Protection of your personal financial information (PFI)

Individuals and SMEs (small and medium-sized businesses) turn to the financial services industry to help them invest in their economic future. Managing funds and controlling currency risk is what these financial professionals do, but sharing your information with a financial specialist carries an amount of risk of its own.

What kind of information is shared? When accounts are opened or transferred as an individual or an SME, personally identifiable information is inevitably passed between you and your financial services representative (and sometimes your support staff). This information includes and is not limited to:

• Name
• Speak to
• Social Security number
• Account numbers (for example, when making a transfer or transferring banks or credit cards)
• Date of birth
• Employment and income history
• Information on current assets and portfolio

Much of this information is done in person or online via a secure website, but SMEs and individual clients often turn to their brokers, account representatives, and customer service personnel to answer specific questions about their accounts. . Increasingly, these information transactions are conducted electronically.

How can customer information be at risk if paperwork is handled securely in person or through a secure web process? Personal financial information (PFI) can be compromised as you grow and build a one-to-one relationship with your financial services professional. Sometimes the connection to a financial services company is done by phone, other times by email. It is the security of email communication between the customer and the company / organization where their PFI is put at risk.

A quick question or message sent to a financial services organization seems to go instantly from your computer to the recipient’s inbox. In reality, emails make temporary stops along the way. As emails are directed by proprietary servers to their final destination, the messages that arrive at each of these stops are often stored and sometimes copied or even scanned before being sent to their final destination. Email security goes beyond being aware of the current phishing scheme, in which unscrupulous data thieves pose as someone from your trusted financial institution. Information interception isn’t just about who is forwarding your message, but also who can get that message across when you’re on the go.

Financial firms, although guided by government laws, restrictions and guidelines sometimes do not appear to have concrete policies when dealing with email between the client and the firm’s employee. Compliance and risk officers who administer company policies must grapple with the nuances outlined by the Sarbanes-Oxley, Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulations. Each of these government-imposed policies dictates how your personal financial information (PFI) is handled digitally, but they do not outline the best method of PFI protection.

Andy Purdy, Acting Director of the Department of Homeland Security’s National Cyber ​​Security Division in a February 2006 interview with CNet / News.com identifies the importance of protecting PFIs and other important digital assets:

“I believe that consumers, small businesses and large businesses and government are all important when it comes to reducing cyber risk. We are trying to educate partners on liability and the techniques that consumers can use to help protect their systems. ” (1)

A customer’s PFI is a product that can be bought and sold on black market data warehouses. Digital bullies seek to collect email information on a variety of mediums. What can individual clients and SMEs do to improve the situation while staying connected to their financial services business? Data encryption made it easy to protect sensitive information like PFI. If one of these black market digital thugs intercepts an encrypted message (unless they have somehow obtained the encryption keys), they will not be able to decrypt the message. If the email bully tries to break any of the commonly used encryption algorithms, they probably won’t be able to do so in their lifetime.

Business owners and individual investors can work a lifetime to achieve financial success and stability. Having confidential information like one’s PFI at risk via email can break that financial stability.

The risk in communicating with these services can be contained by knowing the risks of email, phishing scams, and the use of encryption tools to secure the financial statement. Although quite broad in nature, financial services in each of your facets as a lender, investment manager or financing arm can go one step further in the financial success of your clients. The use of encryption tools allows the individual customer or SME to keep in close contact with these managers of their financial future.

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Final notes:

1.) Joris Evers, “Newsmaker: Locking down America’s Net defennses” February 16, 2006, CNet New.com – http://news.com.com