Description

A focused course, tailored for you

The Brokerage Security Engineer's Control-Evidence Playbook

Move from ad-hoc Splunk queries and JIRA tickets to a versioned, evidence-ready control library your SOC, audit, and reg-exam teams all read from one place.

Every audit ticket that lands on a brokerage security engineer's queue is the same shape: pull the query, pull the export, pull the change record, paste the screenshot. The work is real, the evidence is real, but it is reassembled from scratch each time because nothing in the stack treats the control as a first-class object with an owner, a query, and a retention location.

$199 one-time

Tailored to your situation. Access within 24 hours. 30-day money-back.

Includes a hand-built implementation playbook delivered alongside course access, generated for your specific situation.

Why this course

Security engineering at a US broker-dealer sits at the intersection of four review cycles that never quite agree on terminology. The SEC Reg S-P safeguarding review wants privacy and access-control evidence. FINRA cyber sweeps want incident-response readiness and vendor diligence. NYDFS 500 attestation prep wants the CISO sign-off chain and the multi-factor and privileged-access coverage figures. The parent bank's internal SOC review wants its own slicing of the same controls. Each of those reviews can be answered from the same underlying telemetry. Splunk, CrowdStrike, CyberArk, Okta, the PAM export, the change-record stream. The bottleneck is not data, it is the gap between the named control on the auditor's worksheet and the named query in your SIEM. Close that gap once, version it, and every subsequent ask is a fifteen-minute pull rather than a half-day reconstruction.

What you walk away with

A control catalogue keyed to the FFIEC IT Handbook, CIS Critical Security Controls, and the SEC Reg S-P safeguarding rule, with each control mapped to a named owner, a named query or export, and a named retention location.
A standing evidence pack for the four examiner questions every brokerage security team gets in rotation, ready to ship inside one business day.
Repeatable PAM, EDR, DLP, IAM, and SIEM query patterns that survive auditor follow-up six months later because each query is versioned and dated alongside the control it answers.
A diff-able change record for every control update that satisfies the auditor question 'when did this change and who approved it' without needing to scroll a Confluence history.
A working narrative for the NYDFS 500 annual certification covering the privileged access, multi-factor, and incident-response controls the engineer actually owns.

The 12 modules

Module 1. The Brokerage Review Calendar and Where Security Sits in It

Maps the SEC Reg S-P safeguarding review, FINRA cyber sweep, NYDFS 500 annual certification, and parent-bank internal SOC review onto a single twelve-month calendar. Names which controls each one cares about and which artefacts each one accepts as evidence. The output is a single page the security engineer can put on the wall and use to decide which control to harden next based on the closest deadline.

Module 2. The FFIEC IT Handbook as a Control Catalogue Backbone

Walks the Information Security, Operations, and Audit booklets and extracts the named controls a brokerage security engineer is actually responsible for. Treats the FFIEC vocabulary as the canonical reference and shows how SEC and NYDFS asks map back to it. The output is a starter control catalogue of around 80 entries with FFIEC citations attached.

Module 3. CIS Critical Security Controls v8 as the Operational Layer

Layers the CIS Critical Security Controls onto the FFIEC backbone so each control has both a regulatory citation and a hands-on implementation reference. Covers the eighteen CIS controls in the order a brokerage SOC would prioritise them and shows how to record CIS Implementation Group attestation in the catalogue.

Module 4. Naming an Owner, a Query, and a Retention Location for Every Control

Defines the three fields without which a control is not audit-ready. The named owner is a person, not a team. The named query is a Splunk search, a CrowdStrike Falcon query, a CyberArk vault report, an Okta system log query, or a ServiceNow report, written down with its current version. The named retention location says where the output lives for the seven years FINRA expects.

Module 5. PAM Evidence the Auditor Will Actually Accept

Covers the CyberArk and BeyondTrust patterns for producing privileged-session monitoring evidence, dual-control approval evidence, and standing-privilege reduction evidence. Each pattern shows the export, the redaction rules, the timestamp tolerance, and the cross-reference back to the change-management record. Worked example for an SEC Reg S-P safeguarding follow-up.

Module 6. EDR and SIEM Queries for Incident Response Readiness

FINRA cyber sweeps consistently test incident-response readiness through table-top and through evidence-of-detection asks. This module covers the CrowdStrike Falcon, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, and Splunk Enterprise Security queries that answer those asks. Includes the rule-coverage report that demonstrates which MITRE ATT&CK techniques the brokerage actively detects on.

Module 7. Identity, Multi-Factor, and Joiner-Mover-Leaver Evidence

NYDFS 500 sections 1.2 and 1.6 and SEC Reg S-P safeguarding all examine identity hygiene. This module covers the Okta, Azure AD, and Sailpoint queries for multi-factor coverage attestation, privileged-role recertification, and the joiner-mover-leaver flow. Includes the named exceptions register and the standing report for the quarterly access review.

Module 8. Data Loss Prevention and the Reg S-P Safeguarding Story

Reg S-P safeguarding examines the controls protecting customer non-public personal information end to end. This module covers the Symantec DLP, Microsoft Purview, and Netskope queries for outbound channel monitoring, the customer-data classification register, and the documented incident-handling workflow for confirmed data-loss events. Worked example for an SEC sweep follow-up.

Module 9. Vulnerability Management Evidence Across Production and DevOps

Tenable, Qualys, and Wiz outputs become audit evidence only when joined to the patching SLA, the named exception register, and the production change calendar. This module covers the queries and reports that turn raw vulnerability data into the named-control evidence FINRA and the parent SOC review want. Includes the recurring report for the CISO monthly metrics deck.

Module 10. Vendor and Third-Party Cyber Diligence

Both FINRA and NYDFS examine third-party diligence in cyber sweeps. This module covers the SIG Lite intake, the SOC 2 Type II review log, the standing register of named critical vendors with cyber risk ratings, and the workflow that ties vendor incidents back into the brokerage's own incident response. The output is a vendor evidence pack the security engineer can hand to the third-party risk lead in one business day.

Module 11. The Diff-Able Change Record and the Quarterly Control Review

Walks the lightweight Git-or-ServiceNow workflow that lets every control catalogue change be reviewed, approved, and timestamped. Shows the quarterly control review meeting agenda, the per-control sign-off log, and the standing report the security engineer hands to the parent-bank SOC reviewer at the start of every cycle. The auditor question 'when did this change and who approved it' becomes a one-screen answer.

Module 12. The Annual NYDFS 500 Certification Narrative

Walks the section-by-section narrative for the NYDFS 500 annual certification covering privileged access, multi-factor, incident response, third-party, and CISO reporting. Shows how the upstream control catalogue, query register, and quarterly review log become the citations under each certification statement. The output is the engineer-level evidence package the CISO uses to sign the certification with confidence.

How this addresses your situation

Specific modules that map to what you said you are dealing with.

An internal audit ticket lands asking for last quarter's evidence of privileged-session monitoring and approval. Modules 4, 5, and 11 turn this into a fifteen-minute response.

FINRA opens a cyber sweep with a request for incident-response readiness evidence and named-detection coverage. Modules 1, 6, and 12 give the standing pack.

The CISO needs an NYDFS 500 annual certification narrative two weeks out and the section 1.2 multi-factor numbers are stale. Modules 7 and 12 produce the refreshed numbers and the citation chain.

An SEC Reg S-P safeguarding sweep arrives and the auditor wants the customer-data DLP story end to end. Modules 8 and 10 hold the evidence pack and the third-party slice.

What you get with this course

A starter brokerage control catalogue keyed to the FFIEC IT Handbook and CIS Critical Security Controls, around 80 entries, ready to populate.
Twelve worked query and export examples across Splunk, CrowdStrike Falcon, CyberArk, Okta, Tenable, and Symantec DLP.
A standing evidence pack template for the four examiner questions every brokerage security team gets in rotation.
The diff-able change record template plus the quarterly control review meeting agenda and per-control sign-off log.
The NYDFS 500 annual certification narrative skeleton with citation slots already mapped to catalogue control IDs.
The hand-built implementation playbook delivered alongside course access, tuned to the specific telemetry stack the buyer names at checkout.

What you will have in hand by Day 1, Week 1, Month 1

Within 24 hours, the learning environment account is provisioned and the hand-built implementation playbook is delivered alongside it.

Modules 1 to 4 are sized for the first week and produce the starter catalogue.

Modules 5 to 8 are sized for weeks two and three and produce the PAM, EDR, identity, and DLP evidence patterns.

Modules 9 to 12 are sized for week four and produce the vendor pack, the diff-able change record, and the NYDFS 500 certification narrative.

Before and after

Before

Every audit ask is a half-day of reconstruction. Splunk queries are rewritten from memory. PAM exports are re-run by hand. The Confluence screenshot is dug out of last quarter's space. Nothing is versioned, nothing has a named owner, and the engineer is the bottleneck on every single review.

After

Every audit ask is a fifteen-minute pull from a versioned control catalogue. Every control has a named owner, a named query, and a named retention location. The SEC Reg S-P, FINRA cyber, NYDFS 500, and parent-bank SOC reviews all read from the same source. The engineer publishes the evidence pack and goes back to building.

What happens if you do not address this

The next examiner ask still costs the engineer half a day per control. The CISO certification cycle still depends on undocumented memory. When the engineer takes leave, the audit response stalls. When the parent-bank SOC slicing changes, the catalogue has to be rebuilt from scratch instead of re-keyed.

Who it is for

Security engineers and senior security engineers in US broker-dealer or wealth-management environments who own one or more of: SIEM rule maintenance, PAM operations, identity-and-access-management workflows, vulnerability management, control-evidence production for audits, or response to SEC, FINRA, NYDFS, and internal SOC reviews. Working level, hands-on the queries and exports, not the CISO writing the attestation but the engineer the attestation depends on.

Who this is NOT for. Not for CISO-track strategy roles whose primary work is governance committee output. Not for SOC analysts whose work stops at triage. Not for engineers in retail-bank or insurance-only environments where the FINRA and SEC overlay does not apply. Not for engineers in pre-IPO companies with no formal audit cadence.

How it arrives

Text-based course in the Art of Service learning environment, plus downloadable templates and worked examples for every module, plus the hand-built implementation playbook delivered alongside course access.

Time investment. Around four hours per module, four weeks elapsed at a comfortable pace. Faster if the buyer is responding to an active audit cycle and works through the relevant modules first.

Why $199 is the right number

Generic CISSP or CISM material does not name the SEC Reg S-P, FINRA cyber, or NYDFS 500 review cadence. Vendor training (Splunk, CrowdStrike, CyberArk) covers the tool but not the control-catalogue layer that turns the tool output into audit evidence. Consultancy-led control catalogue builds run six figures and leave the engineer dependent on the consultancy for every revision. This course gives the engineer the catalogue, the queries, the change record, and the certification narrative in one package, owned and revisable by the engineer.

FAQ

Does this assume a specific SIEM, PAM, or EDR stack?

No. The catalogue layer is tool-agnostic. The worked examples cover Splunk, CrowdStrike, CyberArk, Okta, Tenable, and Symantec DLP because those are the common brokerage stack, but the patterns translate to QRadar, Sentinel, Defender, BeyondTrust, Azure AD, Qualys, and Microsoft Purview without rework. The implementation playbook is hand-built to whichever stack the buyer names.

Is this useful if the engineer is at a wealth manager rather than a broker-dealer?

Yes. The SEC Reg S-P safeguarding rule and NYDFS 500 apply across both. The FINRA module is less directly relevant to a pure-RIA shop but the FFIEC and CIS layers still apply.

How does this differ from a SOC 2 readiness course?

SOC 2 covers the trust services criteria for a service organisation report. This course covers the brokerage-specific overlay (SEC Reg S-P, FINRA cyber, NYDFS 500) plus the FFIEC and CIS backbone. The SOC review at the parent-bank level is covered. A pure-SOC 2 readiness course is a different animal.

What does the hand-built implementation playbook actually contain?

A tailored version of the starter control catalogue keyed to the specific FFIEC, CIS, SEC, FINRA, NYDFS controls the buyer's environment is reviewed against. The query and export examples are rewritten to the buyer's named SIEM, PAM, EDR, and IAM stack. The certification narrative skeleton is pre-populated with the buyer's named control IDs. Around 60 pages.

30-day money-back guarantee. If after a week of working through the materials this is not what you needed, reply to the receipt email and a full refund is processed. No questions, no forms.

Within 24 hours your account in the learning environment is provisioned and the tailored implementation playbook is delivered alongside it.