Sector — Professional Services
Cybersecurity for accountancy, advisory, and professional firms
Client data confidentiality, secure collaboration, and practice management security for knowledge-worker environments. Proportionate, practical, and delivered fractionally.
What's specific about security in professional services
Professional services firms live and die on trust. Accountancy practices hold a complete financial picture of their clients — tax returns, payroll data, business accounts, personal wealth information. Advisory firms hold strategy documents, M&A pipelines, and board-level sensitive material. A data breach at a professional services firm is not just a regulatory event — it's a breach of the client's trust that is hard to recover from.
The regulatory picture is also tightening. Accountancy firms are increasingly asked about their security posture by clients, insurers, and professional bodies. The ICAEW, ACCA, and other institutes have all strengthened their expectations on technology controls and data protection. Cyber insurance renewals ask increasingly detailed questions, and a poor answer can mean higher premiums or exclusions.
Most professional services firms I work with are led by practitioners — accountants, consultants, advisers — who are excellent at their profession but have limited time and appetite for security governance. They need controls that work without creating friction in client-facing operations. A fractional CISO who understands the practice model and speaks the language of professional risk is usually the right fit.
Client-data concentration
Accountancy and advisory firms hold an unusually complete picture of their clients' financial and commercial affairs. A single compromised account can expose dozens or hundreds of client businesses.
Microsoft 365 and practice-platform security
Most professional services firms run on M365 with connected practice-management platforms. Default M365 settings, broad delegated admin rights, and inconsistent audit logging are the most common findings.
Professional-body and insurer expectations
The ICAEW, ACCA, and other bodies have tightened expectations on technology controls. Insurers now ask specific questions about MFA, backup, patching, and incident response. Evidence is expected.
How I help professional services firms
Engagements are scoped around the practice reality: partner-led decision making, lean operational teams, and zero tolerance for disruption to client work.
What this typically looks like
Most professional services engagements start with a Discovery Audit covering the M365 environment, practice-management platform, client-data controls, and insurance/professional-body readiness. Two to three days, prioritised remediation plan. From there, a fractional engagement of one to two days a month covers governance, supplier oversight, client-security support, and partner/board reporting. Direct availability when an incident, renewal, or client-questionnaire arrives.
Where the supporting proof lives
If you want to see the broader evidence behind the sector work, these pages show the project history, AI operating model, and public tooling that sits underneath the engagements.
Want a straight read on where your firm stands?
30 minutes. A frank look at your current position and whether I can help. No pitch, no slide deck.