It was only a matter of time before the financial industry regulators started to pay more attention to cyber security concerns. The likelihood of a massive breach grows with every day, and perhaps some standards are in order.

As Reuters notes, "The review is part of a series of ‘thematic' examinations the regulator launched in 2010 and ramped up this year. Thematic exams focus on how brokerages are controlling major risks of concern to FINRA...Thematic reviews are different from FINRA's more traditional ‘targeted sweep' examinations, in which it looks at firms' compliance with a specific area of securities regulation." 

It's fair to say that most broker-dealers are doing a lot already. The top companies at least have invested heavily in this area, but the smaller broker dealers may be lagging. We'll see. Finra's Susan Axelrod, head of the member regulations sales practices unit, offered a list of some pressing issues: Single vs. multi-factor authentication to access sensitive accounts, mergers that result in spotty security practices, external access to networks.

The last issue looms especially large given the new heterogeneity of the network; the ballyhooed "consumerization" of the network may have outrun security efforts for the moment. In connection with this trend, acceptable social media use by employees looms as another big issue, though Finra has already issued guidance in this area.

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