One of the most valuable assets that your business holds right now is data. Personal information belonging to your customers and indeed of your employees has become a commodity of cyber criminals over the past number of years. Personal data obtained by cyber criminals gets used for ulterior motives such as scamming a victim for money, using the personal information for ransom or for selling the data on the dark web.
There have been an increase of 54% in data breaches over the last year and over 4 billion records compromised in 2019
Data Protection is key for your business
Protecting the data that your business contains is paramount in the future. Should a data breach happen to your company, it could be catastrophic.
If a data breach happens to your company, it will suffer through:
- Loss of trust
- Loss of revenue
Why the Real Estate Sector is prime target
Real estate companies are going to be a prime target for data breaches in the years to come, simply because of the level of information that held by realtors. Realtors hold personal information including names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers and in some cases social security numbers. All this information is so valuable for cyber criminals to take advantage.
Another reason for hackers to target realtors is because their clientel have capital. With those who are purchasing properties, it is clear that they have capital or have access to capital to purchase real estate. This makes this type of clientel more appealling to target for hackers as they are likely to exploit cash for them.
What to do to protect your data
Here are some of the things that you can do to protect your data:
Passwords
Be sure to change up your passwords on a regular basis. If you use the same password over and over you are putting your own data and the data held by your business at risk. If one of those sites are hacked and passwords are compromised, then all your other accounts could also be hacked.
Dont use passwords that are personal to you, like a family members name, or pet name as your password. Remember to strengthen it up with numbers and special characters.
Become cyber aware
If you want the best for your business, you should take precautions to stay safe online. One of the best things that you can do is to stay cyber security aware. Try a cyber awareness course that will provide you and your employees with the information that you need to keep the hackers away.
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