On Security and Technology
With all of the different holidays and festivities coming up ahead, I just wanted to be the first to thank you for being part of our success this past year of 2021. Pocket Mortgage has had another record-breaking year in many different avenues & none of it could have been possible without your continued support. Thank you 
Sales volume aside, we’ve had quite a run at becoming a much leaner, faster and more efficient brokerage in the last 12 months. If you haven’t already had a chance to experience the Pocket Mortgage difference, next time we transact I promise you’ll be impressed! 
In addition to an already almost completely digital onboarding process, we’ve also added the following to our toolbox to serve you better in 2022:
- Digital ID Verification (using your Bank Account portal)
- Digital Bank Statement Download Tool (You no longer have to print any of your bank statements; we send you a link that scrubs the last 90 days of your banking history and securely delivers them back into our Mortgage Portal)
- Document Upload Portal (No more transmitting docs via email, you simply receive an email link to upload all of your documents into our secure portal that encrypts and safeguards your information until the end of the transaction; we also enforce Access Codes for all portal links to avoid unauthorized access)
- Digital CRA Download Tool (Don’t have your NOAs or T4s handy? or perhaps cant locate that CCB statement? With our latest tech, we are now able to obtain your Authorization and download all of the NOAs/T4s/T4As/T5s/CCB Statements and much more directly from CRA)
- eSign 2.0 (We’ve introduced our original eSign tool back in 2018, but it took a few years for it to really bloom. As of recently, we’ve upgraded our eSign system to provide better audit trails. This ability to provide better audit trails might not sound like a lot, but with this recent upgrade we can confidently say that our eSigns are now acceptable by virtually every Lender in Canada)
- New and Improved Smart Mortgage Application (We’ve used online mortgage apps for years now, but none of them compare to our latest Online Mortgage Application. Don’t believe it? Try it for yourself – Click Here. Unlike prior versions, our latest Online Mortgage Application comes with decision logic. In other words, it adjusts your input fields as you populate the information into it. Pretty cool, huh?)
*** We’ve also made it a point this past summer 2021 to considerably improve all security measures across all systems (emails, CRMs, Deal Management Systems and just general Databases). We’ve made sure to upgrade all systems to the latest encryption technologies and performed a very vast security audit to ensure every single aspect of our brokerage is well protected.
In the end of the day, security and technology isn’t something you can’t just set and forget ladies and gentlemen. You can choose to do things the same way you’ve always done them… You could stay romantic about the way things used to be… However, technology doesn’t care. It just comes and crushes everything in its way.
So, you can choose to adapt with the times and make technology your greatest ally.
Or, you can also ignore it… but it will leave you biting the dust in the end.
MAJOR SECURITY TIP FOR 2022 (make sure to read):
If you’ve read this far into the email, I’m going to share a little tip that will save you lots of headache in the year of 2022 (and many more years to come).
Not a lot of people know this, but majority of all those Email/Facebook/Instagram hacks that you have probably seen on social this past year of 2021 are only happening because everyone keeps reusing their passwords across different accounts (IE: for years, my mother kept reusing the same password for her emails, Facebook and bank accounts until I made her change it all into unique passwords). Just this past year of 2021, I’ve seen at least two dozen of people post on social that their accounts got hacked. However, not enough of them spent the time figuring out why.
At first, having your Email/Facebook/Instagram hacked may not sound like such a big deal, but it very much is. If you’ve used the same email account for 5+ years, chances are you’ve transmitted your IDs, financial statements, bank accounts, private messages, pictures and more over that email account. I dare you to go into your Sent folder right now and type ‘ID’ in the seach bar above and see what result show up. If that doesn’t make you worried, try typing ‘Tax Return’ or ‘CRA’ instead and watch your anxiety levels increase 
While going through the Security Audit earlier this summer, I was introduced to NordPass (click this link to go to their Website) NordPass is a password manager that has a couple of very handy security tools. Password Health tool scans all of your logins and notifies you if any of your passwords are being reused (meaning that if someone guesses one password, they could hold many accounts hostage at the same time). Password Generator tool allows you to generate unique and complex passwords for each and every account (so if someone takes one account hostage, they don’t get access to anything else). However, most impressive is the Data Breach Scanner tool that literally scans the Dark Web for any evidence that any of your login credentials have been compromised and are being actively sold on the Dark Web. If any of your accounts show up on this list, it’s highly recommended to update your passwords to avoid any possible security breaches down the road.
I’m not new to password managers, but I’ve never seen one that did such an amazing job at all three of those things listed above. The NordPass Password Manager itself is actually FREE, but the three tools listed above are meant to be premium features for paid customers. Luckily, they allow a 7-day free trial so you can give it a go and judge for yourself. Last time I checked they also had some Holiday Promos. Make sure to check them out!
Disclaimer: This was NOT a paid endorsement. I have NO association with NordPass, but i do find their tools very useful.
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