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Is one of your primary goals this year to become paperless and thereby more efficient? Have you considered the security of the provider you are assessing?

For most Real Estate Brokers when you bring up the word Security regarding their online transactions, it is one of the topics furthest from their minds. It is perceived as an obscure word with very little relevance to their business. It may not even be on the list of criteria when evaluating providers in their initiative to become paperless.

With the extreme sensitivity of the data being gathered and housed by every Real Estate brokerage it should be a major focus for everyone. A breach of security could expose your company and brand to tremendous if not crippling financial and legal ramifications.

As of late, all of the highly publicized security breaches of companies like WalMart, Target and recently, DropBox have resulted in millions of dollars in damages. Sony Pictures has even bought the rights to make a movie out of the Target security breach about the Blogger who broke the story; so you can be assured your Buyers and Sellers will be asking how secure the data they are providing you is in your hands, especially if you report to them that you are housing this data in a Document Management System.

However, security isn’t just about the protection of the data, but also the accessibility to the data for the authorized users. If you are moving your paperwork, essentially the core of your business up to a paperless solution, it’s crucial that it is a carrier grade provider – reliability and accessibility is key to running efficiently and effectively. Outages can and will cost you money and cut into your productivity.

If your initiative this year is to go Paperless, don’t let the question of Security and Availability be an Obscure one – it should be top on your list of things to evaluate and assess no matter what provider hosts your documents.