Before you feast this holiday season, use these cybersecurity travel tips

Continuing to protect our customers from the dangers of wire fraud should be a top priority of all of us in real estate the rest of the year and into 2020. 

You’ve probably heard a lot about email safety and two-factor authentication, but Premier Title Agency wanted to specifically talk about cyber security when you’re on the road. With the holidays quickly approaching, we assume that you’ll be on the road a lot the next couple of months. The bottom line is that you’re not immune from hackers while away celebrating the holidays with family or closing an end-of-year business deal.

In fact, you’re more susceptible when your guard is down. Yes, the fight against wire fraud can be exhausting, but it’s well worth the digital security of you and your customers. Let’s start with phone safety. 

Before going on your trip, make sure you do these two things in case you lose your phone: 
•    Enable the “find my phone” feature on your other devices, so you can find and remotely wipe your phone’s data if need be.
•    Turn on password protection for all your devices. Whether it’s a passcode or a security feature, this creates an extra level of safety if your phone is stolen or you lose it.

Free Wi-Fi seems great. It saves you data and often is faster than your phone provider. But free Wi-Fi isn’t worth your identity. 
•    Avoid logging on to accounts that have sensitive or personal information while you’re connected to public Wi-Fi. Hint: free hotel Wi-Fi is not a good way to check your bank account. 
•    Try using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) or a personal/mobile hotspot for the times you do need a secure connection.
•    While we all love seamless connections, enable your device to ask permission before automatically connecting to any Wi-Fi network.

Here are a couple extra travel tips from Raytheon.
•    Let your IT department know you’ll be traveling. This is especially helpful if you are working on something important for work. 
•    Updates are great, but vacation is not the time to install them. Wait until you’re on a secure network since some updates may include malware in disguise.

If you need more tips or have any other questions about wire fraud, visit www.stopwirefraud.org or talk to your trusted Premier Title office today!