When credit card or bank account numbers are stolen, businesses reap greater damages than individuals. Qwest wants to help its small business customers learn how to protect their businesses and their customers from identity theft and fraud crimes. Secure Your Workspace. The workplace is not safe from identity thieves. They will try and steal mail from unsecured mailboxes or take personal items from unattended desks. You can protect your business and your employees by training your employees to be aware and vigilant of security issues. Limit using Social Security numbers as employee or customer identifiers. Limit the use social security numbers for employee or customer ID numbers. This gives identity thieves easy access to personal financial information. Give Customers Clear Privacy Policies. All customers should have access to a clear company policy regarding the treatment of confidential information supplied by customers. Dispose of customer information in a safe and secure manner. Companies should have specific policies in place for the disposal of documents containing confidential customer information. Customer records should be shredded and electronic files must be properly deleted. Be responsible with your business credit. Check with your financial service providers to see what protections are available against fraudulent transactions and monitor your businesses credit reports.   For small businesses that connect their computers and internal networks to the Internet, it is important to protect your systems properly. Small business owners should use the same precautions for their business computers as they would for their home computers. But here are some additional safety measures that businesses should take in the workplace: Beware of spam – businesses are just as likely to receive bogus e-mail offers and requests for sensitive information as consumers. Strengthen your security to protect your Internet connections and computers using firewalls and anti-virus software programs. Secure any remote access modems or business partner connections. Follow best practices from your operating system vendors for limiting the configuration of your systems to only those services you need and use. Regularly review and update your security systems and the user access to your computers and applications. Phone and E-mail Protection Tips For Business Owners Beware of scam artists posing as service representatives. Be skeptical of requests for personal information via e-mail or over the phone and contact your service provider immediately to report the incident. Never divulge information on your phone system unless you know to whom you are giving it. Immediately deactivate voicemail passwords and authorization codes of terminated employees to enter your company’s voicemail system. Do not allow phone lines to be “forwarded” to off-premises numbers. Do not allow unlimited attempts to enter your phone system. You can program your phone system to terminate user access after third invalid attempt. Run periodic security audits to check for loopholes in your phone system or contact your telecommunications provider to do so. NOTE: Qwest is providing the above information as a customer service for educational purposes only. Qwest assumes no liability for the use of this information and does not guarantee that following the recommendations provided will prevent fraud.

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