How to Educate Teams About Wire Fraud

Real estate transactions are faster and more efficient than ever thanks to technological advancements made in the last decade. The ever changing nature of this industry means that you need to continually educate yourself and your team on how to spot and prevent new types of real estate fraud. 

In 2023, the average impact of a data breach increased 13.4% for businesses with fewer than 500 employees (IBM 2023 Cost of a Data Breach report). Security tools like CertifID can help bring down the number of data breaches caused by software failure, but they can’t account for human error.

Your team is often the first line of defense in what are called social engineering attacks, or the various techniques fraudsters use to trick authorized parties in real estate transactions into sharing confidential information or performing an illegitimate action. With real estate fraud on the rise, it’s crucial to train your team to spot social engineering tactics and stop cybercriminals in their tracks. 

Use these best practices as a blueprint to create your firm’s comprehensive training plan.

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Table of Contents

• ‍Perform Phishing Tests‍
• Prevent Social Engineering with Digital Hygiene Policies‍
• Mitigate Risk with Data Sharing Protocols‍
• Stop Brute Force Attacks With Strong, Unique Passwords‍
• Secure Accounts by Enabling Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)‍
• Wire Fraud Security: A Team Effort‍
• Make Cybersecurity Training a Regular Part of Operations

Perform Firm-Wide Phishing Tests

Email phishing is a common method fraudsters use to steal personal financial information. Phishing is when criminals send emails to as many people as possible to capture their account credentials or personal information, such as bank or credit card details.

Given that communication in the real estate industry is becoming increasingly digital, it’s paramount that your workforce recognize the tell-tale signs of fraudulent impersonation. 

To determine your team’s baseline level of fraud awareness, try conducting an unannounced, firm-wide phishing test with a third party like PhishMe or Wuvavi. Simulated testing can be a great strategy to pinpoint and rectify your company’s weaknesses before a cybercriminal can exploit them. These services are more cost-effective and less devastating than learning the hard way, with the average cyberattack in 2023 costing business $4.75M (IBM 2023 Cost of a Data Breach report). If you’re not ready to invest in training yet, you can also test your employees’ skills with Google’s free phishing quiz.

Prevent Social Engineering with Digital Hygiene Policies

While property listing sites like the MLS are a great way to increase awareness of your business, they also pose a threat to your firm’s security and make it easier for cybercriminals to attack. They don’t need to actually breach your digital defenses via hacking; they can simply use your publicly-available contact information to perform business email compromise.

To prevent social engineering, employees must practice good digital hygiene. Limit the amount of personal information that is publicly available, like email addresses, phone numbers, and other identifying information. Instead, try using a contact form that doesn’t reveal your email address. If fraudsters can’t access this information, they can’t weaponize it in phishing emails.

Mitigate Risk with Data Sharing Protocols

To prevent cybercriminals from stealing data and hijacking transactions, encourage your team to never share personal or login information via email, electronic documents, or third-party sites. Establish a firm-wide data protocol that uses secure communication platforms like CertifID, and help your team understand the risks of not following protocol. 

Even though communicating via email may seem more convenient, the lack of end-to-end encryption makes it easy for cybercriminals to steal data and hijack transactions. Opening unexpected and unsolicited email attachments may also threaten your firm’s operations. While most fraudsters are after user credentials, they might also attach malware to emails that, when downloaded, install on devices and/or networks to extract sensitive information and facilitate illicit transactions. 

To prevent these attacks, it’s imperative to establish and enforce firm-wide data sharing protocols. Following protocol can help keep your firm’s information safe, as can security tools like CertifID, the most secure way for title agents and attorneys to send, collect, and confirm wire instructions with clients. 

Stop Brute Force Attacks With Strong, Unique Passwords

Fraudsters attempt to steal user credentials through brute force attacks. Using scripts, they try combinations of usernames and passwords until they successfully log in.

To make it more difficult to hack into your accounts, your team should create complex passwords with a mix of upper- and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters.

To decrease the chances of this happening to you or your team, every account should have a unique password. In the unfortunate event that you do get hacked, cybercriminals won’t be able to compromise all of your accounts.

Generating and remembering distinct passwords, however, can be incredibly difficult. That’s why we recommend you use a password manager like LastPass or 1Password. These add-ons not only manage all your passwords, but also encrypt them for safer storage.

Secure Accounts by Enabling Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)

Two-factor authentication (2FA) is another way to secure user accounts. 2FA requires account owners to enter both a password and an additional piece of information, like a unique code, to log in. Even if a hacker knows the username and password, they can’t log in without the third authentication detail.  

Most social networks and email providers make it easy to turn on 2FA. Google Account, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram all allow users to turn on 2FA using a variety of methods, including SMS, call verification, security keys, prompts, and third-party apps.

Wire Fraud Security: A Team Effort

Navigating the threat of real estate fraud can be incredibly challenging and confusing. That’s why it’s imperative that your employees view your IT team as trusted advisors. As the first line of defense, it’s up to your employees to triage potential security threats, and communicate them to tech experts. When questions are encouraged and welcomed, it creates a safer environment for everyone. 

Without a culture of trust, your team won’t feel empowered to share information that could play a critical role in exposing your systems’ vulnerabilities, hindering any effort to prevent, stop, or reverse real estate fraud attacks.

Make Cybersecurity Training a Regular Part of Operations 

Cybersecurity training should be a regular part of your firm’s operations. As the technological landscape evolves, continual cybersecurity education will empower your team to detect and protect against real estate fraud attempts. 

Your company’s first line of defense should be your people. The second should be a cybersecurity tool like CertifID. Request a demo to find out which of our security solutions would be a good addition to your firm’s anti-fraud measures.