It’s safe to say cybersecurity hasn’t always been front of mind for asset management firms.
In March 2020, the Central Bank of Ireland sent out a public letter, titled ‘Dear CEO‘, to discuss the lack of cybersecurity best practices within the financial services industry.
The letter highlighted six areas firms should focus on:
- Cybersecurity risk governance
- Cybersecurity risk management
- IT asset inventories
- Vulnerability management
- Security event monitoring
- Security incident management
While this may seem like a tough mountain to climb, there are best practices your firm can follow to help boost your cybersecurity maturity and protect your all-important assets and data.
3 cybersecurity best practices to adopt today
With that in mind, let’s delve into three approaches that could boost your firm’s security, both now and in the future.
1. Invest in identity management
The frequency of insider threats rose by 47 percent within the last two years.
For asset management firms, an insider breach could result in damaging repercussions, both financially and reputationally.
To help prevent the likelihood of these threats, invest in a package such as Microsoft 365 E5, which contains a wealth of security and compliance tools. With Microsoft’s trustworthy identity and access manager, for instance, you can:
- Ensure only the right employees access the right data
- Encourage users to log in via multi-factor authentication
- Monitor user activity and flag any suspicious behaviour before it can fester
Security capabilities such as these will ensure your employees have the right amount of freedom, all while keeping your data secure.
2. Head to the cloud
When your data’s housed on-premise, you’re solely responsible for its security. This can be a struggle for asset managers, particularly if they don’t have the right skills in-house.
Cloud platforms, however, handle the burden for you. And they invest a lot of money into doing so.
From physical security parameters to application-based monitoring, there’s plenty of security measures to keep your data secure when you migrate to the cloud.
3. Protect your sensitive data
Over half of asset management firms state they struggle with enhancing systems and processes to cope with new regulatory requirements. Unfortunately, if you’re not compliant, you may end up facing some hefty fines.
While regulatory compliance must start within your firm’s culture, there are tools and templates that can help.
Azure Information Protection, for instance, allows you to classify, label and protect your sensitive data to ensure its watertight security when passed within and outside of your firm. On top of this, the Azure cloud platform offers tools to help you enforce policies across your resources, as well as a GDPR blueprint.
Champion cybersecurity with Chalkline
Asset management firms are under a lot of pressure to breathe life into their cybersecurity efforts. And, with a growing number of cyber threats and data breaches within the financial services industry, it’s no wonder.
We hope these three best practices will inform your security and efforts going forward.
However, we understand that many firms feel ill-equipped to handle a task as complex as IT security and regulatory compliance. So, if you’d like some help, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with the Chalkline team.
