Top CRE executives discuss how owners and developers are using cyber security.

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Tama Huang, Chief Innovation Officer, CohnReznick

You know, traditionally we've put cyber security budgets, by the way, into the CIO or the CTO's domain. And I believe that that shift needs to occur so that it becomes an operational expense, not a technology expense.

Hussain Ali-Khan, Global Alliance Director, CBRE

Cyber security from a real estate perspective is challenging on a couple of different levels right. I think that the cyber security threat to all corporate entities exists in a couple of different ways. One is in a loss of data, exposure to liability, you know peoples stuff getting stolen…

Tama Huang, Chief Innovation Officer, CohnReznick

Everything is digital. We live in a digital world. And every aspect of our interactions with physical space is becoming digital as well. So. And that's that's so pervasive that when we think about cyber security it's not merely thinking about technology in and of itself. It is also thinking about every switch, every meter being connected. Right. Like you know it used to be only your servers, or your laptops, or your phones and now it is your fridge, your car, your doorbell. Those are all connected devices today that require cyber security.

Raj Bhatti, CIO, NGKF

Of course the physical security is very important, that sometimes gets overlooked, who has access to where. I mean in a data center, you can't walk in with a security guard, but any blue code can walk anywhere into a building, right. Those kind of little things or obvious things that are relevant for a data center now need to be relevant for a property. And then of course you on the technical side, as I said, all of the frameworks that you would expect in a large data center are needed in a building, you need to have firewalls. You need to have good identity management. Now that we have tenant engagement, you have all kinds of different users logging in. And as far as monitoring that suspicious activity, those things should be proactive. And then I think that's one of the first things that is new, that probably a landlord hasn't done yet and they will start needing to do so.

Kent Tarrach, VP, Asset Management & Global Corporate Development, Brookfield

What we're examining now is as we incorporate tenant engagement platforms and start to collect more data on the individual occupants of our buildings, we recognize that there has to be a level of security and safety built around those systems as well, because we are getting information about how people are spending their days, potentially what they're buying, we may have credit card information, we may have some other personally identifiable information, and we want to make sure that we can protect that just as much as, you know, a credit card company can or these others that have been doing it for a lot longer than us. And so before we start really going down that path it's critical for the real estate companies, owners, operators to really think of themselves in that same vein, that they have to also provide that level of cyber security to their occupants.

John Gilbert, EVP, COO, CTO, Rudin Management

What we saw it Rudin was that the most important thing that we had to do was to create a platform that could allow other technologies to plug into. Having an integrated, single integrated operational platform and operating system is the most important thing that a property owner can do.

Tama Huang, Chief Innovation Officer, CohnReznick

Networks are pervasive and persistent that this is not a once a year we do a pen test or we do some sort of a cyber security test. It is ongoing. It becomes a surveillance effort. It becomes an ongoing effort that needs to occur at all times both digitally and physically.