Cybersecurity software and training vendor Entreda, a wholly owned subsidiary of Smarsh, announced its acquisition of the cloud-based risk assessment platform Privva.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Privva’s mostly Maryland-based team of 20 will be joining Entreda and the acquired firm will now be selling its technology under the Entreda brand. Privva’s founder and CEO, Ishan Girdhar, will continue to lead the organization and will report to Entreda CEO Sid Yenamandra.
Privva’s cloud-based platform helps companies across several regulated industry verticals conduct cyber-risk assessments to manage third-party vendors as well as internal risks. The two firms have already collaborated as strategic partners for more than two years.
“Many wealth management firms to date have been using clunky offerings or even relying on spreadsheets to assess and monitor their third-party relationships for cybersecurity,” said Yenamandra, noting that the SEC, FINRA and other regulatory bodies are increasing their focus on vendor risk management.
Advisory firms are now being required to perform risk assessments of third-party providers they use, who in turn must attest to a certain amount of rigor in protecting client data. Firms need to have a vendor due diligence protocol in place for annual review of current vendors and for new vendors.
Simply put, Privva’s cloud-based platform is employed by a wealth management firm’s head of cybersecurity in performing such risk assessments.
“They can send out questionnaires and risk score their vendors and then focus on any weak spots found,” said Yenamandra. “It [Privva] is very easy to use and pick from a library of questionnaires with thousands of templates a firm can pull from.”
Entreda’s Unify platform, which has included Privva’s solutions, has already formed a core component of Advisor Group’s CyberGuard Program, which is made up of six subsidiary firms and more than 10,000 financial advisors.