So how are Federal agencies, like Housing and Urban Development, known as HUD, how are they doing protecting sensitive information and keeping their systems safe from hackers?  

Hi everybody,  It’s Joe Hillner with Your Home Sold Guaranteed Realty, where we guarantee that  your home will sell for 101% of asking price, or I’LL pay you the difference! 
Ok, so every week, I share market data to keep you informed with the local real estate market.  
Here is this week’s Boca Market Watch.

First, Single Family Homes:

This past week, a  decent week with 63 new homes on the market, ranging from $299,000 to $45 Million - Holy guacamole!. Now that's a spicy meatball!  23 homes back on the market, while 25 homes listed took a price decrease, and 9 sellers raised their asking price.  And  a down week with just 35 different properties under contract, and another 32 going pending.   And 20 homes were unsuccessful in selling and were taken off the market or the listing expired outright, very few.  98 homes were sold in the past week, now you're talking, and those sales ranged from $220K to a cool $9M. 

Next up, Condos and Townhomes:

76 new listings, not bad, and ranging from $71 Grand to $14.5 Million.  Very nice!
22 units came back on the market, 26 properties with a price decrease, and 10 sellers with an increase, just like single family homes, still on the low side.  45 different properties went under contract, and another 53 went pending, a pretty fair week. And only 26 condos or townhomes were unsuccessful in selling and were taken off the market or the listing expired.  85 closed sales this week, a decent week for condos, and ranging in price from $75 Grand to $3.65 M!

Here's what's making news right now.

 A bipartisan report from a U.S. Senate committee states that several federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), have failed to meet basic cybersecurity standards, putting the personal and financial information of millions of Americans at risk of theft,

The 47-page report follows up on an original report from 2019 which found that eight federal agencies — the departments of State, Transportation, HUD, Agriculture, Health and Human Services, Education and the Social Security Administration — had systematically failed to comply with federal cybersecurity standards identified by the agencies’ inspectors general.

Two years later, only one — DHS — had “managed to employ an effective cybersecurity regime for 2020,” the report said. The other seven agencies had made “minimal improvements” and earned grades of C or D from the report, based on ratings from the agencies’ own inspectors general. DHS received the highest grade, a B.  This is disgraceful!

HUD, which maintains at least a BILLION records containing Americans’ personal information such as names, addresses, incomes, and employment history, suffered from many shortcomings, according to the report. The agency has allowed “shadow IT” — hardware, software or cloud services used without the organization’s knowledge —  to operate without approved authority. This means that the agency may not know a system exists until it is breached and cannot install security patches, leaving the agency vulnerable.

Why did this hit my radar?  HUD oversees FHA loans, which are a huge portion of purchase money mortgages in our country.  They are often referred to as first time home buyer loans, even though they are available to anyone buying a primary residence.  HUD operates mostly on legacy software and hardware systems, which apparently are inefficient, costly to maintain and “increasingly difficult to secure,” the report said. The agency has also failed to inventory all of the systems containing HUD data, particularly web applications, and to implement multifactor authentication for HUD systems that store, process or transmit personally identifying information. Moreover, HUD did not maintain an inventory of the collection and use of such information and lacked awareness as to how much of this information was under its purview and even where it was located! Unbelieveable!

As a realtor, I'm often exposed to clients' sensitive personal information.  I'm held to a very high standard by the Federal Gov't to protect this data carefully, and it's something that I take very seriously.

This report shows a sustained and systemic failure to address cybersecurity vulnerabilities at our federal agencies, a failure that leaves national security and sensitive personal information open to theft and damage by increasingly sophisticated hackers.  These Federal agencies can't even follow their own regulations, but if I get sloppy, I get sued or worse. 
 But hey, what do I know?  I'm just a realtor trying to make a living...