6 Technology Tips To Keep You In Line With FINRA & SEC Requirements
- Ask Your IT Provider To Conduct Regular Network Vulnerability Assessments.
Regulators want to know if you’ve performed regular IT network assessments to promote compliance. You must ensure that you, or whatever third parties you work with, have the capabilities to identify and manage the risk of data breaches and protect your investors’ confidential information.
Network assessments help you find the weak spots in your critical IT assets and take corrective action before attackers exploit them and steal your clients’ confidential data. Your IT provider can set up scans to monitor individual clients’ assets, groups of assets or entire networks. They can also schedule assessments to run automatically at specific intervals. This meets security best practices for regulatory requirements.
- Encrypt Your Digital Transmissions.
It’s critical that you secure digital transmissions of data and encrypt emails that contain financial information and statements. Regulators will want to know how your firm captures, retains and secures business communications between you and your investors, and they’ll want to know who’s in charge of the actual supervision and monitoring of these transmissions.
Email encryption services ensure that the contents of your emails are protected from outsiders. When an email is encrypted, it’s no longer readable until it’s unlocked and decrypted. Email encryption services are popular with financial firms because they send and receive so much confidential information.
You must ensure your emails are encrypted and secure during transit and in storage. Ask your IT provider about email encryption and protection services.
- Monitor The Security Of Your Digital Information.
Do you have the knowledge to ensure your data is secure? This is an area where confidence is critical. Regulators want to know how you protect your clients’ confidential data in storage. Ask your IT provider about perimeter security such as:
- Enterprise-grade firewalls that restrict access to unauthorized users.
- Content filtering so you can set policies to prevent internet fraud, phishing and spear-phishing attacks, and inappropriate access.
- Intrusion detection that monitors your network for suspicious or malicious activities.
- SOCaaS (Security Operation Center as a Service) that covers all of this. It resides behind your modem. It delivers 24/7 threat monitoring, advanced analytics, threat intelligence, and human expertise in a combined incident investigation and response.
- Implement A Cyber Security Policy.
How often is your cybersecurity policy reviewed, updated, and reported on for accuracy with applicable regulations? Does your written policy align with the actual way you supervise security of digital information? What corrective-action measures are in place for infractions?
Your cybersecurity policy should act as a framework to protect IT assets. It should be clear and define:
- Risk-mitigation measures.
- Enforcement strategies and the consequences for violating policies.
- A schedule of internal IT compliance reviews and assessments.
Establishing a formalized cybersecurity policy can reduce the risk of unsanctioned or potentially damaging inbound/ outbound communications, and instances that may draw unwanted attention to your firm from regulators.
- Make Sure Your IT Is Both Secure and Easy To Access.
If regulators come for an audit:
- Are you prepared to respond if they ask you to produce specific communication content?
- Can you prove all types of communication are being captured, reviewed, retained and secured properly?
- Can you retrieve and produce specific content in a timely manner?
- Invest In A Robust and Dependable Archiving Solution.
Not all archiving systems are created equal. To comply, you must invest in a solution with a single platform that can retain, manage, and search across all channels, including social media in its original context, keeping it in a search-ready state.
Comprehensive archiving platforms also help to eliminate content silos and offer solutions for more than compliance, such as e-discovery, escalation paths, and personal access to archived content.
Looking For The Right IT Services?
Regardless of what type of IT solutions you put into place, they should be easy to update and scalable. Static or multiple standalone options that only target individual needs or requirements won’t be enough. Your firm requires comprehensive IT Services that will ensure you always comply with FINRA & SEC regulations.
Looking for an IT Service Company in South Carolina that will help you implement a secure and robust IT environment? Get in touch with Cyber Solutions about our data security, network assessments, and other vital IT services that will contribute to your FINRA and SEC compliance efforts.
