Client Case Study · RIA

Portland Private Wealth: a growing RIA, fully Zero Trust.

A Schwab-affiliated registered investment adviser serving high-net-worth families adopted FCI’s complete managed cybersecurity — every control, every device — without hiring a security team and without changing how its advisors work.

Case study · Published with the client’s cooperation · September 2026

The short version

One decision instead of a dozen point tools.

Portland Private Wealth Management is a growing RIA with clients who expect discretion and regulators who expect proof. Rather than assembling security piece by piece, the firm took FCI’s full managed stack and went completely Zero Trust — controls enforced automatically, evidence produced continuously, and a 24/7/365 U.S.-based SOC behind every device.

Client

A growing RIA

Schwab-affiliated, serving high-net-worth individuals and families, with SEC obligations — including the amended Reg S-P — and custodial due diligence to answer.

Decision

Full Zero Trust

The complete FCI deployment: device validation before connection, enforced controls across endpoints, users, network and data, and 24/7 monitoring with incident response.

Outcome

Evidence on demand

When a regulator, custodian, or cyber insurer asks, the documentation is already there — and the advisors never changed how they work.

The story

Getting ahead of growth.

Growth multiplies everything — advisors, devices, client data. Portland Private Wealth’s leadership chose to put enforced, evidenced security in place ahead of that curve, not behind it.

1. The starting point
A security-conscious firm choosing to get ahead of growth.

Portland Private Wealth was expanding — and with growth come more endpoints, more vendor relationships, and more of the questions every RIA now faces: SEC examinations under the amended Reg S-P, custodial due diligence, and cyber insurance applications that read like audits. Leadership was already security-conscious; the decision was how to keep enterprise-grade protection ahead of the firm’s growth without building an internal security team.

The pattern: for a growing RIA, the real cost of piecemeal security is not the tooling — it is the leadership attention consumed by managing it.
2. The decision
Take everything — the complete Zero Trust deployment.

Instead of selecting from a menu, the firm adopted FCI’s full managed cybersecurity stack: every device validated before it connects, multi-factor authentication enforced at the operating-system level, encryption, secured connectivity, and FCI’s 24/7/365 U.S.-based SOC monitoring with incident response behind it all — deployed and enforced without admin access and without remote login.

The pattern: full-stack adoption removes the gaps between point tools — the seams where incidents start and where examiners find findings.
3. The deployment
Enforced automatically, invisible to advisors.

Controls were rolled out and enforced automatically across the firm’s devices. Advisors kept their machines, their applications, and their working habits. What changed is what leadership can now see: which devices are protected, which controls are operating, and the evidence trail behind both.

The pattern: security that requires advisors to change how they work gets worked around. Enforcement has to be invisible to be durable.
4. Living with it
The questions keep coming. The evidence is already there.

An SEC examination, a custodian’s security questionnaire, a cyber insurance renewal — each one now starts from documentation the firm can produce on demand rather than a scramble to reconstruct its posture. Cybersecurity moved from an open item on the leadership agenda to a solved operational fact.

The pattern: “Data Secured. Compliance Proven.” is not a tagline here — it is what the firm hands over when anyone asks.

We didn’t want a dashboard and a to-do list — we wanted it handled. FCI took us fully Zero Trust without slowing down a single advisor, and when anyone asks about our security — a regulator, a custodian, an insurer — the evidence is already there.


Jacob Becker
Jacob Becker President, Portland Private Wealth Management

What this means for your firm

Four lessons for growing RIAs.

Portland Private Wealth’s path is repeatable. The decisions that made it work are the same four most growing advisory firms face.

The full stack beats point tools

Incidents and exam findings live in the seams between products. One enforced, managed deployment removes the seams.

Evidence beats attestations

Regulators, custodians, and insurers increasingly want proof controls operate — not a policy that says they should.

Advisors keep working

Enforcement without admin access or remote login means protection that does not depend on changing advisor behavior.

No internal security team required

A growing RIA gets a 24/7/365 U.S.-based SOC, incident response, and evidence production without a single security hire.

Could your firm produce this evidence today?

Start with the 16-question assessment, or ask FCI what a full Zero Trust deployment would look like for your firm — at your size, with your custodian, under your regulators.