IT for CPAs and wealth management where the regulator already knows your tech stack.
SEC examinations, FINRA cyber-rule pressure, IRS Publication 4557, peak-season uptime, and immutable audit logs — all on a calendar that doesn’t move. We deliver managed IT, cybersecurity, and AI governance built for firms where the audit could happen any week.
Concentrated PII, public-trust businesses, regulator pressure — all year, but worst at tax time.
CPA firms and RIAs hold the kind of data attackers love most: SSNs, account numbers, financials, K-1s, beneficiary lists, signed advisory agreements. And you operate on a calendar everyone — including the regulator — can see.
Tax-season ransomware
Attackers track the SEC fiscal calendar and tax deadlines. Hit a CPA firm in mid-March, the leverage is enormous. The downtime cost compounds.
Token theft and session hijacking bypass MFA. Quiet inbox rules forward client comms to an attacker for weeks. Conditional Access + sign-in risk policies close the gap.
Audit-ready logs — or scramble
SEC, FINRA, peer-review and IRS exams all want logs. Sign-ins, file access, admin actions. If they’re not centralized and retained, you can’t produce.
AI in tax & audit work
Staff pasting client returns into ChatGPT for “quick checks.” Client SSNs, financials, K-1 detail absorbed into third-party logs. IRS 4557 and SEC interpretive guidance both implicated.
The audit-ready stack — built for the calendar that doesn’t move.
Designed around SEC Cybersecurity Risk Management rules, FINRA cyber guidance, IRS Publication 4557 (Safeguarding Taxpayer Data), and modern cyber-insurance underwriting.
Identity & MFA hardened
MFA enforced including admins. Conditional Access by location, device, risk score. Sign-in risk monitored. Privileged Identity Management. Session-lifetime tuning for sensitive apps.
Audit-ready immutable logs
Sign-ins, file access, admin actions, mailbox rules, configuration changes. Centralized to a SIEM or log archive. Retained per regulator requirement. Search-ready when the exam comes.
Wire-fraud & impersonation defense
Defender for Office 365 anti-impersonation. Vendor-banking-change procedures. Out-of-band verification policy. Tag external mail. Built around the moments money actually moves.
Secure client portals
SmartVault, Citrix ShareFile, Liscio, or Microsoft 365 with B2B guest access — secured and audited. Replace insecure email file-sharing for K-1s, returns, account opening documents.
Backup & DR with retention obligations
Immutable backups of CCH Axcess, Lacerte, UltraTax, file shares, M365. Retention tuned to record-retention rules. Restores tested before tax season starts — not in the middle of it.
Cyber-insurance + WISP
We complete carrier questionnaires, attest to controls, supply evidence. We also build or refresh your Written Information Security Plan (WISP) — the document IRS 4557 says you need to have.
Tax-season uptime engineering
Pre-season environment hardening: tax-engine update validation, e-filing readiness, internet redundancy, after-hours support arrangements, monitoring tuned to known-bad patterns during peak.
AI governance for tax & advisory
Sanctioned tooling (tenant-bound Copilot, Claude Team) with DLP. Unsanctioned ChatGPT blocked for staff handling client data. AUP in plain English. Training scenarios specific to returns and advisory work.
vCIO with regulator-fluency
Quarterly reviews mapped to SEC / FINRA / IRS posture. Risk register reviewed before exams. Cybersecurity Risk Management rule readiness tracked through the year.
AI in financial services
The first AI question an examiner will ask: “What’s your policy?”
SEC and FINRA both issued AI guidance and risk alerts in 2024–2025. State boards followed. The IRS 4557 framework already implies AI usage discipline if you handle return data. None of this is theoretical — it’s the next inspection question. We help you have a defensible answer.
Sanctioned AI inside the data boundary
Copilot in your M365 tenant. Claude Team with no-training-on-data. Never personal accounts on client data. Documented and provisioned.
DLP at the prompt boundary
Browser-extension DLP scanning prompt content. Conditional Access blocking unsanctioned AI for users handling PII / financial data. Purview labels enforced.
Training mapped to the work
Practical examples: tax returns, K-1 detail, beneficiary lists, advisory plans. What you can paste, what you can’t, how to verify, when to escalate.
WISP & cyber-insurance alignment
Your WISP and your insurance application reference the same control set. AI policy lives in both. Auditors see consistency — not patchwork.
“A modern CPA or RIA can’t separate ‘the tax engine’ from ‘the AI policy’ from ‘the cyber-insurance application.’ They’re the same conversation.”
Laz De La Vega · Practice Lead, Primetime IT Solutions
Common questions
What financial firms ask on the first call.
Do you handle the tax-engine stack — CCH, Lacerte, UltraTax, ProSeries?
Yes. We support the major tax engines, including their cloud / hosted variants, integration with M365, e-filing connectivity, year-over-year update validation, and backup. We’ll work with your tax-engine vendor support directly so you’re not the relay.
Will you write our WISP?
Yes. The IRS Publication 4557 framework requires tax pros to have a Written Information Security Plan. We’ll draft (or refresh) yours, map it to the controls we actually operate, and keep evidence current so an IRS or peer review can see consistency between policy and practice.
How do we handle the SEC Cybersecurity Risk Management Rule?
For investment advisers, we operationalize: written policy mapping, incident-response procedures, vendor due diligence, annual review, board reporting (or partner-level for smaller firms). For RIAs subject to Rule 206(4)-7, the cyber posture becomes part of compliance program testing.
What about FINRA?
For broker-dealers we work in coordination with your compliance vendor (e.g., your outsourced FINOP or compliance consultant). The technical controls we deliver map cleanly to FINRA Cybersecurity guidance — identity, EDR, MDR, backup, AUP, IR plan, training.
Can you support a fully-remote / hybrid practice?
Yes. Conditional Access with device-compliance, identity-aware VPN or ZTNA, full MDM coverage, secure client portal for document exchange, AI governance regardless of where staff are physically located. The compliance posture doesn’t change because the office is virtual.
Free financial IT assessment · 30 minutes
Be ready before the next exam — or the next tax season.
30-minute call. We’ll review identity, logs, portals, AI exposure, and your WISP posture — and deliver a one-page snapshot mapped to your regulators.
