Schwab has opened a dedicated center for advisors as part of the industry-wide fight against cybercrime and IT-related breaches.

Schwab Advisor Services has unveiled a Cybersecurity Resource Center for advisors, at a time when preventing cyber attacks is top-of-mind for the industry, and other concepts such as innovation labs take off.

The center offers educational materials to guide advisors through each step of cyber risk prevention, and offers one-on-one consulting for those firms with more complex needs.

The content aligns with the National Institution of Standards and Technology framework, which the SEC and FINRA have encouraged advisors to adopt, Schwab said.

Specifically, it aims to help advisors:

•    Understand the regulatory and fraud environment;
•    Assess their work and develop an action plan to strengthen programs;
•    Educate employees on roles and responsibilities for protecting firm and client information; and
•    Educate clients on best practices for protecting information and how to maintain their programs.

“Cybersecurity is an incredibly important issue for all advisors, and we view this as a critical component of our practice management and consulting support,” said Nick Georgis, senior vice president at Schwab Advisor Services. “By institutionalizing important practices like vendor due diligence and employee education on data security, firms are in a better position to meet the challenges of cybersecurity today and in the future.”

Indeed, nearly 90 per cent of advisors recently polled by the Investment Advisor Association and ACA Compliance Group pointed to cybersecurity, privacy and identity theft as their top compliance concern for 2016. Family offices make attractive targets for cyber criminals in particular, although many have reported that they do not have a formal cybersecurity policy in place (source: Moore Stephens).

Across the board, nonetheless, firms of all stripes - including the SEC (see here) - are increasingly recruiting cybersecurity experts and ramping up their resources dedicated to this area of risk. Another example is Regions Bank, which last November named former FBI executive John Boles as manager of international and cyber investigation.

Click here and here for part one and two, respectively, of a recent in-depth feature looking at cybersecurity best practices for family offices.