Avue announces new identity theft protection for federal subscribers

Avue Technologies Corp., which provides human resources software to federal agencies, will begin providing employees of its client agencies identity theft protection free of charge this summer.

"Every employee that has an account on Avue is going to be able to sign up for an account with LifeLock," said Todd Oliver, Avue's chief security officer, during a lunch in Washington last Thursday. LifeLock is a private company that provides an array of identity theft protection services. "We take this as an extreme responsibility of Avue's."

The program will roll out in July at the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight and at other Avue client agencies in August, Oliver said. Employees at those agencies will be covered for free; LifeLock will offer discounted subscription rates for employees' spouses and children. Those subscriptions will stay constant if employees move from one Avue-served agency to another. If employees leave federal service, their LifeLock subscriptions will expire one year from the day their subscription began.

Gary Woods, vice president for business development at LifeLock, said identity theft is a growing problem.

"You're 25 times more likely to have your identity stolen than your car," Woods said. "On average, the financial cost is not the major part of this problem. The average loss is $1,500 to $3,000. The real problem is if you become a victim, you continue to have your identity used against you, and it will take between 175 and 300 hours to get your life back in order."

In addition to the identity theft initiative, Avue is working on a series of human resources refresher courses for clients, said Linda Rix, Avue's chief executive officer. Those classes will be available free of charge to its current clients and will include subjects such as position classification, performance management and reduction in force.

"We've got a lot of very new people in federal HR, so we're setting up an entire curriculum in that," Rix said.

Rix also invited the attendees to join Avue in its partnership with the American Legion to help veterans find jobs in the federal government by joining monthly recruiting sessions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

"Vets tend to be employed in the lowest-paying jobs [that] the government has," Rix said. "They have skills that are transferable to higher-paying positions. We're concerned about the quality of their employment and the speed of their employment. If they can't secure employment almost immediately, they get some money, they have a little bit of runway, but it runs out very quickly."