Overall Title Company

“ Let us rather run the risk of wearing out than rusting out.” -TR

“The only man who never makes mistakes is the man who never does anything.” -Theodore Roosevelt

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." Franklin D. Roosevelt

Property data curator ATTOM released its Year-End 2023 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report, which shows foreclosure filings — default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions — were reported on 357,062 U.S. properties in 2023, up 10 percent from 2022 and up 136 percent from 2021. However, filings were down 28 percent from 2019, before the pandemic shook up the market. Foreclosure filings in 2023 were also down 88 percent from a peak of nearly 2.9 million in 2010. https://lnkd.in/dP_xxHF4

The economic downturn looks to be plateauing, and forecasters are debating when the upturn will begin. But they do agree the upturn is coming. What will the shift mean for the housing market and for your business?

Housing affordability is expected to improve in 2024 as mortgage rates fall and more homes go up for sale, but Redfin reports that less than 16 percent of 2023 listings were affordable for the typical household. ttps://https://lnkd.in/gpkE7Zry

Title Top Cybersecurity trends to expect in 2024 Cybersecurity vendor Netwrix recently shared its key IT security trends expected to affect organizations of all sizes in 2024. Dirk Schrader, vice president of security research, and Ilia Sotnikov, security strategist, share five trends expected in the coming year. “Criminals will be taking advantage of AI (artificial intelligence) and machine learning — but so should the security community,” Sotnikov said in a release. “These technologies can help quickly connect the dots across multiple data sets, giving them the broader context required to spot even sophisticated cyberattacks in their early stages. Plus, they can respond faster and more effectively because they can see exactly what happened and which accounts, data and other assets were involved.” Cyber insurance requirements will tighten. With successful cyberattacks leading to increasing payouts, insurers will require more organizations to have strong security measures in place to qualify for a policy or to reduce premiums. Common requirements today include multifactor authentication (MFA), patch management and regular security training for business users. In 2024, identity and access management (IAM) is likely to join that list, especially for the enterprise sector. ’Netwrix also expects insurers to partner with managed service providers (MSPs) to help ensure a minimum level of security at small and midsize companies. Attackers will increasingly harvest encrypted data, even if they cannot yet unlock it. Quantum computing is advancing rapidly, so forward-thinking cybercriminals will be stealing encrypted data that they cannot unlock with today’s technology but that they might soon be able to decrypt. The top targets will be organizations with large volumes of sensitive data, including financial and legal firms. To reduce risk, organizations should not rely just on encryption but instead build a multi-layered strategy that includes data classification, risk assessment and mitigation, and incident detection and response. AI tools will make it easy for cybercriminals to glean the details they need. AI will enable threat actors to swiftly locate personal details required for convincing phishing emails and to mine databases of stolen credentials to launch effective password-based attacks. Phishing emails will be harder to spot and expand in non-English-speaking countries. In the past, phishing emails were riddled with grammatical errors and typos, and were usually in English. In 2024, however, AI tools will make it much easier for attackers to craft convincing emails in any language. To fight back, organizations need to update their phishing training and make it easy for users to report suspicious messages. https://lnkd.in/gNYWBncn