Past, Present and Future of Background Screening Company’s

Background investigations have been around a long time. Most of us are familiar with the arduous and extensive process that individuals who apply for "top secret" clearance or law enforcement go through. This process can take several months to be completed. In the past, only government, law enforcement and military agencies subjected applicants to this type of background check.

However, in today's fast-paced, Internet-centric, security-focused and litigious business environment, background screening has become a norm that is part of the dating and hiring landscape.

Advances in integrating information systems are creating the capability to access business and personal information easily through one source, which is transforming background screening systems that have historically been totally incompatible.

Impact of Information Technology

With the Internet being woven into the fiber of how both our business and personal lives are conducted, background screening has been significantly impacted by information technologies. Much of this has been driven by the need for speed and access to multiple data sources. Our goal is to provide a customized solution incorporating at least criminal, public records and real property searches.

With the recent changes in the political wind on the use of law enforcement databases, background checking companies can now better understand, use and integrate the access and data into their product offerings. We see this as an opportunity to solve problems and provide solutions by better utilizing access to these same national databases.

Another positive outcome related to accessibility of data could be a more cooperative nature between law enforcement agencies and the private and public sectors.

"This will create new and better sources of information and quicker access for our customers.

We also believe that our present and future customers are going to increasingly want the ability to customize reports for specific reasons.

Clients will want more online access to the various customized reports and more freedom to order these same reports from a screening company's Web site.

The trend toward online access to court, criminal, real property and public records reports presents a major convenience and advantage to our customers.

Technology will affect the industry more in 2005 than ever before. More and more customers will be requiring access to online searches and thus background screening services will have to allow for fasterspeed of processing with less human intervention.

DPL-Surveillance-Equipment.com sees future trends emerging in various areas such as: reported workplace crime, safety and threat incidents; geographic crime vulnerability data; threat proximity identifying terrorist and crime targets; and homeland security information.

The challenge of background screening company’s will focus on how to bring screening searches into the mainstream of personal, HR/employment processes and systems so that security, HR and management will be able to easily view relevant information as an integral part of their professional and personal information management systems. The days of the standalone background screening systems appear to be numbered.

One of the essential ingredients of an effective and valid corporate background check is being able to positively identify the person you are screening. False negatives lead to a myriad of problems for employers and can end up in costly lawsuits. A recent case illustrates this point:

In less than three years, James R. Gorman became manager of $100 million in client accounts for The Vanguard Group. When Gorman's Pennsylvania insurance license came up for renewal, though, the company found a problem when performing his background check. Gorman had pleaded guilty to loan and credit card fraud. He was a convicted felon. So Vanguard did what any financial services company would do: fire him.

There was just one problem: They got the wrong guy. The James R. Gorman who worked for Vanguard had a different Social Security number, date of birth and address than the James R. Gorman whose conviction record had been unearthed.

Companies must ensure they have a positive match from screening data, or other costly problems will occur. This is when the due diligence of having well-trained internal investigators or selecting a high-quality firm to conduct your screening truly pays off.

We can be virtually assured that technological advances will not only continue, but will likely do so at an accelerated pace. Thus, firms involved with background screening need to get prepared for the ride because lots of changes are likely to be coming their way via the technology super-highway.