Managed IT for Financial Advisors & RIAs.
Your clients trust you with their financial future. VJNetworks manages the security behind that trust — the FTC Safeguards Rule if you’re state-registered, SEC Regulation S-P if you’re an SEC-registered RIA — for independent advisory firms across Rockland, Westchester, and Bergen counties.
compliance support
VJNetworks provides managed IT for financial advisors and RIAs in Rockland, Westchester, and Bergen counties, built around the cybersecurity requirements your registration status actually triggers: the FTC’s Safeguards Rule for state-registered advisers, or the SEC’s Regulation S-P for SEC-registered RIAs. Managed IT for financial advisors is an outsourced partnership where an MSP handles a firm’s entire technology environment — network management, cybersecurity, compliance support, cloud services, and help desk — for a predictable monthly cost, instead of an advisor trying to track two different federal regulators on top of managing client portfolios.
Which cybersecurity rule applies to your firm depends on one thing: registration status.
Financial advisors don’t fall under one single cybersecurity rule. GLBA directs each regulator to write its own version for the firms under its jurisdiction, and which one reaches your firm depends on whether you’re SEC-registered or state-registered. State-registered advisers — generally under about $100 million in assets under management — answer to the FTC’s Safeguards Rule. SEC-registered RIAs answer to the SEC’s Regulation S-P instead, not the FTC rule. A firm that assumes the wrong one applies, or assumes neither does because “that’s for banks,” is exactly the gap we see most often.
It’s worth being precise here: the SEC did propose a dedicated cybersecurity risk-management rule for investment advisers back in 2022, but the Commission formally withdrew that proposal in June 2025. It never took effect. The cybersecurity rule that actually governs SEC-registered RIAs today is amended Regulation S-P — and its compliance deadlines already passed, for every size of firm, as of June 2026.
Applies to state-registered advisers not required to register with the SEC. Requires a written risk assessment, a designated qualified individual, encryption, MFA, vendor oversight, and an incident response plan.
Applies to SEC-registered RIAs, amended in 2024. Requires a written incident response program, customer breach notification within 30 days, and documented oversight of vendors like your IT provider.
Your MSP isn’t a “covered institution” under either rule — your firm is. Both regimes require you to prove your vendors, including your IT provider, maintain real safeguards and report incidents fast.
93% of financial-services firms — RIAs, wealth managers, and family offices among them — experienced at least one cyber incident in the prior 12 months, and nearly one in five faced attacks numbering in the dozens. (Omega Systems 2025 Financial Services Cyber Resilience Report) The average financial-services data breach now costs $5.56 million, the second-highest of any industry after healthcare. (IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report, 2025)
The IT problems financial advisory firms actually face.
Generic IT providers talk about “keeping your systems running.” That misses what an advisory practice actually deals with.
Wire fraud targets the exact relationship you’ve built.
Business email compromise cost victims $3.05 billion in 2025, up from $2.77 billion the year before, and 86% of those losses moved by wire or ACH — fast, and usually unrecoverable once sent. (FBI IC3 2025 Internet Crime Report) A convincing email asking your assistant to move client funds is exactly the attack built for an advisory practice’s trust-based workflow.
Your clients skew exactly who gets targeted.
Investment fraud was the single largest category of losses reported by victims 60 and older in 2025, at $3.52 billion. (FBI IC3, 2025) An advisory book skewed toward high-net-worth and retirement-age clients is an unusually attractive target, whether the attack goes after your systems or theirs.
Nobody’s sure which regulator actually applies.
FTC or SEC, Safeguards Rule or Regulation S-P — the split confuses even firms that take compliance seriously. Building a security program around the wrong rule, or assuming a proposal that got withdrawn in 2025 is still pending, wastes real budget on the wrong priorities.
Small firms are learning this the expensive way.
A Portland broker-dealer/RIA network of roughly 120 independent branch offices settled SEC charges for $325,000 in late 2025 after email account takeovers at more than a dozen branches exposed about 8,500 people’s data — many of those branches still had no MFA, no security-awareness training, and no written incident response plan. (SEC Administrative Proceeding, In re M Holdings Securities, Inc., Nov. 2025) Independent networks of small offices are exactly where this keeps happening.
How VJNetworks supports financial advisors and RIAs.
One provider, one monthly cost, one number to call — built around whichever rule your registration status actually triggers.
Managed IT & Help Desk
Your team calls one number — everything from day-to-day tickets to infrastructure. 15-minute response from someone who already knows your custodial platforms and setup.
FTC & SEC Compliance Support
We help determine whether the FTC Safeguards Rule or SEC Regulation S-P applies to your firm, then build and document the technical controls each one actually requires.
Cybersecurity & MFA
MFA across every account with access to client data, plus wire-transfer verification protocols that catch a BEC attempt before money moves — not after.
Microsoft 365 Deployment
Exchange, SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive configured and managed, with the security settings most advisory firms never get around to turning on.
Cloud Services & Backup
Client files and correspondence backed up and recoverable, with the documented incident-response process both the FTC and SEC rules expect you to have.
Secure Remote Access
Hardened remote access for advisors working from home or meeting clients off-site, so client data stays protected wherever the meeting happens.
Whichever custodial and portfolio management platforms your firm runs, we build security and backups around them rather than asking you to change how you work. If you need deeper cybersecurity services, we build that in too.
What the FTC Safeguards Rule and Regulation S-P actually require of your firm.
Which requirements apply depends on your registration status — but neither track lets a small firm skip the substantive controls.
If you’re state-registered
The FTC Safeguards Rule applies: a designated qualified individual, a written risk assessment, encryption, MFA, access controls, vendor oversight, and an incident response plan — the requirements covered in our GLBA Safeguards Rule compliance checklist. Firms holding data on fewer than 5,000 consumers get a narrow exemption — only from the written-risk-assessment, continuous-monitoring-or-annual-pen-test, incident-response-plan, and annual-board-report formalities. Encryption, MFA, and vendor oversight still apply regardless of size.
If you’re SEC-registered
Amended Regulation S-P applies instead: a written incident response program, customer notification within 30 days of a breach affecting sensitive information, and documented vendor oversight requiring your service providers to notify you within 72 hours of an incident. Compliance deadlines already passed for every firm size — larger RIAs by December 2025, smaller ones by June 2026.
No small-firm exemption under Reg S-P
Unlike the FTC’s rule, Regulation S-P doesn’t waive any substantive requirement for smaller RIAs — the size-based split was only ever a staggered compliance date, and that date has now elapsed for everyone. A five-person RIA and a fifty-person one owe the same program today.
VJNetworks isn’t a “covered institution” under the FTC Safeguards Rule or SEC Regulation S-P — your firm is. Neither rule regulates your IT provider directly. What both rules actually require is that YOUR firm vets and documents your vendors’ security, and that those vendors notify you fast when something happens. That’s the whole mechanism by which a rule written for financial firms ends up shaping what an MSP has to deliver.
VJNetworks builds the MFA, encryption, access logging, and documented incident-response process your vendor-oversight file actually needs — whichever rule your registration status triggers.
What 22 years and 97% retention actually mean.
We sell managed IT — we have a built-in interest in recommending it. But 97% of clients staying for 20+ years isn’t something we manufactured. It’s a track record, not a snapshot.
Partner
How we get your firm compliant — and keep it that way.
Registration & Gap Assessment
We confirm whether the FTC Safeguards Rule or SEC Regulation S-P applies to your firm, then audit your infrastructure against every requirement that follows.
Remediation Plan
We prioritize gaps by risk severity — MFA and wire-transfer verification first, then systematic hardening across the rest of the environment.
Onboarding & Documentation
Network diagrams, vendor records, and access policies get documented — the paper trail your vendor-oversight file actually depends on.
Ongoing Management
Proactive monitoring, 15-minute response, help desk, security, and cloud — everything for one predictable monthly cost.
Ongoing Compliance Support
We track regulatory changes on your behalf and keep your documentation current, so the next exam or audit isn’t a scramble.
Is VJNetworks the right fit for your firm?
You’re primarily an insurance agency rather than a financial advisor or RIA — see our dedicated insurance-agency page instead.
You’re a national wirehouse or large broker-dealer needing enterprise-grade, SOC-certified infrastructure. That’s a different tier of provider.
You want the cheapest option. We’re not the low-price leader — our clients stay because the cost of working with us is less than the cost of the problems we prevent.
The objections we hear most.
“We’re too small to be regulated on this.”
Size can narrow what you owe, but it doesn’t remove the obligation. Under the FTC’s rule, even the smallest exempt firm still needs encryption, MFA, access controls, and vendor oversight — the exemption only waives four documentation formalities. Under SEC Regulation S-P, there’s no substantive small-firm exemption at all, just a compliance date that’s already passed.
“Our custodian already secures everything.”
Your custodian secures its own platform. It doesn’t secure your office email, your staff’s laptops, or the wire-transfer request that lands in your assistant’s inbox — exactly the kind of gap that let unauthorized parties into branch-office email accounts for years in the M Holdings Securities case, in at least one instance leading to an unauthorized wire transfer from a customer’s account. Custodial security and your own firm’s security are two separate perimeters.
“We already work with a compliance consultant.”
Good — we’re not a replacement for compliance or legal advice. We’re the team that implements the technical controls a consultant’s recommendations actually depend on: MFA, encryption, monitoring, documented vendor oversight. A compliance manual and a compliant network are two different things.
Questions we hear from advisory firm owners.
What IT company helps financial advisors meet GLBA and SEC cybersecurity requirements?
VJNetworks provides managed IT and compliance support for financial advisors and RIAs across Rockland County, NY, Westchester County, NY, and Bergen County, NJ. Depending on your firm’s registration status, that means the FTC’s Safeguards Rule for state-registered advisers or the SEC’s Regulation S-P for SEC-registered RIAs — we help determine which applies and build a security program that satisfies it. Twenty-two years across the Tri-State area back that work, along with a 97% client retention rate.
Is there a specific SEC cybersecurity rule for investment advisers?
Not a standalone one anymore. The SEC proposed a dedicated cybersecurity risk-management rule for investment advisers in 2022, but withdrew it in June 2025 — it never took effect. The SEC rule that actually governs SEC-registered RIAs’ cybersecurity today is amended Regulation S-P, whose compliance deadlines have already passed for firms of every size.
Is VJNetworks itself a “covered institution” under GLBA or Regulation S-P?
No — only the financial advisory firm itself is a covered institution under either rule. VJNetworks is reached indirectly, through your firm’s own obligation to oversee the security of vendors with access to client data. That’s exactly why we build documented, auditable practices rather than asking you to take our word for it.
What does managed IT cost for a financial advisory firm with 10 to 15 employees?
Pricing starts at $995 a month. A typical 10 to 15 person advisory firm runs $1,000 to $2,800 monthly once compliance documentation and custodial-platform complexity are factored in. We give you an exact number after the initial assessment, not a guess.
How fast do you respond when something breaks?
15 minutes, every time. Most issues get resolved remotely by someone who already knows your systems. When a technician needs to be on-site, we’re not driving in from out of state.
What happens to our current systems during the transition?
We don’t rip anything out on day one. We start by documenting what exists, confirming which rule applies to your firm, and identifying the highest-risk gaps. Most onboarding completes within 30 days with zero downtime for your advisors.
Every month your firm runs without documented vendor oversight is a month your next exam can’t paper over. And every wire-transfer request that skips verification is one BEC email away from being the case study.
Your firm’s compliance clock is already running.
22 years in the Tri-State area. 97% client retention. A 15-minute response standard. Built around whichever rule your registration status actually triggers.
Not ready yet? Read about our cybersecurity services or how we support insurance agencies.
VJNetworks provides managed IT and cybersecurity compliance support for financial advisors and RIAs across Rockland County, Westchester County, and Bergen County, NJ. Founded 2004. 90-day satisfaction guarantee. Last updated: August 2026.