While most people think about security in the traditional sense of protecting physical assets, there is an ever-growing and potentially more damaging threat to consumers these days in the form of identity theft. According to an identity theft survey conducted by the Federal Trade Commission, approximately 8.3 million Americans in 2005 said they discovered that that were victims of identity theft in one form or another.

Since that time, cases of identity theft have only continued to grow. According to a report issued earlier this year by financial consulting firm Javelin Research and Strategy, more than 11 million Americans in 2009 were victims of identity theft. The 2010 Identity Fraud Survey further noted that the average identity theft victim spent 21 hours and $373 of their own money fixing the damage.

The problem has become so pervasive that many in the security dealer community have begun offering identity theft prevention and recovery solutions as a part of their monitoring package. With dealers always exploring new ways to create recurring monthly revenue, some see the move to providing identity theft solutions as a natural evolution of the market.

Available Solutions

One company that is offering a suite of identity and computer security solutions through the dealer channel is Ocenture. Ocenture not only offers identity theft protection and recovery services, but also a host of other products including Internet security software, crime and sexual predator monitoring, family protection software, online data backup, password management, computer theft protection, and remote technical services.

Ocenture CEO Adrian Sedlin said that the company identified the residential security market in 2006 as being an emerging vertical for identity theft solutions. He added that they have been developing products for the market over the past two and a half years. The company officially announced at ESX last month that it has partnered with Pennsylvania-based Guardian Protection Services.

Sedlin said that he thinks it makes sense for dealers to offer Ocenture's solution as a complimentary service as either part of bundle or as up-sell or cross-sell.

"We had a couple of fundamental observations about the industry. The industry has historically been about access control, perimeter security and doors and windows," he said. "If you go to the ISC show, you see 999 booths dedicated to hardware. What we find interesting is that people in the industry ask the question of how can we use technology to better secure doors and windows? The question we feel the industry has not identified is how has technology changed the things that we need to secure?"