In conversations with business leaders, I often hear a familiar line of thinking:
“We process hundreds—even thousands—of transactions every month. If one is affected by fraud, it’s unfortunate, but not catastrophic.”
At first glance, that seems reasonable. After all, one transaction out of a thousand feels like a small percentage. But this mindset overlooks a critical reality: the financial impact of cybercrime isn’t measured by how many transactions are affected—it’s measured by what it does to your bottom line.
Let’s put this into perspective.
Imagine a $500,000 transaction. In a typical title or escrow operation, your net profit on that deal might range from 0.5% to 1.5%, depending on your fee structure, overhead, and market conditions. At best, you’re clearing $7,500 on that transaction.
Now consider what happens if that same $500,000 deal is hijacked by a wire fraud incident. That’s $500,000 gone—not just in lost revenue, but potentially reimbursed funds, legal fees, operational disruption, reputational damage, and increased insurance premiums.
To recover from that one loss, you don’t just need one more good transaction.
You need to close 67 additional $500,000 deals—just to earn back what was stolen.
Let that sink in:
You are effectively working for free until those 67 deals are closed.
Everything your team does—every order opened, every closing completed, every hour spent—is going toward covering a hole that didn’t need to be there in the first place.
It’s Time to Reframe the Conversation
Cybersecurity isn’t just an IT problem—it’s a profitability problem. It’s a business continuity problem. And it’s a brand trust problem.
Leaders who continue to view cyber incidents as isolated or acceptable losses are gambling with the financial health of their companies. One incident can negate months of legitimate business activity and render a high-performing operation financially stagnant.
If you wouldn’t ignore a drop in revenue or a spike in costs, you shouldn’t ignore cyber threats either. Because when you run the numbers, the math makes the risk impossible to ignore.
