Organizations take on risk when they do not know their customers, employees and vendors. According to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners 2006 Report to the Nation on Occupational Fraud and Abuse, "U.S. organizations lose an estimated 5 percent of annual revenues to fraud." Fraud goes beyond a quantitative dollar amount. Fraud can do additional damage because of the potential regulatory sanctions and loss of trust and reputation in the marketplace.

Many online risk management service exist today that help mitigate enterprise-wide fraud risk from customers, employees and vendors. A series of software and solutions help perform checks prior to entering a business relationship, and then once a relationship has been established, can provide alerts of suspicious activity.

Implementing a comprehensive Identity Risk Management (IRM) solution means various tools, processes and policies are designed to help an enterprise mitigate potential fraud caused by inaccurate or incomplete information about a business (vendors) or individual (customers and employees).

As a best practice, a robust Identity Risk Management solution should help an organization by recognizing:

– Identity misrepresentation, impersonation, or identity theft

– Unauthorized physical access

– Unauthorized electronic access

– Collusion

The result of an effective ID Risk Management system is it can help strengthen an enterprise's identity verification, enhanced due diligence and regulatory compliance programs. This translates into additional layers of protection being incorporated into an enterprise's overall fraud prevention efforts.

Below are examples of how an enterprise can mitigate fraud on the customer, employee and vendor level by implementing Identity Risk Management solutions.