It's that time of year again! FNF Family of Companies – National Agency Division is once again a Champion Organization by the National CyberSecurity Alliance.
Let's kick off National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM) with our first educational video and email about mortgage payoff wire fraud. This year’s focus is to “See Yourself in Cyber,” and we wanted to focus on mortgage payoff wire fraud because of its danger to title agents
It's no secret that wire fraud has been a hot topic. Over the past couple of years, the type of wire fraud has evolved to also include mortgage payoff wire fraud which can be devastating to a title agency due to the size of the loss. As will be detailed in week 2, there probably is not any insurance coverage available for the loss.
Join Michele Green as she discusses steps your agency can implement to Create – Confirm – Check to avoid mortgage payoff wire fraud. After her video, be sure to review the information on Create – Confirm – Check in your agency to determine what procedures you should take to protect your escrow accounts.
In week 2 of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM), Michele Green will continue the mortgage payoff wire fraud discussion by reviewing the current availability of cybersecurity insurance.
After the focus on mortgage payoff wire fraud and insurance, Krista Christensen will provide you with information on strong passwords and enabling multi-factor authentication.
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National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM) is still going strong! This week, we're going into cybersecurity insurance and why it is important to Create – Confirm – Check.
Last week, Michele Green shared with you what mortgage payoff wire fraud is and how you can implement strategies to Create – Confirm – Check so your escrow accounts are safer from mortgage payoff wire fraud. Next, Michele will share with you why there is no insurance coverage for mortgage payoff wire fraud.
After you watch these videos, schedule time to talk internally in your title agency about how you can implement strategies to Create – Confirm – Check or whether you want to transfer the risk to an outside vendor. And, as always, continue to talk at every staff meeting and regularly remind each other about mortgage payoff wire fraud so your title agency is not a victim.
We're halfway through National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM)!The overall focus for this month is on mortgage payoff wire fraud; however, no cybersecurity awareness month would be complete without information on how to protect e-mail accounts hackers attack. This week, we're focusing on strong passwords and multi-factor authentication.
Be sure to watch the video with Krista Christensen as she walks you through information on strong passwords and implementing multi-factor authentication.
Password cracking is an extremely common tactic for hackers considering that less than half of the public utilizes strong and complex passwords. There are several programs that hackers can use to guess or "crack" passwords, which means that we have to take important steps to outsmart the hacker and protect our personal information.
In general, password attacks fall into four major categories: password theft, password guessing, password cracking, and unauthorized password resetting or bypass.
The most common theft method is sending a traditional phishing email, which prompts the potential victim to click on a link and type in their username and password. Passwords can also be manually guessed...and the shorter and simpler the password, the easier it is to guess. The average user rarely changes their password and uses the same password for multiple accounts, making them an easy target.
On the more technical side of things, a "password cracker" is an application program that can recover passwords using various techniques and algorithms. Thankfully, there are ways we can make our passwords stronger, more complex, and difficult to uncover.
Imagine that your computer, with all of your sensitive information and personal belongings, is like a castle. Your password is the lock on the door, but enabling multi-factor authentication is like building a moat. Similar to a moat, MFA is an additional defense against attacks. It makes it even more difficult for scammers and hackers to compromise your account. When possible, you should always turn on MFA because it's easy to do and greatly increases your security.
Enabling MFA adds an additional step when logging into an account. The first step is entering your password, and the second step is providing an extra way of proving that it's really you. This could be a PIN code or texting/emailing a code to your mobile device.
Not every account offers MFA, but it's becoming more popular every day. MFA is the standard for most financial institutions, online stores, and social media platforms. According to Microsoft, enabling multi-factor authentication is 99.9% effective in preventing breaches. Simply put, use MFA everywhere you can.
This is the last week of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM)! This week, we're focusing on common red flags you might encounter if you're being phished. Read on to make sure you don't get hooked!
Phishers may prey on your sense of trust in order to get access to your personal information, money, or accounts, or otherwise put you or your company at risk. Phishing emails can use language that is urgent, alarming, or even threatening. They can also impersonate trustworthy sources known to you – such as Amazon, Google, UPS, financial services providers, and others you may normally interact with for legitimate purposes. There have been situations reported where employees received fake notices from Microsoft, asking them to provide credentials. They can disguise themselves as people you know, even high-level executives at your company. It is key to use your best judgment and scrutinize emails in your inbox. If a message is unexpected, requires you to act urgently, or is riddled with hyperlinks or typos, you could be being phished.
Recognizing that a phishing email is fake is the hard part, so congratulations! As long as you don't click on any links and don't reply back, the phisher has failed at their attempt to bait you. Simply delete the email and block the sending address. On Outlook, Gmail, and Mac Mail, you can easily report a phishing attempt. It's a good idea to alert your manager or IT team as well.
If you did not have a chance to see Michele Green discuss mortgage payoff wire fraud or cybersecurity insurance, now is the time to catch those videos also so you aren’t caught in that net either!
