The nation’s second largest title insurer, First American, and some of its subsidiaries are still offline as of Wednesday morning after the title firm’s Dec. 20 cybersecurity incident. The systems outage has caused disruptions to home closings over the holidays in more than 2,000 locations.
First American announced the incident mid-day on Thursday, followed by notifying clients on Friday that its email system was taken offline. It also filed a document with the Securities and Exchange Commission the same day, acknowledging the disruption but providing no estimate of how long it would last.
The company has shared updates through a new website it created, but there have been no updates since last Friday.
Homebuyers, sellers and appraisers have been posting on LinkedIn looking for clarification. One buyer commented: “We wired in full payment for a home that was supposed to close last week. Now our funds are not accessible and we are on track to miss our close date.” In another comment, a home seller said they had been waiting on disbursement for 6 days.
The First American Financial umbrella includes First American Title Insurance and First American Title Guaranty, along with nearly two dozen subsidiaries. As of Wednesday morning, the websites for DataTrace and ACI, a valuation technology subsidiary, remained offline. However, ServiceMac, First American’s mortgage servicer subsidiary, had come back online after being offline through Tuesday afternoon.
This latest cybersecurity attack at First American is unrelated to the May 2019 cybersecurity incident, in which it was recently asked to pay the New York Department of Financial Services (DFS) $1 million as part of a cybersecurity violation settlement.
First American is not the only title company hit with a cybersecurity attack. In late November, Fidelity National Financial fell victim to a ransomware attack taking its systems offline for a few days. Ransomware gang AlphV/BlackCat later claimed responsibility.
