Just as technology advances, so do the tools cyber criminals use to steal. Wire fraud, identity theft, and email scams—especially “phishing”—currently threaten data security for broker-dealers and financial advisors— and are growing in number and sophistication. An estimated 5% of U.S. adults fall victim to these crimes every year.

Keeping our clients’ information secure from criminals is a top priority for our firm. To better protect you and your accounts from cyber security threats, we continuously review security procedures to ensure that we are following best practices recommended by the custodians, financial institutions, and industry experts with whom we work.

While we feel we are taking clear and actionable steps in our own firm’s security measures, cyber fraud continues to escalate, is becoming more sophisticated, and is ever changing. As a fiduciary to our clients’ financial accounts, we are encouraging our clients to embrace a series of measures to help protect their identity and mitigate potential security risks. These are measures that we encourage everyone to use to avoid their financial information falling prey to cyber criminals.

The Cybersecurity – Investor Protection Checklist outlines some best practices for investors across six key areas aimed to help you protect yourself from cyber fraud.

Please carefully review this checklist with all members of your household.

We also ask that our clients do the following:

If you change a current address, please notify us immediately so that we can update our records.
If you suspect that your email account has been compromised, please call us immediately.
If you suspect that your Schwab and/or Fidelity account has been compromised, please call us immediately. If it’s after business hours, please call Schwab and/or Fidelity’s Customer Protection Teams, which are available 24/7.
For Fidelity account holders – call 1-800-FIDELITY to inform them of suspicious account activity.
For Schwab account holder – call 1-800-515-2157 to inform them of suspicious account activity.

Do not hesitate to contact us with questions or concerns. As always, we appreciate the opportunity to help you achieve your financial goals.