Publisher's Synopsis
In today's online world, your name, birth date, and mother's maiden name are often used to verify your identity. But in the wake of massive data breaches at Sony and Epsilon, we are now painfully more aware that this very same information can be used just as easily to falsify your identity. The time has come for Congress to take action. With nearly 1.5 billion credit cards now in use in the United States and more and more Americans banking and shopping online, cyber thieves have a treasure chest of opportunities today to get rich quick. In recent years, sophisticated and carefully orchestrated cyber attacks designed to obtain personal information about consumers, especially when it comes to their credit cards, have become one of the fastest-growing criminal enterprises here in the U.S., as well as across the world. Why crack a vault when you can hack a network? The Federal Trade Commission estimates that nearly 9 million Americans fall victim to identity theft every year, costing consumers and businesses billions of dollars annually, and those numbers are growing steadily and alarmingly.
