#security
Protect your financial data with security best practices and tools
Malware disguised as popular AI tools hit small and mid-sized businesses more than 33,300 times in the first four months of 2026, nearly five times the 2025 count. Learn the five disguises most likely to reach your team, what one bad download costs, a shareable download-safety checklist, and a 15-minute software-approval routine that stops most fake installers.
The SEC's amended Regulation S-P has applied to smaller covered institutions since June 3, 2026, requiring a written incident-response program, customer notice within 30 days of awareness, and 72-hour service-provider breach escalation. A practical checklist for small RIAs, broker-dealers, and transfer agents covering the notice decision, vendor oversight, disposal rules, and the records that prove each step.
Set least-privilege access, human approval gates on money movement, and an audit trail that links each action to its evidence before an AI assistant creates financial drafts, changes records, or touches a payment workflow.
A business owner's guide to inventorying crypto wallets, seed phrases, and NFT holdings so your LLC's treasury survives incapacity or death — RUFADAA-compliant will language, Shamir backups, platform legacy tools, and per-wallet bookkeeping that keeps the estate honest.
Since January 1, 2023 California treats payroll records as protected personal information under CCPA/CPRA, while Colorado's 2025 biometric amendment and Virginia's 2026 changes narrow the "employee exemption." Here is a 30-day compliance plan covering the workforce privacy notice, retention schedule, security, rights requests, and vendor contracts for small employers.
IRS Letter 6042C verifies a specific business return; Letter 5263C verifies the entity itself on file from Form SS-4, and both carry a 30-day response window that, if missed, stalls your returns, refunds, and overpayment applications. This guide explains how thieves obtain an EIN, the tax and non-tax red flags that signal fraud, exactly what to fax back in each case, when Form 8822-B is required within 60 days of a responsible-party change, and a monthly-quarterly-annual monitoring routine that catches misuse early.
Rhode Island's SB 3212, signed in June 2026, lets business owners remove fraudulent UCC filings through an administrative complaint, authorizes the Department of State to refuse suspicious filings, and requires misleading "annual report" solicitation letters to disclose that they are advertisements. The same defenses — quarterly UCC searches, entity-record checks, and fee verification — work in every state.
AI notetakers can violate two-party consent laws, waive privilege, and create discoverable records. Learn the consent, notice, and data-handling controls small businesses need before the next meeting.
The FBI attributes over $3 billion in losses to business email compromise. Learn how BEC wire fraud works — vendor impersonation, CEO fraud, payroll diversion — and the verification controls that stop payments before they leave.
The Delete Act's DROP platform went live Jan 1, 2026; brokers must process centralized deletion requests starting Aug 1, 2026 every 45 days, with 90-day determinations and 2028 audits. Learn the obligations.
The TAKE IT DOWN Act took effect May 19, 2026. Covered platforms must provide a takedown request process and remove nonconsensual intimate images — including AI deepfakes — and identical copies within 48 hours or face FTC enforcement.
Starting September 15, 2026, Cloudflare will block mixed-use AI crawlers by default on ad-carrying pages for free-tier and new accounts, part of a broader shift from Pay Per Crawl to a Pay Per Use monetization model that lets site owners charge AI companies when content actually creates value.
