A host of threats, from phishing attacks to all manner of malware infection, have been on the rise throughout the course of the coronavirus pandemic. Advisors and financial services firms remain under threat, ranging from relatively simple attacks led by innocous emails to sophisticated new malware finding itself injected through vulnerabilities at large incumbent firms.
And thanks to work-from-home mandates that have forced employees to sometimes work over their personal in-home networks and on their own devices, at least early on, hackers had an even more fertile ground to work with. It has not been just the outside cyberthreats either, FINRA put out guidance earlier in the year and security providers soon found that a lack of hard disk encryption, operating systems without the latest patches, and antivirus and malware software that were not fully updated were all too common failings among advisors working from home.
With all this in mind, advisors should be aware of the many threats, new and old that they could encounter and must avoid.
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