Stanford Report, November 10, 2004

Credit union enhances security services

Stanford Federal Credit Union (SFCU) has enhanced its information security services through a partnership with Identity Theft 911. SFCU is the first financial institution in the country to participate in the program.

Called RB421, the program offers the credit union's 42,000 members identity theft education, defense and resolution services. Credit union president and chief executive officer John R. Davis said in a statement that SFCU has never had a data security breach and called the program "an additional layer" of customer service.

SFCU pays a fixed monthly fee into an account that Identity Theft 911 draws from whenever services are rendered to credit union members, according to company spokesman Mark Durham. The service became available Nov. 1 and is free to members.

"Prevention really is the key," said Sam Tuohey, SFCU's vice president of information services. He added that one member already has been referred to the company after losing his wallet.

Among other services, the company will investigate for fraudulent use of credit cards and identification, expedite alerts to monitoring agencies if identity theft is confirmed and assign a case manager to offer customers consolidated, one-on-one support.

SFCU has a history of banking-industry firsts, including being the first financial institution in America to offer online banking over the Internet. That was in 1993, when the Internet was used mostly by universities, Tuohey said.

A year later, SFCU became the first credit union to have a website, Tuohey said. (The American Bankers Association credits Wells Fargo with launching the first bank website in 1995.)

SFCU has had funding and procedures for information security in place for years, Tuohey said. The credit union has contacted members in the past about credit card number leaks, stemming mostly from large retailers reporting the theft of computer equipment containing partial credit card numbers.

Such an incident prompted SFCU to call 223 account holders who obtained Visa cards through the credit union as recently as three weeks ago. The retailer's server, however, did not keep vital information such as names, birth dates and Social Security numbers, nor was the credit union's own security breached, Tuohey said.

Identity Theft 911 was founded last year and is based in San Francisco. Its clients include Fortune 500 companies, nearly 300 universities and a wide spectrum of financial institutions, insurance firms and corporate-benefits providers. Its top executives belong to the International Association of Financial Crimes Investigators, one of several industry affiliations that boosted SFCU's confidence in signing up first for RB421.

For more information about the program, contact SFCU compliance administrator Kathy Smith-Born at 723-8598 or kathy@sfcu.org">kathy@sfcu.org.