Government gets serious about identity theft

A handful of federal government agencies are doing more than ever to step up efforts regarding identity verification by introducing new security measures. Employees of the Defense Department, the General Services Adminstration and NASA have been given brand-new microchip-embedded cards, which are intended to cut down on cases of workers who are no logner with the departments using their old cards. The new rule, published in the Federal register, comes after a 2008 review by the Government Accountablility Office, which found that Common Access Cards were not easily accounted for. "The most prevalent issue of the audit report, and the one that DoD, GSA, and NASA are undertaking to resolve with this case, was that the CACs were not adequately accounted for after contract performance or completion," the report stated. Many have been calling attention to how important identification verification is, especially in a digital age. In an interview with Net-Security.org, David Mahdi said that" a digital identity may be issued by a single authority - a bank, a retailer or even a government agency - and that identity may only be used with that authority."