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I told you Bitcoin wasn’t currency!
On today’s broadcast, cybersecurity takes center stage at FINRA and the SEC, what you
need to do to protect your business from attacks. Amazon launches its cloud desktop service
to the public. Does this mark the end of plain old desktop in your business? And two growing
providers form a new joint venture to take your portfolio management efficiency to the
next level.
So get ready, FPPad Bits and Bytes begins now.
Hey everyone, I’m Bill Winterberg, and thank you for joining me for this week’s technology
news broadcast.
Today's episode is brought to you by Orion Advisor Services, the nation’s largest privately
held portfolio accounting service bureau. Providing full-service data reconciliation,
advisory fee billing, Salesforce integration, mobile apps and more, Orion believes it's
time for you to enjoy your business again. Visit fppad.com/orion for more information.
Leading off today’s broadcast is an update from FINRA and the SEC highlighting cybersecurity
threats faced by advisors and broker-dealers. In a roundtable event held in Washington DC
this week, regulators and industry representatives acknowledged that the number one cybersecurity
threat to firms of all sizes is the unauthorized account takeover.
This happens when a hacker compromises an investor’s username and password credentials,
or manages to take control of an investor’s email account. The hacker then proceeds to
liquidate holdings and transfer money to outside accounts, or even poses as a client with a
convincing story to get advisors to transfer funds to an outside account, a clever tactic
known as spoofing.
Both FINRA and the SEC acknowledge they must play a role in this area, but neither provided
details on what exactly that role should be, and if any advisor exams are to include cybersecurity
audits, they are likely to start in the fall of 2014 at best.
Until then, here’s what I recommend you do: First, update your compliance manual with
policies for what you do when faced with a cybersecurity attack.
Second, train everyone in your organization so they’re familiar with the common tactics
from hackers, including phishing, spoofing, and reverse social engineering. And finally,
invest in technology to boost your security, like activating multi-factor authentication,
deploying firewalls, and even using phishing simulation software that I highlighted in
episode number 115.
To watch the webcast archive of the cybersecurity roundtable, be sure to visit fppad.com/126
to get the links to this week’s top stories.
Next up is news from Amazon, as the company announced the general release of its virtual
desktop solution to the public called WorkSpaces.
WorkSpaces is squarely aimed to take on other virtual desktop providers like Citrix, VMWare,
and Microsoft, and with pricing ranging from $35 to $75 per month for each user, WorkSpaces
is roughly half the price of the competition. If you’re looking to get rid of your aging
server and move all of your core software to the cloud, Amazon WorkSpaces just became
a very compelling option.
Plus, with the introduction of a new WorkSpace Sync application, you can backup and synchronize
up to 10GB of documents between your WorkSpaces, the Amazon Simple Storage Service, and even
your local desktop computer. This gives you a secure and reliable document storage alternative
to consumer services like Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive that you might
be using today.
And finally, two popular providers in portfolio management and rebalancing software, Orion
Advisor Services and Total Rebalance Expert, announced a new joint venture this week called
the “Total Technology Platform.” The two companies first integrated their solutions
back in October of 2012, enabling the import of account, transaction, and tax lot data
from Orion directly into TRX with a single click.
But this latest venture goes beyond bidirectional integration, as users of Orion will now be
able to access TRX directly from within the Orion platform. At the same time, both companies
said they are committed to maintaining open-architecture platforms rather than hold advisors captive
to one bundled solution.
Orion users can still take advantage of integrations with Blaze Portfolio, iRebal from TD Ameritrade
Institutional, and Rebalance Express from RedBlack Software, and TRX users can continue
to import data from Morningstar Office, Portfolio Center from Schwab Performance Technologies®,
Advent’s Black Diamond Performance Reporting and more.
For more details on the Total Technology Platform joint venture, as well as other stories that
didn’t make this week’s broadcast, visit fppad.com/126 for all of the links.
Remember, Bits and Bytes exists because of the support of our sponsors, so be sure to
visit Orion Advisor Services to learn how their portfolio accounting services can help
you enjoy your business again. Visit fppad.com/orion to get more information.
So have you been the target of cybersecurity attacks? Are you getting rid of your servers
in favor of virtual desktops? I want to know. Send me a message on Twitter using @billwinterberg
or search for me on Google+
For FPPad.com, I'm Bill Winterberg, see you next time!