MWSUG 2013 Experts Solution Panel

Monday, 3:30pm - 5:00pm

Moderators: Matthew Karafa, George Hurley
Experts: Art Carpenter, Ben Cochran, Ron Fehd, Andrew Kuligowski, Kirk Paul Lafler, Art Tabachneck

The Problem

Three years ago, the law firm of Dewey, Chedham, and Howe just lost a disk containing 1,000,000 customers’ identifying information. In the intervening years, about 20% of those individuals have had their identities taken or otherwise misused as a result. Since resources are tight, and identity theft is a large potential risk we want to minimize this risk, DC&H are trying to focus prevention efforts. Based on what is out there from the US Government, what areas can DC&H target to address the real and potential risks of identity theft? Assume all records come from the MWSUG region (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin). How do the stolen identities relate to the demographics of the region? Is there a way to predict who is at the biggest risk of Identity Theft? What areas (demographic, geographic, etc) should DC&H target for interventions to prevent future theft based on what they’ve experienced in the past?

Data to answer these questions may be pulled from:

• The List of potential customers that was lost (included in linked ZIP file)
• A database of information about their Banks (included in linked ZIP file)
• Freely available web-based data like the US Census Data Website

The resulting analysis data set should include:

• Demographics (e.g. Age, race, gender, other relevant demographic data)
• Socioeconomic data (based on Geographic region and/or employment level)
• Geographic Data (e.g. Degree of Urban-ness of residence, Median HH Income, % Unemployment)
• Other: (e.g Crime Rates by State)

Tools available:

Base SAS, SAS/STAT, SAS/SQL, SAS Macro Language, any readily available programs on most users' desktops (e.g. Word and Excel, a browser of choice, etc).