security | ProptechNerd - Matt Cohen

Security Assessment: Demystifying the Process

Don’t Be Afraid of the ‘Audit’ Information security laws are still a patchwork nationwide, but an increasing number of industry organizations are ﬁnding that they need our assistance to comply with laws and other applicable requirements. The purpose of this post is to help demystify the process. Many industry organizations are just realizing all

Security and the Great Flywheel of Convenience

30OctoberMatt CohenProfessionalsecurity

Security Lets Us Provide a Better User Experience A Ten-Year Journey In James C. Collins’ bestselling business book, “Good to Great”, he introduces the concept of the flywheel. Outside of business, a flywheel is a heavy wheel that, once momentum is built, can store and provide consistently great power to a machine even when

Solving the RETS Credential Re-Use Conundrum

24AugustMatt CohenProfessionalmls, security, standards

How Many Times Must a Tech Provider Download the Same Listings? I received a call recently from an MLS administrator who wanted to talk about a RETS issue that had been bothering him. His MLS charges a small fee to subscribers for a RETS feed; the fee covers the costs related to the feed,

Screen-Scraping – Finally, the Real Estate Industry Solution

25MarchMatt CohenProfessionalsecurity

In 2011 and 2012, Realtor.com was under the gun to solve the problem it had with screen scrapers, where sites were “scraping” data off of their site and using it in unauthorized contexts. For those that haven’t been watching industry news sites discussion of screen scraping, scraping is when someone copies large amounts of

VOW and IDX Rules: Security Compliance in the Trenches

18AprilMatt CohenProfessionalcompliance, mls, security

As a consultant often called on by MLSs for help with VOW and IDX compliance audits as someone who is always pushing for improved information security in the real estate industry, I love that information security is featured prominently in the VOW rules, section 19.5: “A Participant’s VOW must employ reasonable efforts to monitor