The real estate industry is often omitted in conversations about data security, but it is one of the most vulnerable sectors with potentially most devastating consequences for companies and their clients globally. As stated in Occupational Fraud 2022: A Report to the Nations 2022 by ACFE, the real estate industry suffered the highest median loss of USD 435,000. This number makes real estate an absolute leader in possible damage. For instance, frequent victims of cybercrime, such as financial and government organizations, risk to lose “only” USD 100,000 and 150,000 per case accordingly.

Renters in search for somewhere to live, are asked for immense amounts of information: identification documents, background check, bank statements, employment and rental history, etc. Property owners or real estate agency representatives require this information not to get in trouble with fraudsters. The more data they collect, the fewer surprises are there for them. At the same time, the more data they’ve gathered, the riskier the business is. 

Losing control over sensitive real estate data is a crime itself, and it may lead to a chain of further offenses, such as using stolen identification documents or credit card details for fraudulent activities by third-parties, applying for loan, accessing retirement funds, and many more.

The consequences of a major data breach can potentially sink a company, and it only takes one careless or fraudulent realtor to let cybercrime happen.

Data regulations in real estate

Like other industries, real estate companies must adhere to data regulations, required in their region. Organizations need to review their cybersecurity and privacy policies, and should comply with the general recommendation: to collect and store what is absolutely necessary for only as long as required.

The Federal Trade Commission’s Principles of Data Protection (United States): these guidelines encourage companies to adapt to the increasing use of digital tools.  The FTC urges understanding what data, where and for what reason is stored, who can access it, how is it transmitted. The regulation also requires having a response plan for the case of data loss.

Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (United States) primarily covers financial institution, but also regulates safety of consumers’ “nonpublic information” used in real estate services, such as Social Security numbers, other data and history. GLBA’s violation can lead to civil monetary penalties of between USD 5,000 to USD 1 million per day.

Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 (United States) in particular calls for taking reasonable measures to adequately dispose of sensitive information, thus protecting it from unauthorized access and use.

General Data Protection Regulation (European Union) requests to securely handle real estate data with “appropriate technical and organizational measures”. Personal data must be accessed only by employees who need it.

Data Loss Prevention for real estate

Zecurion Next Generation DLP will allow real estate companies to find vulnerabilities, take control over insider threats, disclose fraudulent schemes, understand whether an employee is misusing his position/access rights, monitor the high-risk group, and review all employee-related processes within the company.

Here are the tools to cover most customer use cases for compliance and ultimate data protection, provided by Zecurion:

1. Data identification and classification for files and traffic – to put data in order and control;
2. Forensic and retrospective analysis with investigation and reporting capabilities – to know context, not only events;
3. More than 10 content detection techniques, Bayesian probabilistic analysis method with dictionaries, Support Vector machine learning algorithm, etc. – to prevent fraudulent activities instead of combating results;
4. Report customization capabilities – to adjust what you need to supervise in the first place;
5. Unified employee profile section with key statistics regarding the user – for people-oriented instead of data-oriented approach;
6. Policy oriented deployment – to be able to broadcast created policy across any selected target channels.