With regard to amenities, have you considered offering your residents access to credit building and protection from identity theft? These services can provide more value to your renters than you might have guessed. Identity theft and fraud are estimated to impact five out of 10 Americans. For the majority of residents, rent is their largest monthly expense, and they work hard to meet it. Why not give them credit for that? Including on-time rent payments for inclusion in credit reporting can have significant credit score benefits over time. What kind of protection is available? When it comes to preventing identity theft, it’s important to be vigilant. Should your information be compromised, you must act quickly to either stop fraud in its tracks — or minimize the damage if an incident has already occurred. Credit monitoring with real-time alerts via text or email, and public records surveillance to make sure your identity isn’t being used by a thief, are important services to look for to protect your sensitive personal and financial information. Other services to consider include change of address monitoring to ensure your mail isn’t being fraudulently redirected, and lost wallet protection to get help with canceling credit cards and replacing the contents of a stolen or misplaced wallet. How do I offer fraud protection to my residents? Resident-Link* from Fraud Protection Network is an industry leader in providing residents with credit building and monitoring along with identity theft protection in a single product. The solution includes on-time rent payment reporting, identity and ID verification alerts, social security number and public records monitoring as well as credit monitoring services. Ready to offer a great new amenity at your community? Property managers can offer residents a path to building better credit and peace of mind...

A report published by the Identity Theft Resource Center and CyberScout found there were 1,579 data breaches tracked in 2017. That figure represents a 45% rise over 2016, and an all-time high number of such events. More than half of the breaches (870) listed by the report were associated with the business sector. Other categories reported by ITRC and CyberScout include 374 breaches in the healthcare sector and 134 breaches in the banking/credit/financial sector. “Each year we see an upward trend in number of data breaches cited in these reports. These troubling statistics are a good reminder for property managers to take proactive steps to avoid the potential catastrophe of a data breach,” said Jay Shobe, Yardi vice president of cloud services. According to the report, the most common breaches occurring in 2017 involved hacking of user accounts to gain access to protected data. Hacking typically involves phishing scams, where scammers fool users into entering a username and password into a forged online form, and ransomware which can infect a computer when a user clicks on a nefarious email attachment. In the case of ransomware, access to data can be locked until a payment is made. On a positive note, the study found that the rise in breaches isn’t purely due to increased illicit activities. An increased willingness of organizations to make breaches public knowledge, as opposed to keeping them quiet and privately handled, also boosted the number of 2017. “Companies can avoid a lot of negative attention by responding to data breaches with transparency, as opposed to covering up attempts to steal their clients’ data. When individuals know their data is compromised they can take proactive steps to mitigate immediate and long-term impacts of a breach,” said Shobe. The Security of the Yardi...