Why Buckhead offices are targets
Criminals follow money, and a lot of it passes through Buckhead suites. Investment firms send client distributions. Law firms and title agents handle settlement funds. Real estate and insurance companies move deposits and premiums. Each transaction has a moment when someone trusts an email. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center counted 24,768 business email compromise complaints in 2025, with losses of about $3.05 billion, and a separate $275 million in real estate fraud. Those are only the losses people reported.
Speed matters when a wire goes wrong. In 2025 the IC3's Recovery Asset Team worked 3,900 fraudulent-transfer cases through its Financial Fraud Kill Chain process and helped freeze about $679 million, a success rate of 58 percent. Recovery is far more likely when the bank hears about it within hours rather than days.
How a typical attack unfolds
- A staff member enters their password on a convincing fake sign-in page, often sent from a real but compromised vendor account.
- The attacker signs in, sets a hidden inbox rule to divert certain messages and reads quietly for days or weeks.
- When a closing, capital call or invoice comes up, the attacker replies in the real thread, or from a lookalike domain, with new bank details.
- The payment goes out. Nobody notices until the real recipient asks where the money is.
Every step in that chain can be broken with controls that don't get in the way of normal work.
What we put in place
- Strong sign-in protection: multifactor authentication for everyone, with phishing-resistant methods for partners, finance staff and administrators, plus conditional access that blocks sign-ins from unexpected places and unmanaged devices.
- Mailbox watch: alerts on new forwarding rules, unusual sign-ins and mass deletions, reviewed by a person who acts on them.
- Email authentication: SPF, DKIM and DMARC on your domain so criminals can't easily send as you, plus warnings on outside messages and monitoring for lookalike domains.
- Endpoint detection and response on every laptop, desktop and server, able to spot ransomware behavior and isolate a machine automatically.
- Least privilege: admin rights limited to a few named accounts, former staff removed the day they leave and shared logins replaced with a password manager.
- Payment verification: a written callback policy for any change in payment instructions, using a phone number you already had on file. We help you write it and train the people who approve wires.
- Training: short lessons and simulated phishing aimed at the roles that matter most, such as assistants, paralegals, closing coordinators and operations staff.
Regulation S-P, the Safeguards Rule and HIPAA
The amended Regulation S-P applies to SEC-registered advisers and broker-dealers, and smaller firms had to comply by June 3, 2026. It requires a written incident response program, oversight of the vendors that handle customer information and notice to affected customers within 30 days. The FTC Safeguards Rule covers state-registered advisers, mortgage brokers, tax preparers and other non-bank financial firms, and since May 2024 has required notice to the FTC within 30 days of a breach involving 500 or more consumers. Medical practices follow the HIPAA Security Rule. We build and document the technical side of each: access controls, encryption, logging, vendor records and the steps your team follows during an incident. We aren't your lawyers, and your compliance officer or counsel decides what the rules require of your firm.
Cyber insurance renewals
Insurers ask more each year: MFA on every account, endpoint detection, offline or immutable backups, and how you verify payment changes. We help you answer accurately and close the gaps that could push up your premium or give an insurer grounds to dispute a claim.
After an incident
When an account is taken over or malware lands on a laptop, we cut off the intruder, preserve the logs your insurer and counsel will want, determine what was accessed and restore clean systems. That evidence is what tells you whether notice is required and to whom.
Questions about cybersecurity
Won't stronger sign-in rules annoy our partners?
Done well, they notice very little. Managed devices in familiar locations sign in smoothly, and extra checks appear only when something looks unusual. We roll changes out to leadership first so they see the experience before everyone else.
Do you replace our compliance consultant?
No. We handle the technology and the evidence that it works. Many clients pair us with their compliance consultant or counsel, who interpret the rules and own the written policies.
