The EBI Integrity Advantage
EBI understands that you require background screening services that are fast, accurate, and affordable. At EBI, we raise the bar and deliver these service needs along with compliance, accountability, integrity, and an overwhelming concern for the confidentiality of your applicants.
EBI does not cut corners by providing inaccurate or unconfirmed electronic data; nor do we off-shore your candidates’ confidential information or use home-based contract workers to reduce our costs associated with your employment screening program and reference verifications. We refuse to jeopardize your next new hire to the potential of identity theft. The integrity of EBI and the clients we serve is too valuable for us to take these risks just to save a few dollars.
Our values are communicated clearly through our full accreditation by the NAPBS (National Association of Professional Background Screeners). Our commitment to provide superior processes, protocols, and service above industry standards and beyond client expectations is unwavering.
When you are evaluating a company to perform background screening on your behalf, be sure to see how they measure up to EBI’s Integrity Advantages.
Accreditation - Background Screening To The Highest Standards
EBI is one of only a few background screening firms in the world that have earned the distinguished seal of Accreditation through the National Association of Professional Background Screeners (NAPBS).
Each year U.S. employers, organizations, and governmental agencies request millions of consumer reports to assist with critical business decisions involving background screening. Background screening reports, which are categorized as consumer reports, are currently regulated at both the federal and state level. Since its inception, NAPBS has believed that there is a strong need for a singular cohesive industry standard and therefore created the Background Screening Agency Accreditation Program (BSAAP). Governed by a strict professional standard composed of requirements and measurements, the BSAAP is positioned to become a widely recognized seal of approval that brings national recognition to background screening organizations (also referred to as Consumer Reporting Agencies). This recognition will stand as the industry “seal” representing a background screening organization’s commitment to excellence, accountability, high professional standards, and continued institutional improvement.
The NAPBS Background Screening Credentialing Council (BSCC) oversees the application process and is the governing accreditation body that ensures the background screening organizations seeking accreditation meet or exceed a measurable standard of competence. To become accredited, EBI passed a rigorous on-site audit of our policies, procedures, and best practices as they relate to fifty-eight background screening industry standards in the following six critical areas:
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Researcher, data, and verification standards Product and service standards Overall business practices
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EBI Does NOT Off-Shore Personally Identifiable Information -
Does Your Provider?
EBI is a proud member of Concerned CRAs. We are committed to the future of the employment background screening industry, as we believe that certain data practices employed by some firms that operate in our industry place our profession, clients, and their applicants at risk.
Because of the lack of controls as well as environmental, political, economic, and social risks associated with off-shoring consumer information, EBI does not store or send Personally Identifiable Information (PII) data outside the U.S. or its territories for processing, customer service, verification products, the preparation of a background report, or for any other reason.
In addition, EBI’s Verification Specialists and Customer Care Representatives are professionally trained employees located in our operations center in Owings Mills, Maryland. EBI does not utilize home-based contractors or an independent service provider to conduct domestic reference and verification checks, nor do we outsource these services or any other element of your background screening program, including customer service, overseas. This is done to protect the PII of your candidate from potential identity theft and fraud.
Responsible Record Retrieval and Electronic Data Usage
The use of screen-scraping, web harvesting, or electronic court direct methods has become a popular trend in the screening industry for some firms that continue to look for ways to cut costs and deliver information quickly with no regard to quality, integrity, or compliance. These electronic processes are plagued with inaccuracies and drawbacks in several ways:
- Often times, court-specific abbreviations, cryptic codes, and other jurisdictional shorthand are used to condense the length of criminal records and information returned to the screening provider. An electronic system does not have the ability to discern what the full scope of the information being reported should be, thus causing information gaps, inaccuracies in data, missing dispositions, etc., which leaves the information harvested virtually useless and non-FCRA compliant.
- Other issues of expertise exist in terms of the length and scope ordered for a criminal background search which an electronic process has no way to determine. The information available can vary depending on how far back criminal records are stored for public access along with how often records are updated to the website. System updates can be several days or months apart leaving information accessed online outdated and inaccurate.
- Many jurisdictions only provide online access to certain charge levels, such as high-level misdemeanors or felony convictions only. This leaves critical records undetected in many courts.
- An electronic extraction cannot compare to the same information, historical and present, that a trained investigator conducting research within official court records could uncover.
- There is sporadic or no access to certain online records, counties, and other jurisdictions that leaves the use of this process very limited.
- Many records are only located physically within the courthouse. Records within the scope of reportability are often archived by other storage means, such as microfiche or hardcopy storage, and not available online.
- There is no advanced notification to vendors who use screen-scraping when scraping algorithms change, and changes can occur on a frequent basis. Remember, government agencies rarely even know scraping occurs much less who is scraping court records to notify them of programming changes.
- Subject identifiers are limited in many court jurisdictions as they have been removed due to concerns of identity theft, which leaves companies that use scraping methodology with virtually useless and incomplete information.
- There is limited or no ability to discern from common or like names and name variations, which will result in the loss of capturing critical criminal information that can only be researched and determined by human review.
In addition to these screen-scraping and electronic court direct methods, some national background screening firms sell "national criminal records databases" to employers without appropriate safeguards to ensure that the information they are delivering is accurate and up to date per the requirements of the FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act). We believe that criminal records databases are valuable sources of information if they are used in a responsible and legally compliant manner. We are concerned that these practices do not appropriately protect your applicants from avoidable harm. In addition, employers are placed at increased risk of litigation and public relations problems when their background screening partners employ these practices.
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