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CYBERSECURITY

Ryan Quirk

Registered investment advisers, also known as RIAs, provide financial advice, with an accompanying fee structure generally tied to the value of a client’s assets. That fee, in theory, keeps investors’ interests aligned with their clients’.

Hackers are also leaning on RIAs—but not for help with their portfolios.

Ryan Quirk, founder and managing director of risk mitigation firm Sparrow Risk Group, has observed what he called a “marked increase” in sophisticated email-based social engineering attacks targeting both RIAs and their supporting vendors.

Smaller RIAs lack the budget, expertise, and resources of bigger outfits that can afford enterprise-level security, according to Quirk.

“There is a unique rise in the risk to those RIAs and family offices that these larger firms are able to mitigate due to the fact that they have these large cybersecurity divisions that they’re paying millions of dollars for,” Quirk told us. “These RIAs don’t have the capability to afford that.”

Why RIAs have been a target for cybercriminals.—BH

☕️ Cybercriminals are targeting wealth management firms