Can I pay to monitor more items as part of my ID Basic service?
No, there is a limit to the amount of items you can monitoring under the ID Basic service. For details on how many items you can monitor through the Identity Watch feature please see our Equifax ID Basic product page.
How often do we get our details get monitored?
Your staff details are monitored 24/7. If any information is found to be compromised we will send an alert straight away.
How long does it take once my company has entered my details for them to be monitored?
Once your staff have registered the personal information you would like monitored by Identity Watch it takes 12–24 hours for us to carry out the initial scan. We’ll send your staff an email after the first scan is done and let you know what we found.
Does our business bank get notified if we get an Identity Watch alert?
No. Only your staff will receive an email alert. Your staff then have to log on to the portal – see what’s happening – and start planning the next steps. If you want to take more proactive action, our 24/7 call centre on 138332 can take action on any compromised registered cards, phone numbers or passports. This is a different product to Identity Watch, it’s called Secure Sentinel, but it’s all part of the same family.
What is the criminal process when a data breach happens?
How does a data breach happen?
Data breaches can occur in a number of ways:
What are the implications to business?
Depending on the size of the data breach a business can be impacted in a number of ways. Some of the impacts are:
- Loss of valuable data
- Costs of remediation and third party litigation
- Costs of breach notification
- Reputational damage to brand and diminished consumer confidence
- Revenue impacts – customers switch to competitors, prospects more likely to choose competitors
- System and technological disruptions
How often do data breaches occur?
At least one data breach occurs every week in Australia, with an average of 20,073 records lost or stolen per incident.
Currently, the true scale of data breaches in Australia is unknown due to the lack of notification laws. Overseas experience suggests that unreported data breaches are far more common than people impacted are aware.
For more information, see our November 2015 Cybercrime and Fraud Report.
What is a data breach?
A data breach is an incident in which sensitive, protected or confidential data is potentially accessed, modified, viewed or misused by an individual unauthorised to do so. Data breaches may involve personally identifiable information (PII), trade secrets or intellectual property. A data breach may not involve just a single consumer having their identity compromised; it involves the unauthorised access of hundreds, thousands and sometimes millions of records containing personal information.
How do I understand my Equifax Score?
Your Equifax Score is an important number that summarises the information in your Credit File at a point in time and is expressed as a number between 0 and 1200. Your Equifax Score is dynamic and will change as information is added to and deleted from your credit report. In simple terms, the higher your Equifax Score, the better your credit profile which is an indication that you may be more likely to be accepted for credit.