QUESTION
How is the Department of Social Services addressing identity theft prevention and improving security measures?
2:51:39
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111 sec
The Department of Social Services is implementing fraud detection mechanisms, enhancing privacy guidelines, and planning improvements with external offices to prevent identity theft and improve security measures.
- Commissioner Park is deeply concerned about the situation and stresses the ongoing commitment to client privacy.
- Fraud detection methods and privacy guidelines are being enhanced, including collaboration with the Office of Technology and Innovation (OTI).
- Plans to work with the Department of Investigation and the district attorney’s office to enhance processes and security are underway.
- Council Member Stevens emphasizes the importance of trust in the system and seeks innovative solutions for better information security.
Althea Stevens
2:51:39
What are you guys doing to prevent this from happening?
2:51:42
Happening again?
2:51:43
And what are some of the steps that you're implementing now after this has broken?
Molly Wasow Park
2:51:48
Yeah.
2:51:49
Let me start by saying, horrified by this situation and these 4 individuals do not represent the 12,000 employees who work hard on behalf of low income New Yorkers every day.
2:52:00
So and I'm very grateful for the district attorney for the thorough investigation that they did.
2:52:06
So we do take our our client's privacy very seriously.
2:52:10
We have a number of mechanisms and and fraud prevention.
2:52:14
We have a number of mechanisms in place where we do a series of fraud detection mechanisms, looking at people's benefits, looking to see if there's any pattern, you know, using data to see if there's any patterns of of inappropriate benefit use.
2:52:30
We have privacy guidelines and have been enhancing those in conjunction with the with OTI to make sure that we are putting all the protections in place to make sure that systems can't be hacked that only eligible people have access to data.
2:52:47
I would say clearly from this, there indicates that we have work to do, so we will be following with Department of Investigation on the district attorney's office to make any changes in process that that seem appropriate.
Althea Stevens
2:52:58
Yeah.
2:52:58
No.
2:52:58
Thank you.
2:52:59
And and I say all that to just say because, you know, obviously, there's a number of things going on in the city.
2:53:04
And these last couple of months were fraudulent and people losing the trust in in the systems that we put in place.
2:53:09
And just thinking about, you know, with all of those things, this is still even happening.
2:53:13
And so thinking about what are some new innovative things that we can do, and even on the conversation around technology, how are we using those kinda help and support some of this work.
2:53:21
So definitely would love to continue and have conversations about what we're doing to make sure we're securing and keeping everyone's information as safe as possible as we're moving forward.
Molly Wasow Park
2:53:29
Appreciate that.
2:53:30
Thank you.
