Digital Safety: A Critical Part of Protecting Wealth

Cybercriminals increasingly rely on deception rather than technical hacking to gain access to accounts, devices, and sensitive information. For families with multiple financial accounts, businesses, and professional relationships, a compromised email or phone can become a gateway to broader identity or financial fraud. 

A few simple habits can materially reduce cybercrime risk. Five are particularly important.

1. Use a password manager and unique passwords. Reusing passwords allows one compromised account to put others at risk. A reputable password manager can generate and store long, unique credentials so you do not have to remember a different password for every account.

2. Turn on multifactor authentication (MFA). Use MFA wherever it is offered, especially for email, banking, credit-card, and investment accounts. Where available, use stronger phishing-resistant options such as passkeys or security keys.

3. Verify sensitive requests through a known channel. If an email or text asks you to transfer money, change payment instructions, disclose sensitive information, or reset credentials, contact the person or institution using a phone number or website you already know rather than the contact information provided in the message.

4. Keep devices and software current. Security updates patch known vulnerabilities that attackers can exploit. Enable automatic updates for phones, computers, tablets, browsers, and other frequently used software whenever possible.

5. Use alerts and act quickly on unusual activity. Enable login and transaction alerts where available, review unexpected notifications promptly, and know whom to contact if you believe an email, device, or financial account has been compromised. If you need help coordinating next steps, contact The Milwaukee Company.

What’s Next

As we've mentioned before, cybersecurity is an area we're building into our family office services. We'll share more as the program takes shape.

The Roundtable Family Office Services cybersecurity assistance program, which is designed to help you implement a range of cybersecurity measures, is nearing completion. We’ll share more details shortly. In the meantime, if you have questions or concerns about your digital security, we’d be happy to discuss them with you. Please raise the topic at your next review meeting or contact Michael Willms at mwillms@themilwaukeecompany.com.