Security
How we protect your information.
You're handing over the details of your financial life — account numbers, tax returns, what you earn and what you owe. Here's what we do to protect that, what you can do on your end, and what a scam pretending to be us actually looks like.
On our end
The short version: less exposure, fewer hands, no email attachments.
Sensitive documents don't move by email
Statements, tax returns, and anything with an account number on it move through an encrypted portal — scrambled in transit and while stored, and reachable only by someone signed in as you. Email wasn't built to be private, and a forwarded attachment lives forever in someone else's inbox.
Two-factor on everything
Every system that holds client information requires a second factor to sign in — a code or an approval on a device I have, not just a password. A stolen password on its own doesn't open anything.
One person, one set of keys
Small Victories Wealth is a one-person firm. There's no support pool, no offshore admin team, no rotating cast of people with access to your file. When something touches your information, it's me.
Your information lives in as few places as possible
Client information is kept to a deliberately short list of systems rather than scattered across every tool that could hold it. Fewer places holding your data means fewer places it can go wrong.
Devices are locked down
Encrypted drives, automatic screen locks, and a password manager generating a different long password for every service. Nothing sensitive lives on an unencrypted laptop or a personal phone without protection.
No system is perfect and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. What I can tell you is where your information lives, who can reach it, and what happens if something goes wrong.
On your end
Five things worth doing this week.
Most financial fraud doesn't start with a bank getting hacked. It starts with an email account. These take an afternoon and they matter more than anything else on this list.
Lock down your email first
Your email is the master key — it's how every other account gets reset. Turn on two-factor authentication there before anywhere else, and use an app or a hardware key rather than text messages if the option exists.
Turn on two-factor at your bank and at Altruist
Then do your brokerage, your credit cards, and anywhere your paycheck lands. It's the single highest-value hour you'll spend on this.
Use a password manager
One long password you actually remember, protecting a vault of unique passwords you don't. Reusing one password across accounts means one breach anywhere is a breach everywhere.
Freeze your credit
It's free at all three bureaus, it takes about fifteen minutes, and it stops someone opening a card in your name. You can thaw it temporarily when you're applying for something. Do it for your kids too.
Verify money-movement requests by voice
If anyone — me, your bank, your title company — asks you to move money or change where it goes, hang up and call back on a number you already had. Not the number in the email. This one habit stops nearly every wire fraud attempt.
Spotting a fake
What we'll never ask you for.
Impersonating an advisor is a common way in. Here's the line — if a message crosses it, it isn't from me, no matter what the signature says.
Think something's wrong? Tell me now, not later.
Don't reply to the message and don't click anything in it. Reach me one of these ways instead. If you think an account has already been touched, call — that's faster than email and time matters.
If you've lost money or given up account credentials, also report it at reportfraud.ftc.gov and ic3.gov.