Industries
Managed IT and Security for Financial Firms
Client financial data is concentrated, directly monetizable, and held by firms small enough to be seen as an easier route than the institutions behind them. Meanwhile examiners, custodians, and insurers all expect you to demonstrate the controls, not describe them.
The operational reality
Concentrated data, external scrutiny, and clients who notice
A small advisory firm can hold account numbers, tax identifiers, balance histories, and identity documents for hundreds of households in a handful of systems. The concentration is the point: an attacker who reaches one advisor's mailbox and calendar has a route to funds, to identity fraud, and to convincing impersonation of a trusted person. Firm size is not protective here, and in the attacker's calculus it is the opposite.
The second pressure is external scrutiny. Depending on your charter, registration, and the partners you connect to, some combination of regulators, examiners, custodians, institutional clients, and insurers is entitled to ask how you protect information. They rarely accept a description. They ask for evidence: who has access, when it was last reviewed, what is logged, how long it is retained, when the last restore test happened, which vendors hold your data. Firms that have never organized that evidence find each request consuming weeks.
The third is client perception, which behaves differently in this sector than in most. Financial relationships rest on the assumption that the firm is careful. A visible lapse damages that assumption in a way that is hard to repair, and it tends to become known quickly among clients who talk to each other. That is a real reason to invest ahead of an incident rather than after one.
The problem
What we find in financial firms
Recurring conditions in advisory firms, community institutions, and agencies.
Email is the whole attack surface
Client instructions, statements, and identity documents move by mailbox, making a single compromised account an unusually rich target.
Payment verification depends on judgment
Wire and banking-change requests are validated informally, so an impersonation attempt succeeds or fails on whether one person was suspicious.
Evidence lives in people's heads
Controls are genuinely in place, but nothing records that they were reviewed, so every examiner or insurer request restarts from scratch.
Administrative access is unreviewed
Former staff, outside bookkeepers, and prior IT vendors retain access nobody has audited against a current roster.
Client data outside the core system
Spreadsheets, scanned documents, shared drives, and personal devices hold client information the firm has never inventoried.
Recovery has never been rehearsed
Backups run, but no one has tested how long it would take to resume serving clients after a ransomware event.
Scope
What we do for financial firms
Technical controls, operated consistently, with the evidence organized before it is requested.
Identity and privileged access control
Multi-factor authentication across all access paths, least-privilege administration, and scheduled access reviews that leave a record.
Email security and authentication
Filtering, domain authentication, impersonation protection, and mailbox monitoring for the forwarding rules attackers create.
Payment fraud controls
Support the procedural controls that stop wire fraud: out-of-band verification, dual authorization, and staff trained on the pretexts used.
Endpoint detection and response
Managed endpoint protection with monitoring and a defined response path rather than an alert nobody is watching.
Data inventory and encryption
Find where client financial and identity data actually lives, and protect it in transit, at rest, and on portable devices.
Logging and retention
Centralized collection with retention long enough to answer a question about something that happened months ago.
Backup, recovery, and continuity
Isolated backups with tested restores, and a continuity plan for continuing to serve clients when the office is unavailable.
Vendor and third-party tracking
Inventory the providers holding your data or access, record what each is responsible for, and keep the documentation current.
Control evidence packages
Assemble and maintain the technical documentation examiners, custodians, institutional clients, and insurers commonly request.
Security awareness training
Recurring training and simulation focused on the impersonation and payment-fraud scenarios financial staff actually encounter.
Our approach
How we start with a firm
Evidence first. Most firms are further along than they can prove, and the gap between the two is the immediate problem.
- 01
Inventory
Establish where client financial and identity data lives, who can reach it, and which outside parties hold or access it.
- 02
Assess
Measure the environment against the controls examiners, custodians, and insurers commonly ask about, and document the real state.
- 03
Close and record
Implement missing controls in priority order, and set up the evidence trail as the control goes in rather than afterwards.
- 04
Operate and review
Run monitoring and support continuously, with scheduled access and control reviews that keep the evidence current.
Business outcomes
What changes for the firm
Less exposure on the fraud paths that actually target financial firms, and less scramble when someone asks for proof.
Requests answered from a file
Examiner, custodian, and insurer questions draw on documentation that already exists instead of triggering a project.
Harder to impersonate you
Email authentication, mailbox monitoring, and verification procedure together close the most common route to client funds.
Access you can account for
You know who can reach client data, when that was last reviewed, and that departures actually remove access.
A rehearsed recovery
You know how long it takes to resume serving clients after a serious incident, because it has been tested.
Honest insurance answers
Renewal questionnaires can be completed accurately, which is what protects the policy when you need to rely on it.
Client confidence preserved
The care clients assume you take is genuinely in place, which is far easier than restoring it after a visible lapse.
Fit
Who this is for
- Registered investment advisers and wealth management practices
- Community banks and credit unions with small internal technology teams
- Insurance agencies, brokerages, and financial planning practices
- Accounting and tax practices holding concentrated client financial data
- Firms facing examiner, custodian, or institutional client security requests they cannot answer quickly
- Organizations completing a cyber insurance application that asks about controls they are unsure they have
When it may not be the right fit
We would rather tell you up front than sell you something that will not help.
- Firms seeking interpretation of what a specific regulation requires, which belongs with compliance counsel
- Organizations wanting an examination, audit, or coverage outcome guaranteed, which no provider can offer
- Firms unwilling to adopt payment verification procedure, since technology alone does not stop wire fraud
What we do not claim
Jowers Technology Solutions holds no regulatory credential and no specialist standing in any financial regulatory regime. Where this page references examiner, regulator, custodian, or insurer expectations, it does so because those expectations commonly drive security requirements, not as an assertion of expertise in interpreting them. Determining what a specific rule requires of your firm is work for your compliance officer, your counsel, or a consultant qualified in that regime, and we will say so rather than guess.
We do not promise a favorable examination, audit, questionnaire, or insurance outcome. Those depend on your firm, your documentation, and the judgment of the party reviewing it. What we commit to is implementing and operating the technical controls properly, keeping the evidence current, and telling you plainly where you stand.
Wire and payment fraud in this sector overwhelmingly targets process rather than technology. The most effective controls are procedural: verification out of band against a number on file, dual authorization, and a culture in which slowing a transaction down is expected rather than awkward. We will support those with technical controls, but a firm unwilling to adopt the procedure keeps most of the exposure.
Financial services questions
What firms ask us
Do you specialize in financial regulation?
We do not hold ourselves out as regulatory specialists, and we would be cautious about any IT provider who does. Interpreting what a specific rule requires of your firm is work for your compliance officer, your counsel, or a consultant qualified in that regime. What we bring is the technical side: implementing the controls those expectations point at, operating them consistently, and producing the evidence when someone asks how a safeguard works.
An examiner asked for our information security program documentation. Can you help?
We can supply and organize the technical portion: how access is controlled and reviewed, what is logged and for how long, how data is encrypted, how backups are protected and tested, how vendors with access are tracked, and how incidents would be detected and handled. What we do not do is decide what your program must contain or interpret the request on your behalf; that judgment sits with your compliance function. In practice the split works well because the technical evidence is usually the part that takes longest to assemble.
Why do our clients and custodians keep sending security questionnaires?
Because your firm has become part of their risk surface. Custodians, institutional clients, and larger partners increasingly assess the security of the firms they connect to, and they ask in writing so the answers become representations. The practical consequence is that a questionnaire you cannot answer quickly and accurately becomes a business obstacle, which is why organizing control evidence in advance pays for itself.
Our cyber insurance renewal is asking about controls we do not have. What now?
Insurer questionnaires have converged on a fairly predictable set: multi-factor authentication everywhere, endpoint detection and response, backups that are isolated and tested, privileged access management, email filtering, and recurring staff training. Where those are missing, implementing them before the renewal is the honest path. Answering imprecisely to secure a policy can affect coverage at exactly the moment you would need it, and that is a risk worth naming plainly.
How do we handle wire fraud and impersonation attempts?
Technology reduces the volume but does not eliminate the risk, because these attacks target process rather than systems. The controls that work are procedural and non-negotiable: out-of-band verbal verification against a number on file for any payment instruction or change of banking details, dual authorization above a defined threshold, and explicit permission for staff to slow a transaction down without fear of appearing unhelpful. We pair those with email authentication, filtering, and training on the specific pretexts used against financial firms.
Can you work with our existing custodial and portfolio platforms?
Our work is the environment those platforms are accessed from (identity, endpoints, network, connectivity, monitoring, and backup) rather than the platforms themselves, which are operated by their providers. That boundary matters, because a substantial part of your security posture depends on how those accounts are secured and reviewed on your side. We handle that side and coordinate with the platform vendor when an issue sits between the two.
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Learn moreFind out what you could actually prove today
Most firms have more controls in place than they can evidence. We will show you where that gap is and what it takes to close it before the next request arrives.