From there, our team owns the remediation process as much as possible, submitting and tracking what we can on our members’ behalf until their identity is restored.

3. Our generous family plan provides additional peace of mind.  

It doesn’t matter if it’s your employee, their spouse, or their child whose medical identity is stolen. The end result is the same: emotional and financial burdens that affect both personal lives and workplace productivity. That’s why protecting your employees should mean coverage for their families, too. InfoArmor’s generous definition of family includes adult children, parents, in-laws, other dependents, and even deceased family members.

4. Our reimbursement policy protects members’ emotional and financial well-being. 

When medical identity theft strikes, alerts and notifications alone won’t stop an employee from stressing over the potential for high out-of-pocket costs. InfoArmor’s $1,000,000 identity theft insurance policy aims to keep those emotional and financial stressors out of the workplace.

5. Our features are designed to reveal leaked data before medical identity theft occurs. 

Account takeovers and synthetic identity fraud are two common precursors to medical identity theft. Our Social Media Monitoring feature makes it easy for members to spot common account takeovers, while our Dark Web Monitoring tool reveals stolen PII that could indicate the existence of a synthetic identity. When it comes to identity theft, every second counts. Quick action may prevent the worst of the damage. 

Medical identity theft may seem scary, but with InfoArmor, your employees have a partner in protection. Even in these challenging times, our experts remain available 24/7 to help with remediation. 

With fraud cases on the rise, you can help employees up their defenses by sharing these tips for making the most of PrivacyArmor: 

InfoArmor is here to help protect your employees, and their medical identity, during COVID-19 — and beyond.