Your Client Data Is the Firm

Spend enough time around firm owners, managing partners, and admins, and you hear the same sentence over and over:

It’s a fair question. It’s also the wrong one.

The right question—the one professional services firms hate asking because they already know the answer—is this:

Because in a professional services firm, your client data is the business.

You’re not being targeted because you’re famous, you’re being targeted because you’re trusted.

Let’s unpack that.

Professional Services: The Softest Target With the Most Valuable Data

Cybercriminals aren’t romantic. They’re not looking for prestige points or bragging rights. They follow the same incentives every business does:

• High value

• Low resistance

• Predictable return

Professional services check all three boxes:

1. Your client data is extremely valuable

Law firms have confidential matters.
CPAs hold tax records and financials.
Consultants have strategy decks and client IP.
Wealth firms have PII, account details, and statements.

This isn’t “kinda sensitive.”
This is “extortion-grade” material.

2. You look secure from the outside, but often aren’t

You’ve got Microsoft 365, a VPN, maybe a firewall, maybe MFA on email.

That feels secure.

Meanwhile:

• Legacy file systems live behind weak passwords

• Sensitive docs sit in personal Dropbox or Google Drive

• Partners use the same password for everything

• Staff access client data from personal devices

• Shared mailboxes have no auditing

• MFA is “encouraged,” not enforced

This is normal in 10–75 person firms and it’s also low-hanging fruit for attackers.

3. Your people are busy and predictable

Busy, billable humans follow patterns:

• Checking email late at night

• Approving invoices on mobile

• Reusing passwords

• Forwarding files to personal email “just this once”

• Clicking a link from “the partner who always emails last-minute”

Attackers love patterns.

The Myth of “We’re Too Small to Matter”

Let’s clear this up:
Attackers don’t target companies.
They target conditions.

And professional services firms naturally create the conditions that attackers automate against:

• Lots of email

• Lots of documents

• Lots of client communication

• Lots of urgency

• Lots of trust

• Not a lot of IT staffing

From an attacker’s perspective, you’re not a boutique consulting firm. You’re a funnel of sensitive client data guarded by exhausted people and incomplete controls.

It's not personal. It’s just math.

The Attack Scenarios That Actually Happen (Not the Hollywood Ones)

Here are three scenarios we see in the wild constantly—not theoretical, not exaggerated, just the everyday threats professional services firms face.

Scenario 1: The Distinguished Partner With the Weak Phone PIN

A partner loses their phone in an Uber.
It unlocks with a 4-digit code.
Outlook opens automatically.
Client matters, financials, contracts—wide open.

You’re now legally required to report a breach.

All because of a 4-digit number.

Scenario 2: The “Can You Approve This?” Email

An attacker gains access to a client’s compromised mailbox.

They send a believable request to your senior associate:

“Need this wire approved before close of business. Can you confirm?”

The associate, deep in client work, clicks. The associate’s credentials are successfully harvested. Your mailbox is now part of the attacker’s toolset.

Scenario 3: The Offboarded Employee With a Sync Folder

Someone leaves the firm.

No one wipes their OneDrive sync folder.

Six months later, they still have:

• Client data

• Drafts

• Emails

• Attorney–client communications

• Board decks

• Tax filings

• Financial statements

All sitting quietly on a personal laptop next to Netflix and photos of the dog.

No amount of policy language fixes this.

The Real Cost: The Phone Call You Never Want to Make

Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
When a professional services firm is breached, the damage isn’t the ransom or the cleanup.

It’s the conversation where you call a client and say:

That call isn’t about technology, it’s about trust.

And trust is your entire business.

The Good News: The Bar for ‘Secure Enough’ Is Clear and Achievable

This is where most firms underestimate themselves.

You don’t need:

❌ A massive IT department
❌ A CISO
❌ A six-figure stack of enterprise tools
❌ An army of engineers

You need:

1. Identity protection (MFA, Conditional Access)

Stop attackers from logging in, even with the right password.

2. Device boundaries (BYOD done right)

Protect firm data without touching personal data.

3. A Microsoft 365 baseline

The settings your tenant should never go without.

4. Basic compliance alignment

HIPAA/GLBA/SEC isn’t “for big companies.”
It’s for anyone holding sensitive client data.

5. Real offboarding controls

Remove firm data immediately when someone leaves.

6. Someone watching the alerts

A managed SOC so you’re not the one responding at 2:14am.

None of this is exotic; it’s all very achievable for a 10–100 person firm with the right structure.

The Security Equation for Professional Services

If you want to understand why you’re a target, boil it down to this:

High-value data × Busy people ÷ Limited IT = Prime target

That’s it.

That’s the formula.

And the firms that understand this early get ahead of the risk, while the firms that don’t… eventually learn the hard way.

You don’t need to be perfect. You just need to be better than the average firm.

No attacker wants to spend days breaking into a well-configured Microsoft tenant with MFA, device boundaries, and real alerting… when the firm down the street still uses Outlook 2016 with no MFA and “PasswordSpring2024!” as a shared credential.

Security isn’t a contest. But if it were, you only need to avoid being the easiest opponent.

If you want help getting there, we do this all day.

You don’t need a security department. You don’t need more tools.

You need a repeatable security foundation built for professional services firms.

If you want us to build that with you, just say the word.