In 2026, the risks for Wealth Management extend far beyond market volatility or portfolio concentration. Today, attackers are targeting the clients themselves—their digital identities, liquidity channels, and even their reputations. For high-net-worth individuals, the “attack surface” now spans:

  • A crypto wallet drained in second
  • A healthcare portal exploited for blackmail
  • A deepfake call authorizing a fraudulent transfer
  • A social media account leveraged for impersonation

The result? Years of financial growth, or reputation, can disappear overnight. 

As wealth shifts to younger generations and new forms of digital liquidity, wealth managers must expand their definition of protection: not just portfolios and balances, but the digital lives of the clients behind them.

3 Ways Cybersecurity Has Changed for Wealth Management Services

From shifting generational expectations to the rise of digital liquidity and deepfake-enabled fraud, today’s environment has changed the nature of how Wealth Managers grow, and ensure protection for, client assets. Here are three ways Wealth Management has fundamentally changed.

1. Generational Trends are Increasing Expectations

A shift in wealth signals a shift in risk—and in service.

As Millennials and GenZes inherit vast wealth, they are reshaping expectations for how that wealth is managed. 

Trillions of dollars are now moving from older generations to Millennials and Gen Z, and with the transfer comes a demand for ultra-high-net-worth-level personalization and concierge service. Wealth managers are now finding that expectation now extends beyond portfolio construction to lifestyle, privacy, and digital safety. 

This shift also changes the competitive landscape. Firms that fail to integrate cybersecurity into their value proposition risk appearing outdated or inattentive to client priorities. For these younger generations, digital safety is not a separate service; it is inseparable from wealth preservation. In practice, that means the firms positioning cybersecurity as a core pillar of their strategy will be the ones best able to retain and attract next-generation clients.

2. Digital Liquidity: A New Weak Point

With digital wealth, liquidity cuts both ways: accelerating growth and, if keys are weak, theft.

Bitcoin, stablecoins, and other tokenized assets promise flexibility and high-potential growth. But these liquid digital assets are also rapidly transferable—and rapidly stealable—if a wallet, exchange account, or email reset path is compromised. In the first half of 2025 alone, more than $2.17B was stolen from crypto services, including the $1.5B ByBit hack attributed to DPRK actors, already outpacing 2024’s full-year losses. 

But liquidity in digital form is also exposure. Crypto assets vanish in seconds if compromised. Digital wallets and exchanges are prime targets for sophisticated attackers who understand both finance and technology.

For wealth managers, that creates a paradox: strategies designed to enhance liquidity can expand the client’s digital attack surface and erase years of gains overnight if controls aren’t first-class.

3. Deepfakes and Social Engineering on the Rise

Trust your protocol, not the voice on the speaker or even the face on screen.

Deepfake technology now makes it possible to generate convincing voice or video impersonations. Imagine a fraudulent video call authorizing a transfer, or a cloned voice giving instructions to an assistant. These scams are already happening, and they are nearly indistinguishable from reality.

An Overlooked Risk for Younger HNWI

The generational shift in wealth comes with new habits. And while many believe older generations are at increased risk of new phishing attacks, younger generations may actually have increased vulnerabilities. 

Younger investors on average are more visible online, not only in private networks but on TikTok, Instagram, Discord, and other platforms where they follow “finfluencers” and share information about their gains. That visibility creates an opening for cybercriminals. 

For wealth managers, that means verification cannot rely solely on recognition or routine. Anti-deepfake safeguards and strict secondary checks are no longer optional.

What Wealth Management Companies Can Do to Protect Their Clients

1. Ensure Cybersecurity Is Part of the Wealth Strategy

Wealth managers don’t need to become cybersecurity providers themselves — but they do need to make sure clients have access to the right protections. Cybersecurity should be treated as a core pillar of wealth preservation, alongside portfolio diversification and estate planning.

That means confirming clients have cybersecurity services that:

  • Understand the unique risk for HNWIs: This means services must be tailored to the individual and managed continuously, instead of a simple set-and-forget approach.
  • Diversify protections: Clients should have cybersecurity defenses that cover all attack surfaces, including password managers (e.g., 1Password), hardware security keys or passkeys, anti-deepfake verification, transaction allow-lists, SIM-swap defenses, and more.
  • Mirror other luxury services: A client’s cybersecurity solution should entail white-glove support and a personalized touch just like they receive from other luxury services. 
  • Monitor continuously: Standard set-and-forget tools won’t cut it for their risk profile. Accounts, personal devices, and home networks should be tracked with the same rigor as financial portfolios.
  • Adapt proactively: Threats evolve as fast as markets; cyber defenses should be future-proofed where applicable, and highly proactive and forward-thinking regarding new developments in cyber threats.
  • Respond immediately: When a cyber incident occurs, every second counts. A proper holistic cybersecurity service should include rapid incident response to mitigate the harm a cyberattack can cause. 

2. Elevate Cybersecurity Education

Clients already expect their wealth advisor to help them manage risk. That role should now extend to passing along resources to personal cybersecurity education, where awareness is often the weakest link.

Some best practices to reinforce include:

  • MFA & password hygiene: Encourage clients to enroll their families in a password manager and enforce MFA/passkeys on critical accounts.
  • Anti-deepfake verification: Set up an identity verification solution, with out-of-band verification and a “no money moves on live calls” rule without secondary confirmation.
  • Reduce oversharing: Guide clients to review social profiles, tighten privacy settings, and remove personal details that enable impersonation or tracking.
  • Household protocols: Ensure assistants, staff, or family offices use separate credentials, least-privilege access, and written verification for wires or crypto transfers.

3. Recommend Enterprise-Grade Security

HNWIs are targeted with corporate-level sophistication, yet most still rely on consumer-level defenses. Wealth managers can help close that gap by recommending BlackCloak’s three-step framework to digital security:

The Three-Step Framework for Digital Defense

  1. Reduce Digital Exposure

    • Remove client information from data broker hubs
    • Suppress home addresses and family details from public records
    • Use domain privacy and alias emails for public-facing activity

  2. Secure the Home Network

    • Upgrade to business-class routers/firewalls
    • Segment IoT devices (cameras, doorbells, smart vacuums) into separate VLANs
    • Ensure automatic updates, strong endpoint protection, and disabled default credentials
    • Treat all IoT devices as untrusted to prevent mapping or surveillance risks

  3. Retain a Cybersecurity Advisor

    • Establish a named point of contact for security issues
    • Develop rapid incident playbooks and quarterly security reviews
    • Ensure emergency response is in place for account takeovers, doxxing, and swatting

Wealth managers should point clients toward solutions that cover the full attack surface and align with the concierge expectations of HNWIs: bespoke onboarding, family-wide coverage, VIP support, and rapid incident response.

Other Cybersecurity Tips for Wealth Managers

Focus on the Four Accounts That Matter Most

Most incidents begin with weak, reused, or unmonitored credentials. That’s why the starting point should always be hardening the four accounts that matter most:

  • Email: This should be treated as the skeleton key. If compromised, it can reset everything else. Clients should enable MFA or passkeys and consider using separate addresses for sensitive communications.
  • Financial: Banks, brokerages, and crypto exchanges are the most direct targets for attackers. Require strong authentication, hardware keys where possible, and regular monitoring for unusual activity.
  • Healthcare: Portals hold highly sensitive data that can be used for extortion or false claims. Clients should treat these as high-value accounts, securing them with unique credentials and MFA.
  • Social media: The public face of a client and their family. Attackers exploit oversharing to impersonate, harass, or launch scams. Reducing exposure (pruning old posts, limiting geotagging, tightening privacy settings) dramatically lowers the risk of impersonation or reputational damage.

For wealth managers, simply reinforcing these four account categories during onboarding conversations can make cybersecurity guidance more tangible for clients.

For Clients With Digital Liquidity, Set Guardrails

Crypto and tokenized assets have become a cornerstone of liquidity planning. But unlike traditional holdings, losses here are instant and irreversible. For this reason, you should assume crypto is a top-tier target.

Advisors should stress that cybersecurity around digital liquidity must be as rigorous as corporate controls:

  • Key custody: Hardware wallets, cold storage, and multisignature setups should be the default for long-term holdings.
  • Withdrawal allow-lists: Accounts should only be able to transfer to pre-approved wallets.
  • Two-to-move policies: Require two separate verifications before any transfer clears.
  • Segmentation: Clients should separate “hot” wallets used for transactions from “cold” wallets reserved for long-term holdings.
  • Awareness of physical risk: High amounts of crypto and other highly-liquid assets may place your clients in increased physical risk. It’s essential your clients understand the intersection of physical and digital security.

Again, wealth managers don’t need to implement these controls themselves, but they should confirm that clients have them in place. Just as with portfolio strategy, strong guardrails ensure liquidity enhances wealth rather than jeopardizing it.

From Portfolios to People: How BlackCloak Supports Wealth Management Services

The biggest underprotected attack surface in wealth management isn’t a bank account or a balance sheet. It’s the individual and their family.

As trillions of dollars move into new hands, wealth managers who expand their definition of protection will stand apart. That means going beyond diversification, beyond liquidity strategies, and beyond portfolio management—into the realm of digital identity, personal accounts, and reputation security.

That’s why BlackCloak is here to support the clients of wealth management firms with comprehensive, concierge, luxury personal cybersecurity. Because in 2026 and beyond, the most vulnerable portfolio isn’t the one on a spreadsheet. It’s the person behind it.

Contact our team to learn more today.