NAR Helps Realtors Manage Multiple Technology Tools

RISMEDIA, Oct. 5, 2007-The National Association of Realtors(R) Center for REALTOR(R) Technology has released a free software toolkit to facilitate open standards-based Single Sign-On. SSO is an authentication process that allows users to enter one username and password to access all online real estate applications.

With SSO technology, Realtors no longer have to login separately to their multiple listing services, transaction management tools, form and virtual tour providers and e-mail and Web accounts. This streamlines the login process and reduces the number of usernames and passwords required for logins.

“Realtors continue to advance real estate technology, integrating new systems and applications into their businesses to help home buyers and sellers save time and money in the real estate transaction,” said NAR President Pat V. Combs, of Grand Rapids, Michigan, and vice president of Coldwell Banker-AJS- Schmidt. “SSO technology benefits Realtors(R) by allowing seamless movement from one application to another and helping to decrease administrative costs. With SSO, Realtors(R) everywhere can serve their customers and clients more efficiently.”

CRT helped fund the creation of the open-source toolkit to enable broad cooperation between real estate software vendors by using the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) 2.0 standard. The toolkit provides a reference implementation that real estate software vendors can use to incorporate SSO into their products and was developed in cooperation with Clareity Security, a leading provider of security products and services for the real estate industry.

“Vendors’ cooperation on open standards is the key to industry-wide adoption,” said Mark Lesswing, NAR chief technology officer and senior vice president. “This toolkit will help software and solution vendors concentrate on features that will help Realtors do their jobs better instead of spending time on the nuances of SAML 2.0.”

“SSO is an essential step for our industry,” said Paul Hethmon, chief software architect at Clareity Security and one of the principal developers of the SSO toolkit. “It’s been very exciting working with CRT to present this essential building block of cooperation to everyone in the real estate software community. We’re looking forward to expanding the number of vendors using the toolkit and helping them roll out the technology to their applications and customers.”

NAR’s CRT was established to provide technology leadership, guidance and assistance for its members. CRT makes available informed industry insight, research and open-source applications through its mission of implementation, advocacy and information.

Clareity Security, LLC, is a leading provider of security products and services for the real estate industry. Its SAFEMLS and SAFETMS(TM) products help real estate professionals easily and effectively safeguard sensitive MLS and consumer information against unauthorized access. Clareity Security also provides network security services, Unified Threat Management appliances, and other IT security solutions in partnership with companies such as with Secure Computing, a provider of global security solutions.

For more information, visit http://www.ClareitySecurity.com and http://www.REALTOR.org.