Critical Need
Identity Threat Assessment and Prediction (ITAP) is a risk assessment tool that increases fundamental understanding of identity theft and fraud processes and patterns, both malicious and non-malicious. ITAP aggregates data on identity theft and fraud to analyze and describe identity vulnerabilities, the value of identity attributes, and their risk of exposure.
Research Program Abstract
The ITAP research program provides insight into the habits and methods of identity thieves, fraudsters, insider threats, and non-malicious individuals. The ITAP model discovers the identity attributes most vulnerable to theft, assesses their importance, and determines the personally identifying information (PII) most frequently targeted by thieves. In doing so, ITAP offers recommendations to thwart future threats to identity security and privacy.
Potential Impact
The analytical repository of ITAP offers identity solutions relevant to people, organizations, and devices across multiple domains, including financial services, consumer services, healthcare, education, defense, energy, and government. ITAP seeks to provide an unprecedented level of awareness throughout the identity threat and fraud environment. ITAP is delivering actionable knowledge grounded in analyses of past threats and countermeasures, current threats and solutions, and evidence-driven forecasts to deliver the following innovations:
- Innovation #1: Identifies how personally identifying information (PII) is compromised, the vulnerabilities, and the process
- Innovation #2: Quantifies the true consequences of PII compromises in terms of financial loss, reputation damage, and emotional distress
- Innovation #3: Quantifies the value of PII and how it is monetized
- Innovation #4: Characterizes the criminals and the victims
- Innovation #5: Compares identity and fraud patterns across market sectors, DHS critical infrastructure sectors, and countries