Better Safe...Than Sorry! Just picture it…it’s a normal busy day in the office. Phones are ringing, residents in and out of the office, prospects touring, vendors needing keys. In between all the action, you pull out your pending files and work on processing your current applicants at your desk. A prospect walks in and you promptly greet them and offer to tour them. As you excuse yourself to go grab keys, they are alone in the front of the office, unsupervised, with the stack of pending files you were working to get approved before they walked in. When you come back, you place the files inside your desk drawer before touring your community. If this sounds like a typical day at the office, you may need to tighten up on your Risk Management Skills! After attending this year’s recent Redbook Seminar, many of you are aware that Risk Management was a hot topic! Since we require such personal information from our applicants, such as address, DL number and Social Security, our applicants can be at risk of identity theft if we are not consistently handling their files with secured systems in place. No file should ever be left unattended, even for a moment! It would be entirely too easy for anyone to flip open an unattended file and snap a picture of the application with their smart phone and gain full access to someone’s personal information, even if you had left them for a short period of time…such as to pull keys from the key box. We are required to keep personal information about customers and employees safe and secure. It is advised to keep any confidential information under lock and key. Meaning that any information, such as files, must be stored in a secured, locked space when not in use (bins on walls…not secure!). Any information that is accessible on a computer, must be password protected as well. Federal Law requires that any records that contain personal records, must be destroyed in one of the following ways: burn, pulverize, cross-cut shredders, permanently destroy or erase electronic media (deleting a computer file is not sufficient) or hire a (reliable) third party to dispose of business records. If you have any additional questions regarding Risk Management, feel free to speak with your RPM or contact the Training Department.
Posted on: Tue, 04 Mar 2014 04:48:41 +0000
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