2025 Cyber Insurance 8 Best Practices

Cyber insurance is now a requirement for many real estate brokerages. This comes as more and more cybercriminals are successful in their attempts to steal information and money from real estate agents nationwide.

At PBI Group, we have seen a noticeable increase in real estate brokerages requesting cyber insurance quotes. Obtaining a strong cyber insurance policy is a great step towards protecting your real estate brokerage, but there are also “non-technical” recommendations that you can do to improve your chances of avoiding becoming a victim of cybercrime. Below are 8 best practices we often share with your clients:

  1. Turn on MFA/2FA on your email and other information-rich systems. This includes your social media accounts, financial accounts, transaction management systems, etc. MFA (multi-factor authentication) and 2FA (two-factor authentication) are free and easy to enable. Click here for more information
  2. Communicate with your clients to alert them of the risks of wire fraud within the real estate industry. This is a 2-step process: Have them sign a disclosure document at the point of their becoming a client. This is a valuable CYA procedure but is often not enough since clients sign countless documents and often don’t remember what they are signing. Click here for an example.
  3. Call them 1 week prior to their transaction closing to remind them of Step 1. Alert them that during the next few days, the bad guys are likely to attempt to steal their money.
  1. Train yourself on what to look for to identify a fraudulent email. Check out these signs that indicate fake email.
  2. Pay attention to your email filters. All email programs have inbound and outbound email filters, which are rules designed to automatically file emails out of your inbox into other subfolders based on logic (e.g. if an email arrives with the word “Urgent” in the subject, move the email to Folder X). If a bad guy gains access to your email account, they will set up email filters to direct emails into hard-to-find subfolders, so you don’t receive any reply to emails that could alert you of suspicious activity coming out of your email account.

Interested in PBI Group generating a Cyber Liability or E&O insurance quote for your real estate agency? Get started.