By Chris Grandi, CEO at Abacus Group 

I was honored to be invited as a speaker at Boston Private’s 2018 Venture & Private Equity Conference in Cape Cod, MA, last month. During the three-day event, I spoke at a roundtable along with Kevin Daury, CFO at Westview Capital Partners, about cybersecurity best practices. During the session, I provided tips and advice to CFO’s and COO’s on how to develop and manage a cybersecurity program for their firms.

Cybersecurity has become much more important in the investment management space. All managers are concerned about the protection and safety of their data and digital assets.

By Anthony Hartzog, Director of Global Remote Support at Abacus Group 

Since joining Abacus Group in 2012, I’ve worked across many areas of the company, originally as an onsite support tech and then as one of our first remote support technicians. I also created and assumed the role of our first remote support dispatcher. Through the encouragement of growth opportunities within Abacus, I eventually became a team lead, manager and now director of our global remote support team, based in our Dallas office. I have a BA in Information Science with a minor in Business and Computer Science. Prior to Abacus, I worked in IT at the Federal Court.

The majority of our remote support team resides in Dallas, but, to account for our global presence and different time zones, we also have team members based in a variety of regions, including New York City, San Francisco, LA and London. Our service desk is a truly global framework with UK staff fielding issues for US clients, and vice versa, which has allowed our client base to grow with minimal Abacus growing pains.

By Tom Cole, Director – Europe at Abacus Group 

Prior to joining Abacus Group in 2016, I worked within hedge funds and a FinTech start-up. My responsibilities evolved from being a hands-on techie into more leadership and governance duties. During these roles, I had direct experience with working via in-house, co-sourced and outsourced models of IT. Joining Abacus was outside of my comfort zone, as I was most at home being on the client side versus the service provider side. Calling upon my technical and business experience, I conducted a one month rigorous operational due diligence on Abacus prior to affirming my decision to join the company. The outcome surpassed my expectations and fueled my excitement to join the Abacus team, leveraging a proven blue print for service delivery to Europe. I’ve now been leading the European region for Abacus for the last two years, and during the last year, our European client-base has grown by over 150%.

I wanted to share the top four IT challenges that Abacus addresses for alternative investment firms, allowing us to excel in our field.

By Jonathan Bohrer, CFO at Abacus Group

I recently had the pleasure of attending several cybersecurity roundtables, including the HFM US Operational Leaders Summit in White Plains, NY, and an event hosted by Abacus Group in Boston for hedge fund and private equity COO’s and CTO’s, including several Abacus clients. As the operational leader of Abacus Group, being part of these events gave me the opportunity to discuss cybersecurity with my industry peer counterparts. I was also joined at both of these events by Abacus CISO Dave Parsons, and at our Boston event we also included a cybersecurity specialist from SentinelOne who contributed greatly to the discussion.

by Chris Grandi, CEO at Abacus Group

The investment management industry has traditionally been slow in adopting new technologies, and rightfully so considering the stringent compliance and regulatory demands the sector must adhere to. This has especially been the case when it comes to cloud-based technology, transitioning away from on-premise servers housed with a hedge fund's office.

A case study from Thycotic

Paul Ponzeka, Managing Director of Engineering at Abacus Group, was recently interviewed by Thycotic about how we use their Secret Server product to protect credentials for our alternative investment firm clients. Read the full case study published on CRN.com.