Wealth firms are failing to keep pace with a growing wave of digital dangers, regulators and sector specialists have warned, after the Financial Conduct Authority identified a 187% increase in tech outages over the year to late 2017.
The regulator found that too many wealth firms either rely on outdated, manual processes to protect themselves or believe they are below the radar of malicious actors.
‘The biggest mistake that firms make is that they ignore the issue’, says Malcolm Taylor, head of cyber security at ITC Secure, which works with clients including Schroders and Brooks Macdonald. ‘Wealth managers are still doing a lot of business via email, and we’ve seen a lot of email compromise.’
Ironically, while some pre-digital techniques such as traditional telephone dealing and execution may be the safest simply by virtue of keeping information offline, increasing regulatory pressures to standardise, automate and record all communications may be creating vulnerabilities.
‘Cyber criminals hate human contact. We should do more of it to tighten security,’ added Taylor. So how to stay compliant while staying safe, and how can you…
