Right message, wrong client - the hidden risks of email in financial advice
This article was written in June 2021.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that phishing attacks are the most common cyber-security risk.
Yet the single biggest data security risk to your organisation is simply emailing the wrong client with someone else’s personal data.
It’s so easy to do and you feel so stupid afterwards both having to apologise to your client and then disclosing the error to the Information Commissioner’s Office ( ICO).
It’s no safer to post
Even if you avoid email and rely on the post to deliver your correspondence as you think it’s safer, you might want to consider that the second most common security breach reported to ICO is posting a document to the wrong client.
Finance is one of the top five sectors responsible for security breaches (worryingly Health is the clear front-runner given the sensitivity of the data involved).
In the three-month period to June 2021 a total of:
36 out of 180 (20%) security breaches were caused by sending an email to the wrong recipient
32 posted or faxed the wrong recipient (18%)
In third place there were 29 phishing attempts (16%) according to ICO in the Finance sector
With a moneyinfo client portal you don’t need to remember cryptic email addresses which can easily get mistyped, delivered to the wrong recipient, phished or lost in spam. Your client gets a notification on their phone, tablet or PC that they received a new message and can view it and respond securely on any device.
You can deliver almost all your correspondence electronically through your own fully branded app, avoiding postal delays and delivery errors. Clients can authorise transactions and sign documents electronically with a full audit trail of all activity shared by both you and your client. There’s never any doubt about what’s been said and you’re avoiding three of the most common security risks in one – email, post & phishing.
“In our own case what we’ve saved on postage and printing has already covered our annual licence fee.”