Top stories
Marketing & MediaWhy keeping your customers is now the smartest growth strategy
Cristelle Snyman, Everlytic 10 Jun 2026
HR & ManagementHow dotsure.co.za is growing South Africa’s next generation of talent
Dotsure.co.za 10 Jun 2026
Trending
Show more
Subscribe & Follow
Advertise your job vacancies
The cost of ID theft, Part 2: Fixing the system
The costs as well as the volume of ID thefts continue to rise. Estimated business losses per victim increased by about $7,500 from 2003 to 2004, from $41,717 to $49,254, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center. Reported costs per record were $197 last year, according to the Ponemon Institute's third annual study.
As the number of identity theft victims continues to mount, so has the amount of data and information related to such events - and the time and resources devoted to better understanding, analyzing and devising measures that can better prevent such occurrences, as is seen in Part 1 of this series.
"The stakes are already quite high when it comes to data loss: According to Gartner and the Ponemon Institute, the loss of a single record - not financial fraud - is around (US)$197. If you take the extremely conservative estimate from the same research that said that in 2007, 127 million records were lost, you get around $25 billion in direct losses," noted Uriel Maimon, senior researcher for security firm RSA.
