This week I received yet another question from an advisor asking if it was ok to use a “free Gmail account” to conduct business. 

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  With a secure system serving advisors reportedly crashing in late December and still unable to recover client data for advisors it serves, the risk of web-based apps was recently brought into sharp focus to many advisors. So here are issues questions advisors should ask web-based vendors about to minimize exposure to the nightmare scenario of losing client data.   Redundancy. Are data continuously written to more than one hard drive or more than one server? A redundant array of independent disks (RAID) in a web server writes the same information to multiple drives. So if one driv

  As a financial advisor, I believe you have a responsibility to help clients protect themselves from identity fraud and credit card scams. (It's wrong that the CFP Board of Standards does not award CFPs educational credit for learning about online privacy and security.) Financial advisors must be guardians of their clients' online financial lives.   With fee compression a growing concern, adding value to client relationships by educating clients on online security is good marketing. Being an authority — the resource for clients on online privacy and security — p

Have you ignored QR codes, those funny looking squares we've seen pop up increasingly over the past year in print ads, billboards, and on the product packaging? I've not found them very enticing personally, and have been unable to find good uses for them by advisors. Turns out, that's good. QR codes are now regarded as security threats.   "the nasties are using QR codes to lure people into downloading Android malware," says TechCrunch. "While some users are likely to assume that QR codes are unique to the Android market and thus be comfortable scanning them, these codes