In the last several years, businesses worldwide have shifted their focus to digital platforms that help to carry out day-to-day business as usual. This rapid digital shift has expedited the importance of data privacy and security. With rising internet usage, an increase in cloud technologies, and the growing reliance on digital devices, the importance of cybersecurity continues to grow exponentially.
This rings especially true for financial institutions and wealth management firms along with other highly regulated industries where compliance and security are an absolute must. Thankfully, businesses can reduce their organizational and cybersecurity risks while protecting important documents and data with a Digital Vault Platform.
In this article, we’ll break down three significant ways Digital Vault Platforms help financial services and wealth management firms improve compliance regimes while reducing cybersecurity risks across all levels of the organization.
1. Tackle Technology Risks With Active Cybersecurity Oversight
If your organization had no choice but to make a sudden shift to digital document management (and remote working) from the onset of the pandemic, your current technology stack and the processes built around it might not be as secure as you may think. Be sure to be aware of any potential security gaps in your workflow, especially where critical information and data are required to be migrated manually between various online applications.
A Digital Vault Platform can build the foundation for your business plan to protect against cybersecurity threats and ensure that you’re satisfying the compliance requirements of regulators in several ways. With enterprise-grade security, your teams can confidently request, receive, store, and manage critical documents and important files across all stakeholders from the back office to advisors and third-party service providers to your clients.
Best of breed platforms should equip you with the ability to distribute information on a 1-to-1, 1-to-many, or many-to-1 basis all while ensuring information assets containing sensitive corporate and client data are kept safe and secure. When it comes to protecting information and documents, few platforms, if any, come close to the capabilities of what secure Digital Vault Platforms have to offer.
2. Reduce the Impact and Risks of Human Error
Basic human error is often the driver behind successful cybercrimes and data breaches. Commonly, the perpetrators of these fraudulent attempts leverage their victims’ trust—and ignorance—to their advantage. Many of these attacks come as phishing attempts—a seemingly innocent email from a familiar but fraudulent sender asking internal staff to hand over classified information or click on malicious links.
This highlights the importance of training teams on spotting and avoiding online scams and having the right processes and platforms in place for securely storing and sharing information.
It’s especially important to note that regulators, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), are enforcing fines on organizations and firms that do not have active policies in place to protect against cybersecurity risks. These prosecutions include punishments for non-compliant standings dealing with data breaches over email.
By implementing a Digital Vault Platform as a core part of operationalizing back and front office document management workflows, organizations gain clarity and confidence in knowing that only individuals with granted permissions can access and view information; no one else.
Digital Vault platforms can ensure good compliance standards across your entire organization by enabling your head office, advisors, and even your clients and their network of Trusted Advisors, to share, review, and manage critical documents directly within the one secure, encrypted location, rather than relying on outdated, inefficient, and insecure methods such as personal email.
For safe record-keeping and your firm’s document retention policy requirements, digital vault platforms provide the assurance that documents are being handled correctly, filed where they should be through automation and structure, and that information is easily accessible when and where it should be.
3. Protect Member Data with Advanced Security Protocols
With cybercrimes becoming more and more prevalent in our digital world, your business must take the proper action now to protect itself—and clients—from cybersecurity threats.
Having a well-established and trusted Digital Vault Platform in place ultimately means you are able to confidently provide your organization with the right technology necessary to proactively manage potential risks while building the foundation for your company to grow its protective processes and compliance protocols for the future.
Compliance extends across all areas of the business and involves every employee — it’s not relegated to just one committee, group, or department. Because of this, your business needs secure solutions that help multiple aspects of your business when it comes to client data protection.
This article originally appeared on FutureVault.com
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
