What are companies doing to protect employees against identity theft? Fifty-four percent of human resource professionals surveyed by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) said they have a written privacy policy safeguarding employee data.

Other findings:

• 95 percent lock up employee files and limit access to them.
• 49 percent conduct background checks on employees who have access to employee files.
• 24 percent educate employees on fraud prevention.
• 21 percent have a company policy on what to do in the event employee information is compromised.
• 2 percent contract with an outside firm that helps employees who are victims of identity theft.

The online Identity Survey responses consisted of 419 randomly selected HR professionals.