Integrated Security Services, Inc., New York

In a Digital World, Your PI Must Be Licensed AND Experienced

03 Apr
Jan Kromer/flickr

As the rate of cybercrime continues to rise, background checks are more essential than ever. As such, private investigators are expanding their services to the digital world, ensuring that small businesses know the person they interviewed is the person they’re actually hiring.

Checks and Balances

Prior to the recent internet boom that turned so many industries upside down, background checks were thought to be reserved for the utterly paranoid. But in today’s world, cybercrime is escalating at record levels, whether it be in terms of identity theft, stalking, or harassment.

Gone are the days when checks are for only overly nervous meddlers — suddenly, such precautions are the key to avoiding lawsuits or simply hiring the wrong person.

Better Safe than Sorry

If your company or organization is looking to hire a potential candidate, a background check is a crucial step to take towards avoiding potential liabilities.

In the end, it’s always better to be safe than sorry — while an organization should be able to solve the problem of hiring someone less qualified than expected, they’ll never survive the downfall of taking on an employee with a history of deceit or violence.

Taking the precaution to enlist a background check is a decision you’ll never regret. While such early action may seem alarmist, operating with preliminary wariness is what helps you avoid a disastrous situation down the line.

It is important, however, to make sure you go about your check the right way. As identity theft expert Robert Siciliano notes on LinkedIn, “As crucial as this practice is…it’s full of landmines.”

Contrary to what you may have heard from ads online or spam emails, a simple database search will not do nearly enough to cover your bases. On top of being highly reductive and overlooking key steps of the process, this method lacks the most important tool of any private investigation — the intuitive reason of the human mind.

Amidst countless statistics, codes, and other bits of information, you will need an experienced investigator to piece these two-dimensional elements into a cohesive story. And oftentimes, a simple search result won’t yield much at all — flaws within the system can prevent you from actually seeing if someone has a criminal history, including jail time or a record of sexual assault.

Who to Hire

Given the complications of the background check process, you’ll want to work with someone who is timely, meticulous, and able to interpret and validate data. Despite the apparent ease of doing so, many wide-reaching national databases or software platforms misrepresent their actual capabilities.

When it comes to background checks, it’s just better in the long run to uncover all available information — however limited — then walk away with a false sense of security and end up bearing the consequences. And in the end, whether your case is big or small, you need the assurance that it’s being handled in a serious manner by a licensed professional who really cares.

With this attentive presence and personalized experience as your goal, there’s no better way to reach it than hiring Integrated Security Services. Since 1994, Integrated has worked to serve and protect a wide range of clients.

In taking full advantage of scientific progress within the field, our private investigators strive for the best results, working with an integrity that keeps your ideals and perspective in mind.

Our background screen services are engineered to be extensive, nuanced, and detail-oriented. And with an average turnaround of 2-3 days, we’ll quickly affirm or refute whether your latest hire is really the same person you interviewed.

We seek to save you time and money while helping you uphold the integrity of your organization. In a world where nothing seems certain, you can count on Integrated to help you tell the difference between fact and fiction.