The IT Security Stack for Title Professionals

You don’t have to be a security pro to be concerned by the headlines about businesses losing thousands or millions of dollars in the wake of cybercrime attacks. Unfortunately, that's just the beginning, as we don’t always know the impact on these businesses' reputations and customer trust. 

According to the FBI IC3's 2023 Internet Crimes Report, ransomware attack losses have grown to over $59.6M. While ransomeware is significant threat, are still many othercyber threats that real estate professionals need to be ready for. 

So what threats do you need to be aware of? Being an IT expert is not your full-time job, so CertifID compiled the steps a real estate law firm or title company can take to protect your business, reputation, and clients.

The biggest threats to your business

Ransomware may be grabbing most of the headlines, but there are many other risks you need to know about to protect your business and clients. Below are just a few of the most prominent to be aware of. 

• Malware: Short for “malicious software,” this threat introduces code designed to steal, damage, or destroy data or systems. The most well-known form today is, in fact, ransomware.
• Insider threats: This is when an employee or other person with authorized access to your systems knowingly or inadvertently enables an attack or damage to an organization’s network, data, or systems.
• Business email compromise (BEC): BEC occurs when a cybercriminal gains access to a legitimate account to redirect, manipulate, or delete messages and facilitate fraud.
• Wire fraud: This is when a scammer knowingly provides false wiring instructions by email, phone, or mail to manipulate the destination of a wire payment.

Although the approaches that cybercriminals can take to threaten real estate professionals vary, each of the threats attempts to take advantage of one or more of the following elements:

• A lack of awareness from your partners or clients about the prevalence of cyber threats, how they work, and the steps to prevent them.
• The growth in remote work, which increases the amount of communication and verification conducted digitally.
• The time pressure and large sums of money involved in real estate closings.
• The relationship-driven nature of real estate, which increases the risk of social engineering-based threats.

The result? Cybercriminals can successfully inject malicious code into otherwise innocuous-looking files and attachments, perform social engineering or phishing to gain unauthorized access to your email accounts and systems, and monitor activity from inside your network.

In fact, cybercriminals spend an average of 11 days after breaching a network learning about its layout, security products, and potential value before they attack.

Steps you can take

You can’t control whether your business gets targeted by a cybercriminal. However, you can control how strong your security posture is so that you’re harder to attack. It’s all about making the cyber criminal’s job harder - so that they move away from you as quickly as possible.

Because threats can vary, it’s important to think holistically about what’s included in your IT security stack. Here are key elements to consider based on your business and the maturity of your security strategy

• Physical security
• Email security
• Identity and access management
• Endpoint security
• Wire fraud and transaction security
• Data loss protection
• Managed detection and response
• Network and cloud security 

Get the cybersecurity resources you need

Ultimately, no cybersecurity strategy is failproof. Taking the steps to protect your business as your digital footprint evolves can help frustrate criminals enough that they move to the next target. That means better security and resilience for your business.

Want to learn more? Download this complimentary resource, The IT Security Stack for Title Professionals—a short, practical guide to the biggest computer security threats and key defenses written for non-techies.