U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, in coordination with the U.S. Department of Justice and numerous other local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, recently arrested more than 300 foreign nationals employed at Pilgrim’s Pride chicken processing plants in five states for allegedly committing identity theft and other criminal violations to gain and retain employment.

The 311 Pilgrim’s Pride employees taken into custody were charged with criminal violations, including false use of a Social Security number and document fraud.

During the investigation leading up to the bust, numerous identity theft victims detailed the consequences of having their identities stolen, including mistaken tax liens, denial of medical and social services benefits, and damage to their credit ratings.

Reuters reported that financial services companies must change their attitude to security to curb the rise in identity fraud, according to the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in Britain. This warning was issued after a review of data security systems and controls at 39 firms including banks, building societies, insurance companies and financial advisers.

While the investigators found examples of good practice across the industry, FSA said that firms underestimated the risk of data loss and fraud to their businesses, especially to their customers.

The call comes just days after Information Commissioner Richard Thomas said British companies and government departments had suffered an “inexcusable number” of security breaches since the loss of millions of personal details last year.

Bankrate recently released the findings of a national poll, which said that that 8 out of 10 Americans are concerned about identity theft.

Over one-third (34%) said that they know someone who has been a victim of identity theft.

Of the 77 percent of respondents that have Internet service, 36 percent avoid Internet shopping due to fear of identity theft.

“Identity theft is a growing concern among Americans, but there are steps consumers can take to protect themselves,” said Julie Bandy, editor in chief at Bankrate.com. “Bankrate’s guide prepares consumers with the advice they need to keep their assets safe and protect their identity,” Bandy added.

According to Network World, several former employees at LendingTree, an online lending exchange company, helped a handful of mortgage lenders gain access to customer data.

“Recently, LendingTree learned that several former employees may have helped a handful of mortgage lenders gain access to LendingTree’s customer information by sharing confidential passwords with the lenders,” LendingTree stated in a letter sent April 21 to its customers. “When we learned of this situation, we quickly contacted the authorities, and LendingTree is helping with the investigation. We promptly made several system-security changes. We also brought lawsuits against those involved.”
The company did not disclose how many customers would be affected.

LendingTree believes the lenders gained illicit entry to its data systems to access LendingTree’s loan-request forms between October 2006 and early 2008. The company said that the loan-request forms contained such customer data as name, address, e-mail address, telephone number, Social Security Number, income and employment information.

Hannaford Bros. Co. leaders said that the grocer expects to spend “millions” of dollars on IT security upgrades after a major data breach resulted in the theft of up to 4.2 million credit and debit card numbers from its systems.

Hannaford disclosed on March 17 that unknown intruders had broken into its computer network and stolen the credit and debit card numbers as well as their expiration dates. In a letter sent to Massachusetts officials eight days later, the company said that the perpetrators had planted malware on the servers at each of the 294 affected stores.

The company said it will install new intrusion-prevention systems that will monitor activities on Hannaford’s network and the individual systems at its stores, in addition to the deployment of PIN pad devices featuring Triple DES encryption support in store checkout aisles.

Hannaford has also contracted IBM to do network monitoring under a managed security services deal, said Ron Hodge, the grocer’s president and CEO, and Bill Homa, its CIO. The company also replaced all of the servers in its stores as part of an effort to rid its network of malware that was placed on them during the breach.