Real Estate Companies Must Prepare for Cyberattacks

While cyberattacks on retailers, financial institutions and other consumer-facing organizations are known to be common occurrences, real estate companies may be slower to realize that they, too, can make attractive targets for hackers. And because these companies may handle large transactions and hold stores of clients’ personal information, the potential impact of a data breach can be huge. Global Security partner Brian Finch tells Law360 that it is important for real estate companies to accept the inevitability of an attack.

“There are too many ways in, it’s too cheap to do, and the return on investment for the criminals is too high to expect you’ll never suffer an attack, much less a successful one,” he said.

Finch also says the most critical step a real estate company can take is to develop an internal security plan that includes adaptable processes, since technology and hackers’ capabilities are constantly evolving.

“The threat advances so quickly. We cannot keep up with the pace of innovation and the speed of development of cyberattackers,” he said. “There are a lot of good defenses out there, but the hackers are much faster and much more creative. It’s more about having a process for constantly monitoring the threat and being able to adjust defenses in a quick fashion.”