This video can be viewed at the below link.[1]

Since 2004, Congress and the President have designated October as “Cybersecurity Awareness Month” to help individuals protect themselves online from growing cybersecurity threats.

When it comes to your financial stability, cybersecurity is crucial as well.

And here at the Securities and Exchange Commission, we’re a cop on the beat when it comes to certain cybersecurity issues in the financial sector.

For example, we have a rule called Regulation S-P, which requires broker-dealers, investment companies, and investment advisers to protect your customer records and information.

Under this Regulation S-P, we recently announced charges against Morgan Stanley Smith Barney stemming from the firm’s extensive failures, over a five-year period, to protect the personal identifying information of about 15 million customers.

In this case, Morgan Stanley failed to properly dispose hard drives and servers containing customer data. The firm hired a moving and storage company that had no experience or expertise in data destruction services. The moving company, in turn, sold thousands of devices to a third party. Some of these devices were eventually resold on online auction sites. You see where this led.

The challenges of cybersecurity continue to grow. Given how rapidly this space is changing, we at the SEC are working on multiple projects related to the cybersecurity and cyber hygiene of the financial sector, your data privacy as it relates to the financial sector, and public company incident-reporting of cyber events.

When it comes to protecting your data and assets, you have a role. I encourage you to go to the Cybersecurity Spotlight Page at www.sec.gov to learn about cybersecurity risks and work to protect your information and assets.

Please also check out resources throughout the U.S. Government, such as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency available at www.cisa.gov.

Let’s all play our part.