No matter in which field you work, protecting your client data should be among your top priorities. There is nothing worse than losing your clients’ trust, and as a result, your good reputation, due to careless handling of your clients’ sensitive data. And it makes no difference whether the data is personal, financial or any other category that may be misused by a third party against your client or yourself. In such case, the damages may reach astronomical sums because an identity theft can easily result in a major loss of assets.
What consequent risks do you need to consider as a real estate broker? A real estate broker’s job requires handling clients’ personal and financial data, whether it entails basic data, including the SSN, or mortgage underwriting documents, including details of the client’s financial health, assets, history, etc.
Is it appropriate to send the above mentioned data via e-mail? E-mail is without a doubt a fast, simple, and efficient form of communication, but simultaneously a type of communication that is quite easy to “eavesdrop” if necessary. A majority of e-mail service and custom server solution security is not on such a level as to prevent, for instance, the government security agencies from “hacking” a specific e-mail communication and obtaining any necessary data from it. And bear in mind that if the government agencies have this capability, so has almost anyone else with the necessary resources.
The same situation pertains to any public cloud storage and secure web interface for data exchange. These data sharing forms have become very popular during recent years, but we have already witnessed many cases when the data was breached and misused. Let us mention, for example, the leak of 7 million Dropbox cloud storage passwords or the theft of tens of celebrities’ photos from Apple iCloud. If the data is not fully secure with the appropriate encryption, the only defense against its misuse is an access to the actual cloud storage. It does not matter whether the attacker uses phishing, brute force or simply tries to guess the username and password. If they want to access the data, they will most likely succeed, even with the latter method which may sound entirely absurd, though it is not. Many people have yet to learn how to use complex passwords and change them in certain time intervals, despite the fact that correct online account password rules are so simple.
What do you do if such a situation arises and how do you assure your client and yourself that the data is secure? The solution is data encryption, optimally with your own encryption key available only to yourself and your client, no one else. As a result, even in the case someone else accesses your data, they cannot misuse it without the required encryption key.
Will your clients appreciate such a security level for their sensitive data? Try Safety4Data for free and offer this service as an added bonus to your already high quality services.