What is identity protection? How can organizations protect their users' digital identities?

Identity protection is a phrase used to describe activities that safeguard digital identities (and information linked to those identities) from being used by unauthorized sources for (usually) illegal advantage.

Identity theft is now big business. Some personal identity information is easy to obtain publicly, for example name, address and telephone number. Other types of personal information less easy to get hold of (for good reason) and these are of more interest to identity thieves for example, birthday, birthplace, mother’s maiden name, bank account details, and so on.

Individuals have a personal responsibility to look after their identity, but organizations too must be responsible for the safety of the identity data of their employees – and the corporate data they access.

Organizations can put in place a series of measures to protect their users’ identities and the data. Oxford Computer Group’s CTO has written extensively about identity protection in the Microsoft environment:

First published March 2017