Internet Security For The Modern Real Estate Agent - Part 3
Internet and computer security are huge issues and you could spend a lifetime learning all the aspects of protecting networks and systems. Due to that fact, and because talk of Internet security can bore even the biggest geeks to death, it’s best to break the main topics into manageable chunks. Therefore this is the second of three parts of this article. All three parts of this article can be accessed by following the links below.
Doing your manual “offline” backups can get very tedious, especially if you do them right and often, but you’ll thank yourself when your machine dies. It’s important to have a disaster recovery plan that takes advantage of all your backup efforts. A disaster recovery plan is something that every business, including your modest real estate empire, should have to prepare for, and recover from, the worst-case scenario. Whether it’s a fire, theft, power surge, general hardware failure or the aforementioned Godzilla attack your system is likely to completely die on you at some point in your career. Perhaps you’ll get lucky and this will never happen to you, but if you’re been in the business for even a short time you’ve probably already had this happen to you. You need to take some time to develop an exact plan of action to handle these emergencies. It can be as simple as having the following checklist:
Office Leveled By Giant Lizard –
- Retrieve backup from home office
- Purchase new HP computer from Bestbuy on south side of town ($600)
- Install Photoshop, MS Office, Top Producer and Acrobat
- Load backed up data
- Resume regular business operation from home
- Request higher speed connection from Comcast ($10/month more)
- Research new locations
- Handle insurance paperwork
So on and so forth. You should have a plan in place for every feasible disaster. Most of these plans and steps will overlap, but it’s important that you be able to get back up and running as soon as possible.
Having a fully functional home office and an off site office, such as at your brokers building, will make it much easier to stay in business if one of your locations goes down. You should be sure to include whenever possible the cost of each step of your recovery plan and have the necessary funds or credit available at all times. Your plan really isn’t worth much if you can’t actually implement it.
We’ve covered most of the security issues that will affect your day-to-day activity. If you’ve followed along and implemented these recommendations you’re much more secure in your technology than when you started. The last security issue we’re going to be covering is mainly just a nuisance, but it can hinder your business just as much as any of the threats listed above. The issue I’m talking about is something that all of us have dealt with over the years: spam. It’s not just disgusting canned meat anymore, it’s a daily annoyance that in the long run can add up to a great deal of lost productivity. There are a number of spam blocking software packages available, one of the most popular and highly rated programs being Cloudmark Desktop Spam Blocker. I personally have all of my email forwarded through a GMail account. Many of the online email account providers like Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail have very sophisticated spam-blocking systems. Their spam blocking benefits from the huge numbers of users telling them which messages are spam and which are not, as well as from the huge volume of email that comes through their systems. They also are completely free of charge, so they are without a doubt the most cost effective spam blocking solution. Unfortunately emails with a @yahoo.com or @hotmail.com ending can bruise your brand image. Having an email address like you@yourwebsite.com looks much more personalized and professional than having a free account. Branding, image and proper email marketing are a subject for a different article, but you get the point.
Each aspect of security discussed here should be considered part of an overall picture. If you come up short in any one area, it can render all of your other efforts worthless. It’s the weakest link in the chain story – fail in any one area and it won’t matter how well you did in all the others. Once you have an effective system in place, however, these issues almost take care of themselves. All you need to do is add a few minutes every week to your schedule to make sure your software is up to date and running smoothly and to back your data up. Please feel free to post questions about these or any other technology and I’ll do my best to answer them as quickly as I can. I will also be posting more specific articles about each of these security issues in the weeks and months to come.
This is the end of part three of three of Internet Security for the Modern Real Estate Agent.
About the Author
Patrick Gallagher is an Internet consultant and marketing specialist for real estate agents. He has provided Internet marketing training and network consulting services for over 150 Realtors. For more real estate training and information, visit the author’s website at http://www.homemarketingtech.com
Patrick Gallagher is a real estate marketing and technology expert. He has helped hundreds of agents sell over $1Billion dollars of real estate. For more information on real estate marketing, visit the authors website at http://www.homemarketingtech.com
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