With so many stories in the news lately about identity theft, scams, and privacy breeches, we believe it’s important for our clients to understand exactly how we keep their money and their information safe. Along with creating financial strategies, safeguarding your personal information and money from hackers is a critical component of what we do.

Below, we have compiled a list of all the ways Denver Private Wealth Management goes above and beyond to protect your personal information. These technology and security solutions are implemented at the firm level and at Charles Schwab to keep your information safe.

Schwab

What Schwab does to protect your information:

Multilayered technology gives multiple safeguards between unwanted inquiries and your money. Additionally, whether you’re visiting a branch, calling Schwab customer service, or going online, your identity will be verified every time before any personal information can be discussed.

Employees of Schwab are trained in privacy and security measures to make sure your information is always being protected.

 

Additional measures you can take to protect your money at Schwab:

 

Set up Security Alerts

You can sign up for notifications anytime there’s activity on your account – and we encourage you to take this measure! Anytime there’s a buy, sell, money movement, etc. you’ll immediately receive a notification letting you know what has happened. This way you can stay up to date and confident nothing is “slipping through the cracks” on your watch.

Enroll in advanced authentication

If you’d like to make your Schwab login even more secure, consider enrolling in Schwab’s two-step verification program. Each time you access your account, you’ll receive a one-time security code to use with your password. This way, you never have to worry if someone has stolen your credentials, because the second step of authentication will add an additional layer of protection.

Sign up for Voice ID

You can access your account over the phone by using your voice as authentication – streamlining the process of verifying your identity. If you’d like to take this measure to protect from someone fraudulently calling in with your personal information, call 800-435-4000 to enroll.

Voice Password

Clients can put a verbal password on file that must be used whenever they call into Schwab. This is beyond voice authentication and Schwab confirming personal information to identify the client. This verbal password acts as an additional buffer to protect clients from unwanted attacks.

Signature Verification

Schwab compares all signatures to historical documents Schwab has received from clients in order to confirm it’s an authentic signature and the best wishes of the client. This ensures no forgeries can be submitted to Schwab as they constantly authenticate new signed documents against old ones.

As an example of additional verifications, Schwab will ask the client to verify any wires that are sent out of their account. Wires obviously have a large amount of security risk and fraudsters try to wire money all the time because it can’t be reclaimed once it’s left the account. Because of this, Schwab takes additional measures through signature verification on the wires and additional client confirmation in order to confirm all wires before they go out.

 

Other Security Measures

Firewall Protection

We implemented a firewall at the office to give us an additional level of security (physically inside the office). This firewall knows exactly which websites we’re visiting and can give us a second line of defense for phishing attempts.

Workplace

Workplace is the 256-bit encryption software where we store all of our client files and sensitive information. Through this program we can allow access only for those who need it within the office.

Absolute

Absolute is at the chip level of the hardware. It provides us with reporting for everything on our hard drives that might have personal information. Absolute also allows us to see everyone’s computers and where vulnerabilities might be. We also have the capability to wipe the computer remotely if the computer was ever lost or stolen and track where the computer is.

BitLocker

BitLocker enables us to encrypt our hard drives, so that even if the computer fell into the wrong hands they wouldn’t be able to access critical information.

Zix

Zix Email Encryption removes the hassle of manually encrypting email and helps teams feel confident that their sensitive data sent via email is secure. Emails and attachments are scanned automatically and any message containing sensitive information is encrypted for deliver.

Office 365

Office 365 has spam and malware protection built into the Microsoft Office 365 product which provides us with another layer of protection.

Barracuda

Barracuda helps our firm’s emails and communications be backed up on cloud-based software, ensuring we won’t suffer from data loss. Additionally, Barracuda scans all emails for malware of phishing attempts, adding an additional layer of security in all communications.

Advisor Armor (Continuing Education):

Advisor Armor is our firm’s ongoing cybersecurity training and testing program. All team members complete a training and testing program every quarter to keep us informed on the latest threats to be aware of and security methods to protect against them.

Webroot

All computers have Webroot installed for spam and malware protection for the actual laptop and desktop.

 

We realize that some of the programs mentioned here are not something that everyone uses every day, so you might not be familiar with them. If you have any questions about the security of your correspondence and transactions with Denver Private Wealth Management, we are always here to answer your questions.