The cyber threat landscape is evolving, and hackers are continuously attempting new techniques to access your systems and data. In your real estate company, members of your team or even third-party organizations can be susceptible to emails or social campaigns that seem benign, but give assess to hackers who can infiltrate your system undetected.
Hackers target both business-to-business and business-to-consumer relationships, with different risks, threats and avenues of attack for each. If your business is customer facing, consumers may not be as mature with their cyber protection, making them easier targets. Once the hackers get a foothold in, there are numerous ways they can monetize data. Direct consumer interaction can present additional risks for many businesses. If your business or your customers’ email is compromised, misappropriated payments, receipts, or any unauthorized online management can put many of your clients as well as your organization at risk. However, regardless of your company’s services, be sure you have the right threat protection and detection in place.
To ensure you have the right cyber protection for your specific needs, evaluate and measure the maturity of the cyber-governance program. You need to have a risk assessment and methodology where you can continue to make sure you are maintaining best practices, and are reactionary in searching for areas of risk throughout the real estate business life cycle. Monitor your data that resides in any cloud environment or with third-party vendors in your workflow process; if they get attacked, your data may be at risk.
You may need a combination of products and processes in place to best protect your company from cyber threats. There are a range of controls and practices an organization can implement to mitigate cybersecurity risk, such as cybersecurity and vulnerability assessments, penetration testing, incident response assessments, employee awareness training, and cyber insurance to name a few. Understanding the threat landscape that affects your specific industry and situation will help you choose the best action plan. Inventory your assets and practice the fundamentals of data management, considering where all your important data resides both internal and external will help define the boundaries of the protection needed. Allocate the appropriate resources based on your cyber risk assessment process to spread your resources to your weakest areas with the greatest risk.
Cherry Bekaert’s dedicated cybersecurity team can help you safeguard your company’s data and financial resources from potential cyber-attacks and mitigate your risk.
