My original plan for this week was to ask one of our customers to do a guest spot on the Clareity Security Blog.   You know, some fluff piece on how great we are combined with a few of the fun stories we get from customers every week about how they caught unauthorized users in the MLS.  I promise you the post will come, just not this week.

Last week, Clareity Security had the opportunity to fully execute our data center disaster recovery plan.  I don’t recommend doing this as a stress reliever, but the experience was amazing in it’s demonstration of what worked (a lot did) and what didn’t (we changed several processes and policies).  It also shined a spotlight on our awesome support and engineering teams – who held it together under very difficult circumstances.  Difficult decisions that were in the best interest of our customers were made even though they impacted our bottom line.  We all agreed when it was over, we had done the right thing – not the easy thing – but the right thing.  It’s a core value at Clareity Security and one I’m proud to say we haven’t compromised.

The point of this post (I do have one), is that the lesson that reverberated for me last week was communication.  Our customers have much more patience and understanding for technical issues when we COMMUNICATE what is happening, early and often.  If you think you have communicated enough, there is a good chance you haven’t.  If you think you have over communicated…there is no such thing.

We provided routine updates to vendors, MLS staff and leadership and even our own management team.  I personally spoke to almost every customer last week that was impacted (some of you called me back just to say thanks!)  I found it to be a rewarding experience in spite of the stressful nature of the week.  Our customers are completely responsible for our success – they provide us with the critical feedback we need to ensure we provide outstanding service and COMMUNICATION.

Last week we saw one of the largest acquisitions in the history of computer security as Intel agreed to buy McAfee for $7.7 billion dollars.  Clareity Security sells and supports McAfee SECURE™ (formerly HACKERSAFE™), a daily security monitoring service for web sites.  Intel must have wanted McAfee badly because they paid a 60% premium over the stock price, which left a few analysts scratching their heads and calling it an expensive acquisition.

Why did Intel do it?  Hans Mosesmann, an analyst at Raymond James Associates said:  “Security is becoming a really big deal. The security threats that are out there are not going away — you could argue that they are going to get worse — and having a tightly coupled hardware and software is a strategic advantage.”   In other words, Intel plans to build more security, malware and anti-virus features right on the PC chip.    Intel’s chips also appear in other devices that connect to the internet such as DVD players, set top boxes, TVs, and even cars, and these devices need to be protected too.

Intel is also looking to diversify itself from the PC chip market as the world moves to the mobile web using smart phones and iPads.  McAfee’s software provides mostly recurring subscription revenue, which will help smooth Intel’s revenue and give them an opportunity to enter the growing market for securing mobile devices.   McAfee now offers smart phone security software, through the recent acquisitions of Trust Digital and TenCube.   These companies make security software for the iPhone, Android, Blackberry and others.  Since people are 15 times more likely to lose their smart phone than their laptop, mobile device security is becoming a big business and this is another strategic reason why Intel paid so much for McAfee.

Furthering Amy’s theme of knowing your customer better through the use of analytics, let’s explore fiscal planning for 2011. Many of our MLS industry partners are meeting right now with their finance committees, reviewing the current number of subscribers, the current year’s revenue numbers, and working on 2011 budgets.  Tough decisions on programs, events, staff, new investments, etc. are made in conjunction with the revenue forecast.

Looking back at 2010, many organizations have not only met, but far exceeded their revenue targets.  High-fives all the way around!  This defines ultimate success for an organization, doesn’t it?   Does this mean next year’s forecast should follow the same model? Should the forecast be increased or decreased?  Consult the crystal ball or even flip a coin?   Neither method has historically created an accurate prediction.

With all of these questions, analytics are more important than ever to help separate the signal from the noise, the wheat from the chaff.  Our Scout for SAFEMLS solution uses rich analytics to identify revenue and cost reduction opportunities by recognizing shared subscription accounts.  Revenue assurance is the formal name for ensuring everyone is paying for services received and is a very important part of revenue forecasting.  Easily understood is the straight line drawn between a shared subscription and a lost revenue opportunity.   Which begs the question – “Why budget for a 10% revenue loss when more than 25% of your subscribers are sharing access to services?”

As your organization heads into this 2011 budget season, please ask the tough question – ‘are we maximizing the revenue for all users of our services vs. just the current paying subscribers?’  If the answer falls along “we don’t know” or “it’s unclear” or “what??” please drop us a line to discuss our proven track record of maximizing our customers’ revenue and how we can create success for you.

… Ok, actually hand-raising may not be the best way to measure this exercise since we are having this conversation virtually.  I think we can all agree on a few premises though:

1)     Understanding your customers can help retain and grow revenue.

2)     All organizations benefit from gathering data on their customer and using it to provide better (or even different) services.

3)     The word “analytics” is a big scary word that is hard to get our brains wrapped around.

In real estate it seems everyone with a website has some type of tool they use for analytics.  Google Analytics is popular because of the price (free), others like Webtrends are often included in hosting packages.  More sophisticated and expensive products from companies like Omniture are also available.  The bottom line is ALL of these products help you to better understand which content is popular, but tell you very little about your customer and their uniqueness.

I have been watching with interest, the trends with digital publishers such as newspapers and other paid subscription (SaaS) providers.  I think of MLS organizations and other real estate service websites as being digital content providers with similar models.  Some times the content is offered for a fee (MLS subscriptions), sometimes the content is free (real estate search sites) and sometimes the content is offered with a “pay-wall” where you have access to some information for free but additional information requires a “registration” process and often a fee (third party applications, VOW’s, and some real estate search sites).

Like other digital publishers, organizations in real estate can benefit from understanding not just what “content” is popular, but more about the actual “people” interacting with that content.  Understanding the demand at the “user” level instead of the “content” level helps organizations to understand which users are getting value from your service and which are not.  This information can be used to predict user behavior and open opportunities for revenue optimization.

I’m probably losing a few folks about now with all of these buzzwords so let me put this into simpler terms with an example.  If I am an MLS organization, understanding my users’ behavior (based on their login activity combined with which content they find most valuable) I can make better decisions about future products and services.  I can predict with leading indicators, as opposed to trailing indicators, changes in demand for my services along with changes in my market.  Imagine being able to predict your own increase (or decrease) for demand to drive operational cost decisions ahead of time.  Imagine being able to target sub-groups of your membership for additional product opportunities.  Imagine understanding your user population well enough to consider the impact of a change to your pricing model.

These are just a few of the benefits of deploying “user based” analytics, such as those utilized in Clareity Security’s Scout for SAFEMLS product, to detect and report account sharing.  We would love the opportunity to hear more about how MLS organizations, real estate website service providers, brokers and agents are using or would like to use analytics to better understand the health of their business, and we look forward to sharing success stories from other customers.

Clareity Security set the standard for real estate industry login security over five years ago, introducing strong authentication to the industry. Strong authentication, also termed “multi-factor” authentication, involves two of the three following items: something you know (e.g. a password or PIN), something you have that is not shared (e.g. a token, PDA or cell phone), or something you are (e.g. biometric information such as typing patterns). Recently, some vendors have offered an “adaptive security” mechanism that would replace strong authentication, implying that adaptive security is comparable in strength to strong authentication but when it comes to MLS use cases, this is simply misleading.

Adaptive security, for those unfamiliar with it, tries to detect abnormal use and then takes action when that abnormal use is detected. For example, if a user usually logs on from MyCity, Michigan and there is a logon attempt from YourCity, California, the system would attempt to make an assessment of whether the logon was valid. That works great in the banking context, but it just doesn’t apply in any significant way to MLS authentication security, where the most common problem is users intentionally sharing accounts within the same geographic area and even within the same office or home office, where they would likely be using the same computer type and perhaps even the same IP address – likely even the very same computer! An MLS user may also utilize a variety of computers to access the MLS – at customers’ homes, at coffee shops, or sharing computers in broker offices – that makes it even more difficult for adaptive technology to reliably distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate logon attempts based only on identifying the computer or IP address of the user.   The potential for false positives is far greater and presents potential customer service issues for the organization.

Clareity Consulting has performed security audits for MLSs that have tried adaptive authentication. Their staff ask, “So, this user-id logged in from 2 computers – I don’t know if one is the home and the other is the office, or if this is a shared password. Another logged in from 15 computers and local IP addresses – I don’t know if they’re out in the field checking the MLS from wherever they can or if this is a shared account. Another user logged in a lot from one IP address – I don’t know if that’s a bunch of appraisers sharing a computer, a husband and wife team, or just someone that logs in a lot. So, I’ve got this information about Devices and IP Addresses used from the adaptive system – what do I do with it?” Unfortunately, there isn’t a good answer for them!

The only time one can depend solely on device identification to supplement the username and password credentials is when the device is something that is never shared – like a cell phone. Clareity Security experimented extensively in fielding a solution leveraging the agent’s cell phone, but both software and certificate deployment to the cell phone and text-messaging were simply too unreliable and required too much support from the MLS help desk.

Some vendors might point out that financial institutions use adaptive authentication – they are correct, but what they leave out is that banks are swiftly moving away from adaptive authentication alone and are moving to or adding strong authentication mechanisms. The real estate industry has unique issues around intentional account sharing, computer sharing, and mobile professionals, making adaptive authentication using device and IP address based identification insufficient to provide revenue assurance or ensure that MLSs remain members-only systems.

Scottsdale, AZ July 9, 2010 – Clareity Security (www.clareitysecurity.com), the leading provider of online access security for the Real Estate industry, today announced the REALTORS Property Resource (RPR) has selected Scout for SAFEMLS™.  RPR will implement Clareity Security’s SaaS platform to ensure authorized access to its database and reports.

RPR, which is available exclusively to REALTORS®, is a single-source national compilation of data including: tax and assessment data, property data, neighborhood, school, demographic and psychographic information, maps, trends and reports.  “We recognize our responsibility to make sure REALTORS® are the only authorized users of RPR. Scout for SAFEMLS was the clear choice to achieve this goal,” stated Dale Ross, RPR’s CEO.

“We are delighted to partner with RPR to protect access to its national property library and professional tool set,” said Gregg Larson, president and CEO of Clareity Security. “RPR made a wise decision to implement strong, proven security early in the product’s rollout to protect the vast information they have licensed from multiple sources, including that provided by MLS partners.”

Scout for SAFEMLS combines access intelligence and zero-footprint, strong authentication to accurately identify risks and cost-effectively mitigate them. The foundation of the solution is an identity-profiling engine for aggregating user access data, creating statistical profiles, and detecting anomalies. Powered by patent-pending keystroke dynamics, SAFEMLS is unrivaled in the ability to accurately and transparently identify users, detect account sharing, account takeover, and the differences between individual users.

About Clareity Security:

Clareity Security is the leading provider of security products and services for the real estate and mortgage industries. Clareity’s SAFEMLS^® product suite helps MLS organizations and real estate professionals increase subscription revenue by easily and effectively safeguarding sensitive consumer information against unauthorized access via next generation strong authentication solutions for secured online transactions.. Clareity Security is headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona and has offices in Knoxville, TN and Lenexa, KS.  Additional information is available at http://www.ClareitySecurity.com.

Contact:

Amy Geddes, EVP & COO

(480) 444-0014

www.ClareitySecurity.com

Amy.Geddes@ClareitySecurity.com

SCOTTSDALE, AZ – June 8, 2010 – Clareity Security (www.clareitysecurity.com), the leading provider of data security and revenue assurance for the MLS industry, today announced it signed a new Scout for SAFEMLS agreement with My Florida Regional MLS (MFRMLS), Florida’s largest MLS and the overall eighth largest Multiple Listing Service in the world. MFRMLS’ 30,000 subscribers will have secure access through Clareity Security’s industry leading Scout for SAFEMLS plus Clareity Security’s Single Sign-ON (SSO).

Every day, thousands of online accounts are compromised by account sharing: the deliberate sharing of account credentials to fraudulently enable more people to use an account than are authorized to do so. Powered by patent-pending behavioral analytics, Scout for SAFEMLS identifies unauthorized use, ranks its potential for revenue recovery, and triggers remediation workflow. The software-as-a-service application (SaaS) enables compliance managers and executives to easily identify, prioritize and remediate fraud within a service.

With 30,000 subscribers across Central and Southwest Florida, MFRMLS needed a complete secure access solution integrated with its five different user-facing applications. Scout for SAFEMLS combined with SSO provides MFRMLS with the peace of mind of strong security while offering its subscribers a higher level of convenience through Single Sign-On.

“Clareity Security’s SAFEMLS suite of products adds transparent security and single sign-on convenience for our subscribers while providing a vastly improved layer of protection against abuse of our service”, said Merri Jo Cowen, CEO of My Florida Regional MLS. “In our extensive review of access management solutions, Scout for SAFEMLS and Clareity Security SSO were the clear choice for MFRMLS.”

About My Florida Regional MLS
My Florida Regional MLS, located in Orlando, FL is Florida’s largest multiple listing service with approximately 30,000 subscribers. Owned by 13 Shareholder REALTOR® Boards and Associations in Central and Southwest Florida, MFRMLS offers a comprehensive suite of productivity and marketing tools to professionals in the real estate industry.

About Clareity Security:
Clareity Security, located in Scottsdale, AZ is the leading provider of security products and services for the real estate and mortgage industries. It’s SAFEMLS® and SAFEACCESS™ products help MLS organizations and real estate professionals easily and effectively safeguard sensitive consumer information against unauthorized access and provides next generation strong authentication solutions for secure online transactions. Additional information is available at http://www.ClareitySecurity.com.

Contact:

Amy Geddes, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer
480-444-0014
Amy.Geddes@ClareitySecurity.com
www.clareitysecurity.com

CLAREITY SECURITY LAUNCHES SCOUT FOR SAFEMLS AND SINGLE SIGN ON SOLUTION FOR
COOPERATIVE MLS OF CONTRA COSTA, EAST BAY REGION DATA, INC. AND THE BAY EAST ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS

Scottsdale, Arizona — April 14, 2010 — Clareity Security is pleased to announce its Single Sign On (SSO) & Scout for SAFEMLS solution release for the Cooperative MLSs the of Contra Costa Association of REALTORS®, East Bay Regional Data, Inc. and the Bay East Association of REALTORS. Clareity Security’s SSO will serve as the Identity Provider (IDP) for the Co-Op’s participation as Multiple Organization Reciprocal Exchange (MORE) in a reciprocal access data share.

The MLSs involved include the three organizations that comprise MORE (Multiple Organization Reciprocal Exchange): Bay East Association of REALTORS® (Bay East), Contra Costa Association of REALTORS® (CCAR), and East Bay Regional Data, Inc. (EBRDI); who have joined the existing data share between MLSListings, Inc., and the Quattro Group, comprised of Bay Area Real Estate Information Services, Inc. (BAREIS MLS®), MetroList Services, Inc. (MetroList®), and the San Francisco Association of REALTORS® (SFAOR).

MORE provides the Co op’s MLS service participants and subscribers broad access to search for and list properties throughout Northern California. This dramatically expanded MLS service is brought to you by the CoOp at no additional cost.

All participating MLS service providers are required to adhere to the group’s strict access security policies and utilize SAML to facilitate their SSO functionality. Cooperation from all parties was a necessity to ensure the successful integration of Scout for SAFEMLS and Single Sign On into the Cooperative’s primary MLS system which is the LPS Real Estate Group flagship product Paragon.

“It means a great deal to LPS Real Estate Group to provide excellent security technology to our customers,” said Rich Lull, Senior Vice President, MLS Solutions, LPS Real Estate Group. “Our partnership with Clareity Security has consistently allowed us to do that, from the first SAFEMLS implementation over five years ago to a project the size and complexity of the MORE Data Share.”

Clareity’s Scout for SAFEMLS solution serves as the strong authentication product, which was a requirement of
participation in the MORE data share. In addition to unsurpassed security, Scout for SAFEMLS also provides customers with revenue assurance not seen by other products. Scout for SAFEMLS reduces administration and total cost of ownership compared to traditional strong authentication products. The SAFEMLS intelligence based authentication suite combine access intelligence and zero-footprint, strong authentication to accurately identify risks and cost-effectively mitigate them. The foundation of the solution is an identity profiling engine for aggregating user access data, creating statistical profiles, and detecting anomalies. Powered by patent-pending keystroke dynamics, Scout for SAFEMLS is unrivaled in its ability to accurately and transparently identify users, detect account sharing, account takeover, and differences between individual users thus providing a means to recover revenue lost to fraudulent access to the MLS data.

About Clareity Security:

Clareity Security, located in Scottsdale, AZ is the leading provider of security products and services for the real estate and mortgage industries. Its SAFEMLS® and SAFEACCESS™ products help MLS organizations and real estate professionals easily and effectively safeguard sensitive consumer information against unauthorized access and provides next generation strong authentication solutions for secure online transactions. Additional information is available at http://www.ClareitySecurity.com.

Contact:
Amy Geddes, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer
480-444-0014
Amy.Geddes@ClareitySecurity.com

In early 2009, Clareity Security partnered with AdmitOne Security to deliver Scout for SAFEMLS as an expansion of its industry leading SAFEMLS solution. Scout for SAFEMLS is an intelligence-driven authentication suite designed to improve revenue assurance and organizational security. Intelligence-driven strong authentication transparently monitors user access, continuously analyzes for unauthorized use, and automatically applies security policies for remediation.

Scout for SAFEMLS offers a convenient end user experience without compromising security or requiring the organization to incur the expense and time to provision hardware, software, or certificates to end user. Powerful biometric keystroke dynamics tracking offers unsurpassed account-sharing identification far beyond the traditional limited success of IP address and login frequency tracking offered by other security solutions in the marketplace.

Chart 1: Tracking of IP addresses fails to identify 60% of Shared Accounts

In a study of 400,000+ login attempts, using IP address and login frequency as the two measures of identifying a shared account, other systems’ methods resulted in one out of every 10 (10%) non-shared accounts being falsely identified as shared and a six out of ten (60%) miss rate of not identifying actual shared accounts.

Installation of Scout for SAFEMLS began in June of 2009 and the results have been overwhelmingly positive. Based on past experience with traditional SAFEMLS implementations, Clareity Security estimated identified account sharing percentages between 15 and 25% of all active user accounts. The results have actually been much higher. Scout for SAFEMLS is currently installed in eleven MLS accounts representing over 125,000 users with average account sharing detection of 32%.

Chart 2: Shared Accounts as identified by Scout for SAFEMLS

Many MLS organizations have recognized account sharing is directly correlated with revenue leakage. In addition to the benefit of protecting valuable MLS information from unauthorized access, MLS organizations also experience a strong return on investment through the increased revenues from new subscribers no longer able to illegitimately access the service.

Beyond identification of account sharing as the first step in fixing the problem, Clareity Security developed an automated remediation management module within Scout for SAFEMLS, which allows the organization to build customized remediation policies for the shared accounts. Varying from stringent, immediate shared account enforcement policies to developing policies intended to initially educate the end user and escalate enforcement for those users remaining non-compliant, Clareity Security works directly with the MLS organization to develop the ‘right’ set of policies. The true power of Scout for SAFEMLS resides in positively identifying shared accounts and then enacting remediation steps against shared accounts while assuring legitimate users are not inconvenienced.

With the on-going revenue assurance opportunity as a stated goal for many MLS organizations, the identified sharing statistics prove a substantial opportunity for revenue recovery and prevention of revenue leakage. The following example of a 5,000 subscriber MLS organization using Scout for SAFEMLS to identify and remediate shared accounts demonstrates this significant revenue opportunity:

Chart 3: Revenue Opportunity for MLS organization with 5,000 subscribers

Based on a typical cost of a MLS subscription of $35 per month, a 5,000-subscriber MLS organization, using Scout for SAFEMLS, will realize an almost immediate growth in revenue through the identification and recapture of shared subscriptions.

As MLS organizations forecast and plan based on subscription base changes, having the appropriate tools to monitor, analyze, and identify revenue leakage is absolutely critical to the on-going success of the organization. Scout for SAFEMLS from Clareity Security is uniquely positioned as the only intelligence-based analytics tool capable of meeting those challenges for the MLS organization.

For additional information visit www.clareitysecurity.com or contact:

Troy Rech, VP of Sales
540-857-0543
Troy.Rech@ClareitySecurity.com

MARKET ADOPTION OF SCOUT FOR SAFEMLS SPOTLIGHTS DEMAND FOR
CLAREITY SECURITY’S INNOVATIVE ACCESS MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS

Over 125,000 Scout for SAFEMLS subscribers added in the 3rd quarter

SCOTTSDALE, AZ – September 29, Clareity Security continues to demonstrate
innovation in online real estate security and access management with the addition of
several new MLS customers that recently contracted to implement Scout for SAFEMLS.
Many MLS organizations are also contracting with Clareity Security to provide Single
Sign On as a valuable convenience offering for their subscribers. Clareity Security
recently welcomed the following customers:

Hawaii Information Services – Honolulu, HI
Jackson Area Association of REALTORS – Jackson, MI
Monroe County Association of REALTORS, – Monroe, MI
Midwest Real Estate Data, LLC – Chicago, IL
Winnipeg Association of REALTORS – Winnipeg, ON

In addition to our growing new customer subscriber base, many of our existing
customers have opted to implement our next generation, zero-footprint secure
authentication offering. Recently the following customers extended their agreements
with Clareity Security to implement Scout for SAFEMLS:

Metropolitan Regional Information Services – Rockville, MD
Capital Area Association of REALTORS – Springfield, IL
Corpus Christi Association of REALTORS, – Corpus Christi, TX
Greater El Paso Association of REALTORS – El Paso, TX
Las Cruces Association of REALTORS – Las Cruces, NM
Oklahoma City Association of REALTORS – Oklahoma City, OK

“We are proud to bring innovative solutions for real estate, and we appreciate the trust
and confidence our SAFEMLS customers have in us. We have worked hard to deliver
business value that is highly customized for real estate,” stated Gregg Larson, CEO of
Clareity Security.

Scout for SAFEMLS analyzes multiple transparent session factors to ensure that the
user logging in is the legitimate user. The solution combines something the user knows
(the username and password) with something the user has (the device used to access
the system) with something the user does (unique keystroke dynamics/typing patterns).
These three factors together are used by Scout to aggregate, analyze, and act on
session information to secure the MLS system data.

About Clareity Security:
Clareity Security, located in Scottsdale, AZ is the leading provider of security products
and services or the real estate industry. It’s SAFEMLS® and SAFEACCESS™ products
help MLS organizations and real estate professionals easily and effectively safeguard
sensitive consumer information against unauthorized access and provides next
generation strong authentication solutions for secure online transactions. Additional
information is available at http://www.ClareitySecurity.com.

Contact:
Clareity Security
Amy Geddes, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer
480-444-0014
Amy.Geddes@ClareitySecurity.com