A little more privacy.

 

It has been a couple years since I transitioned from the real estate profession into an Information Technology role. During this period, I still dabbled in real estate. Nevertheless, now I have decided to focus one hundred percent on cybersecurity. I am in a position where I can give some basic advice to my fellow industry partners. In the following weeks, I will provide some basic privacy tips, resources, websites, "how to"s and tools to improve online privacy.  The information is available to anyone willing to do some online research, and while some websites and tools are free others have a cost. Finally, I recommend doing your own diligence regarding any information provided. 

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The first and most urgent advice I can provide to anyone is to freeze their credit. Freezing your credit is a free service from the credit bureaus. It is available to anyone.  As per Experian, freezing your credit “can help protect against identity theft and fraud”. Additionally, freezing your credit does not affect your credit bureau score. Finally, freezing your credit “prohibits lenders from extending you prequalified offers, such as a mortgage prequalification.” 

Additional options are available to protect your credit profile such as paying for credit service monitoring with added PIN protection. With a paid credit monitoring service your credit report is actively accessible with the additional protection of a PIN. When applying for credit, third-party companies with your consent can run your credit, providing your predefined PIN number and personal information. Whereas when freezing your credit and applying for credit, a creditor cannot run a credit inquiry until the credit freeze is removed for a predetermined time. Therefore, freezing your credit is more inconvenient. Nonetheless under the concept of risk management usually the more inconvenient a safeguard is, the more secure it is. These are the links to help you get started. 

https://www.experian.com/freeze/center.html  

https://www.transunion.com/credit-freeze 

https://www.equifax.com/personal/credit-report-services/  

As a final note, a good resource to get familiar with is The Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC), a non-profit organization. Their services will allow you to mitigate identity theft, recover from an identity theft event, and protect your business. Additionally, you can sign up to get information or search for data breaches. 

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The ITRC's most recent publication, Q2 Data Compromises Highlights shows a 14 percent increase in data breaches than the previous year. Financial and Healthcare compromises lead the list. Over a billion victims of cybersecurity attacks and over 14 million data breaches were due to systems' human errors such as not configuring the system securely or updating vulnerabilities. Some of the most notable companies in the list include Ticket Master, Dell, Kaiser Permanente, and LoanDepot. Therefore, today more than ever locking your credit is a good mitigation service against identity theft.