Information Security and Wire Transfer Fraud are critical topics for the land title insurance and settlement industry. Wire Transfer Fraud is a threat to every title operation regardless of size, location or years in business. ALTA’s priority is helping you protect your systems, plan for a rapid response in case of an incident, and prepare your employees, clients and customers to be aware and vigilant.

Industry Standard Policies and Tools

• ALTA Outgoing Wire Preparation Checklist: Use this checklist as a best practice for verifying outgoing wire information.
• ALTA Rapid Response Plan for Wire Fraud Incidents: Use this tool to customize your action plan when a wire fraud attempt occurs.
• Video: How To Complete an IC3 Report. Watch the video to see how easy it is to help law enforcement gather information.
• ALTA Cybersecurity Incident Response Plan: Use this tool to help your team to establish and maintain secure systems and be prepared to act quickly if an incident occurs. Leverage these resources to implement Step 1: Preparation: 
• *NEW for 2023* ALTA Cyber System Overview: Use this narrative to improve your understanding of a Cyber System Inventory, why it is important to Cybersecurity efforts, and how to create and maintain your company's inventory.
• *NEW for 2023* ALTA Cyber System Inventory Workbook: Use this model workbook to create and customize your company's inventory.
• *NEW for 2023* ALTA Business Impact Analysis: Use this guide to examine your software applications, determine which resources are critical to your operation, and discover when to add resources to minimize the business impact of downtime.

Employee Training and Awareness

• Monitor and Improve Employee Skills.
  Consider a phishing security test for all of your employees. These companies can help:
• Security Planner: https://securityplanner.org
• PhishMe: https://phishme.com/free
• KnowBe4: https://www.knowbe4.com/resources
• Webinars to Watch:
• Data Security Essentials: Strategies to Protect Non-public Personal Information (Download copy of presentation)
• Fortify Your Business: Lock Down Data and Protect Client Funds (Download copy of presentation)
• Safeguarding Escrow Trust Accounts
• Best Practices: Protecting Non-public Personal Information (Download copy of presentation)
• Fraud and Your Escrow/Trust Accounts (Download copy of presentation)

Resources for Your Clients and Consumers

• Wire Fraud Tips Video: Share this 1-minute video with homebuyers so they know how to protect their money.
• ALTA Wire Fraud Video: This 2-minute video provides four tips on how consumers can protect their money and offers advice on what to do if they have been targeted by a scam. Link to this video from your website, include in your email or share on social media.
• ALTA Wire Fraud Infographic: ALTA has produced this Rack Card explaining Wire Fraud. ALTA Members can brand the infographic with their own information at the ALTAprints website.
• ALTA Wire Fraud PowerPoint for Consumer Education: (Member-only content) Use this presentation to educate consumers about the dangers of phishing emails and wire transfer fraud. The presentation provides information on what to do if you’ve fallen victim to a scam and also highlights 10 tips to prevent wire fraud.

Get Information to Help Your Business and Your Customer Protect Closing Funds

Information Security Articles

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The U.S. mortgage delinquency rate continued to hold at near-record lows in November, with 2.9% of all mortgages in some stage of delinquency (30 days or more past due, including those in foreclosure), according to CoreLogic’s Loan Performance Insights Report. That’s a 0.7 percentage point decrease compared to 3.6% in November 2021.

Real estate transactions have been a prime target of cybercrime over the past decade, and there is little sign of change in this focus, even as the housing market slows. Instead, fraudsters continue to evolve their scam and money laundering tactics to avoid detection. CertfID reports that the latest trend involves vacant lots or unencumbered properties. Read on for educational resources from ALTA to help consumers protect their money.

Title and settlement companies report that the volume of cyberattacks have either increased or remained the same last year when compared to 2020. Because of this, title professionals should know essential risk-mitigation processes to protect against wire fraud and other cyber threats.

Personality tests, quick surveys, and other types of online quizzes ask seemingly harmless questions, but the more information you share, the more you risk it being misused. Scammers could do a lot of damage with just a few answers that give away your personal information. We’ve heard about scammers phishing for answers to security question data through quizzes. They use your quiz answers to try and reset your accounts, letting them steal your bank and other account information. Some scammers hack social media accounts and send malware links to friends of the hacked account holder under the guise of sharing a quiz.

A possible cyberattack against a property records management vendor has left several county offices with the inability to allow for searches of their land records or electronically record documents.