EVS Blog

As the housing market continues to improve, it is essential for real estate businesses to ensure that consumer information is safe and secure. According to the Nationwide’s Health of Housing Markets (HoHM) Report, “the national LIHHM (leading index of healthy housing markets) remains at a level well over the break-even of 100, although it has fallen a tad recently, suggesting that the U.S. housing market is healthy with little chance of a national housing downturn over the next year.” This data conveys that consumers may continue on the same purchasing trend.

Amazon, eBay and other e-commerce giants continue to make online shopping a go-to source for the majority of retail needs. Online shopping can be cost-effective and convenient. However, there are risks that fraudsters can obtain the information entered on the Internet in a harmful and malicious way.

Health care, government and education are common targets of data breaches. However, fraudsters are dominating headlines with a data breach of the affair-driven website, Ashley Madison. The breach gives cyber security professionals and citizens, a strong insight into how secure systems are in comparison to how safe users think their info may be.

Despite knowing that the government and the private sector are continuous targets for data breaches, the momentum of the proposed bill, Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, has stalled. This comes four months after we blogged about the various cyber security bills that have been introduced into Congress. However, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act has survived so far, which is a bill that creates incentives for companies to share details of their cyber attacks and data breaches.

Despite the awareness and notoriety of health care data breaches, such as Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield and Premera, breaches are consistently occurring. Most recently, UCLA Health and St. Francis Health were compromised in different ways. While a segment of the media is calling 2015 the year of the health care attacks, how does this year really compare to the past?