Scout for SAFEMLS: A Case Study in Best Practices

Last year Clareity Security demonstrated A Successful Case Study for customers using Scout for SAFEMLS™.  The case study identified measurable success in both reducing unauthorized access and providing revenue assurance to MLS organizations through the implementation of the full Scout for SAFEMLS solution.  Recently, we started to dig even deeper into the data behind the success of Scout for SAFEMLS.  For this new study we analyzed a sampling of our customers who followed some best practices recommended by Clareity Security as part of the implementation.  We researched further into which specific actions were most successful in remediating account sharing and unauthorized access.  The results are very clear; applying Clareity Security’s best practices generates extremely positive results.

Clareity Security’s best practices have been established by analyzing our customers’ policies against the sharing outcomes in their individual systems.  Clareity Security has worked individually with each customer to develop security policies based on these best practices and their local rules and policies, with the specific goal of deterring account sharing at the earliest possible action while minimizing user inconvenience.  The chart below illustrates Scout for SAFEMLS’s effectiveness at eliminating 97% of sharing for users who enter remediation by the fourth action step.

Many of our customers have applied these best practices, and more are in the process of reviewing updated recommendations from us based on our findings. Our review of twelve Clareity Security customers over a six week period of time showed sharing decreased by almost 18%, unauthorized users decreased over 22%, and active accounts increased by almost 2%. This increase may seem modest but during the same timeframe membership in the National Association of REALTORS® dropped 1.75%.

These numbers greatly impact your MLS organization both from a revenue opportunity and a cost perspective.  A shared account cannot only cause revenue deprivation but also adds to the cost of providing service to your paying members.

Clareity Security has gained considerable knowledge about the profile of a shared MLS account in the past eight years.  While the numbers are not surprising to us, we believe they are interesting and worth noting for purposes of this paper.  A shared account, on average, has almost twice the usage of a non-shared account and the unique devices used to access the account are double a non- shared account. This excess traffic translates to heavier server loads, greater network traffic, and even increased help desk calls. All of which mean extra expenses to the MLS.

Clareity Security is pleased to offer this solution to our existing customers and welcomes the opportunity to work with new organizations. Combining a tool like Scout for SAFEMLS with the experience and best practices developed by Clareity Security staff and customers is proven to recapture (or in some cases retain) revenue for MLS organizations. In addition, reducing unauthorized access means the MLS can experience cost savings while securing access to valuable MLS data.