Registered investment advisers, broker-dealers and trading firms run on two things: uninterrupted access to custodial platforms and markets, and the client trust that a single incident can erase. North Star provides layered cybersecurity and secure cloud IT built for advisories, wealth managers and trading firms across the Denver metro area, Colorado Springs and Fort Collins, protecting client assets, custodial logins and the controls regulators now require.
This page explains why an advisory is a high-value target, how we secure the custodial platforms, portals and market-data systems you depend on, the layers we place between a threat and client accounts, and how we help you meet SEC Regulation S-P and FINRA cybersecurity expectations. It is part of our broader financial services cybersecurity program.
The attacks aimed at advisers go straight for money and the systems that move it. Generic IT support is not built to stop them. The damage lands in five ways:
We secure the way advisories and trading firms actually work — the custodial logins, the portfolio and CRM systems, the client portal and the market data that has to stay available.
Access to your custodian, portfolio-management and CRM systems is governed by identity, phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication and device health, so a stolen password alone never reaches client assets.
Client statements, requests and instructions move through an encrypted, monitored channel — and where your obligations require it, communications are captured and retained.
We move firms off the aging office server using the secure foundation behind our Microsoft 365 cloud migration work. Where a specialized portfolio or trading application still needs a server, we relocate it to Microsoft Azure so the closet and the aging hardware still go away.
No single control stops everything. We build overlapping layers so that when one is tested, the next one holds — each chosen for a threat advisories face:
For an adviser or broker-dealer, security is a supervised obligation you have to evidence. We build to these standards and document the configuration so you can show it to examiners, custodians and cyber-insurers:
North Star provides IT support and cybersecurity for registered investment advisers, broker-dealers, wealth managers and trading firms across Colorado’s Front Range, including Denver, Aurora, Lakewood, Arvada, Westminster, Thornton, Northglenn, Broomfield, Centennial, Greenwood Village, Englewood, Littleton, Highlands Ranch, Parker, Castle Rock, Golden, Wheat Ridge, Colorado Springs, Monument, Fort Collins, Loveland, Windsor and Greeley, along with the surrounding communities. We also support firms with remote advisers and satellite offices elsewhere in the United States.
Beyond the existing safeguards and disposal rules, the amendments require covered advisers and broker-dealers to maintain a written incident-response program and to notify affected individuals when their sensitive customer information is breached. We implement the detection, response and documentation that make both achievable.
Account takeover through business email compromise. Attackers watch a compromised or spoofed mailbox and submit fraudulent disbursement or wire instructions to a custodian or client. Enforced call-back verification, email impersonation protection and phishing-resistant MFA are the layers that stop it.
The custodian secures its own infrastructure, but under the shared-responsibility model your firm still owns identity, access, device security and configuration. Most incidents trace back to those customer-side gaps — which is exactly what our layered protection closes.
Examiners and insurers now expect enforced MFA, endpoint detection and response, tested backups, a written incident-response program and documented controls. We implement those layers and hand you the evidence to answer exam requests and insurance applications accurately — often improving eligibility, premium and audit outcomes.
Yes. Through co-managed IT we extend your team and compliance function with specialized security expertise, after-hours coverage and the documentation your regulators expect — without replacing the people who already know your firm.
Your technology should be your firm’s strongest safeguard, not its weakest link. North Star can assess your environment against the layers above, show you exactly where the gaps are, stand up the incident-response posture your regulators expect, and manage it all as part of our financial services cybersecurity program and broader managed security services.
Contact North Star today to schedule a security review for your Denver, Colorado Springs or Fort Collins advisory or trading firm.