Fidelity National Financial shuts down network after cybersecurity incident

Fidelity National Financial, or FNF, a Fortune 500 company that provides title insurance and settlement services to the mortgage and real estate industries, announced Tuesday that it was the victim of a “cybersecurity incident that affected certain FNF systems.”

The company filed a report with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) saying it has launched an investigation, hired “top experts” to assist, notified law enforcement and “implemented a number of measures to assess and contain the incident.”

“Among other restrictive measures, we blocked access to some of our systems, which led to disruptions in our business,” the report said, adding that this affected services related to securities insurance, escrow, other related services with securities and mortgage transactions.

“Based on our investigation to date, FNF has determined that an unauthorized third party accessed certain FNF systems and obtained certain credentials. The investigation remains ongoing at this time,” the report said.

FNF did not respond to requests for comment.

New Properties mentionted that the breach has halted planned closings, which have left agents and homebuyers “scrambling for workarounds” as they have been told the systems needed to complete their transactions will not be available until Sunday.

A person who said he works at a firm that does business with Fidelity National Financial and has knowledge of the incident told TechCrunch that they heard FNF “decided to shut down their network, their systems, even their email […] in an effort to clean up their servers in Jacksonville and prevent any problems.”

Another source, who said they worked in IT for a company that uses FNF, told TechCrunch that they heard FNF was “locked.”