The Situation

Harborview Realty Group is a boutique real estate agency based in the Midwest, specializing in residential home sales and property management. Harborview has 18 employees, including agents, administrative staff, and a small property management team. The company operates from a single office, but agents frequently work remotely from client properties, coffee shops, and home offices. The company relies heavily on email, a cloud-based CRM, and an online document signing platform to conduct daily business.

The Scenario

In early 2025, a Harborview agent received what appeared to be a routine email from a title company requesting updated wiring instructions for a pending closing. The agent, believing the email was legitimate, forwarded sensitive client financial information in response. The email was a spoofing attack; the sender was not the title company at all.

The incident prompted Harborview's office manager, Dana Kellerman, to work with an outside IT consultant to assess the company's security posture. The consultant confirmed that Harborview had a functioning firewall on its office network but identified a significant gap: employees did not understand what the firewall protected, what it did not cover, and how their own actions created risk. The consultant recommended a short security awareness training as a first step.

Dana engaged an instructional designer to develop the training to help all 18 employees build a foundational understanding of the firewall and their personal role in keeping client data secure.