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IT Services for Financial Service Firms in Colorado Springs

Your clients trust you with their money. Their next question is whether they can trust you with their data.

A financial service firm sells one thing before it sells anything else: trust. Every system your team touches either protects that trust or quietly puts it at risk. Stepping Forward Technology gives financial firms what they cannot hire at this scale: verified security controls, a full-time in-house Chief Information Security Officer, and founder-led technology strategy, with the evidence to show an examiner, an insurer, or a client that all of it is real.

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20 years

serving Colorado Springs

24 / 7

security operations capability

In-house

full-time CISO owns security strategy

The quiet risks in a financial practice

Security that was set up once and assumed ever since

MFA rolled out, mostly. Backups running, probably. Access reviews, eventually. In a business built on trust, assumed is a liability. Verified is the standard.

The evidence request that becomes an archaeology project

An examiner, a custodian, or an insurance underwriter asks what safeguards are in place. Nobody can answer quickly, so the answer gets reconstructed from memory, old emails, and hope.

The vendor you are now responsible for

Regulators increasingly hold firms accountable for the service providers that touch client information. If your IT provider cannot produce its own evidence, its gap becomes your finding.

Advisors and staff absorbing friction

Slow systems, workarounds, and recurring glitches that never rise to a crisis, quietly taxing the hours your firm bills and the clients it serves.

IT Support for Aerospace & Defense

What a Business-Aligned MSP looks like in financial services

Stabilize

Dependable, engineer-first support so your team gets fast, competent help without routing everything through one overloaded person. Proactive maintenance measured weekly against a written standard we have refined every week since 2016, so recurring issues get eliminated instead of re-fixed. Documentation is maintained in your name, current and complete.

Protect

This is where financial firms feel the difference. Security controls anchored to an industry-standard framework and verified healthy: endpoint protection confirmed on every device, patching verified rather than trusted, backups restore-tested, access closed the day someone leaves. A 24/7 security operations capability watches for the threats no prevention layer stops. Security strategy is owned in-house by our full-time Chief Information Security Officer, who holds a Masters in Cybersecurity and is a Certified Ethical Hacker. Findings enter a tracked remediation register and are worked to done, so your posture is something you can demonstrate, not just assert.

Empower

A founder-led technology roadmap tied to the firm’s growth: succession-safe documentation, budget planning aligned to your fiscal cycle, and honest advice from an advisor whose incentives align with yours, not with a project quota.
When Trine Aerospace, a Colorado Springs-based business jet maintenance and reconnaissance equipment manufacturer, needed infrastructure that could carry demanding 3D engineering workloads, we redesigned their system around the work itself, then put our proven proactive model behind it.

SEC expectations, met by evidence

The amended SEC Regulation S-P is now in force for registered investment advisers, broker-dealers, and other covered firms of every size, and SEC examiners are reviewing it. It requires a written incident response program, notification to affected customers within 30 days of certain breaches, oversight of the service providers that handle customer information, and documentation that proves all of it.

We have built and delivered cybersecurity compliance evidence for SEC-regulated clients. We know what the evidence has to show, because we have produced it.

The division of responsibility is clear and deliberate. Your compliance officer and counsel own the written policies and the regulatory judgment. We make the technical safeguards behind those policies real, help build the technical side of your incident response plan, and maintain the evidence as part of daily operations, so the next exam request gets answered from a register instead of a scramble.

Firms outside SEC oversight face parallel expectations from the FTC Safeguards Rule, custodian security reviews, and cyber-insurance underwriting. The approach is the same: controls that exist because the work is happening, and evidence that stays current.
See how we approach cybersecurity
Matt Harvey, owner of Stepping Forward Technology, business-aligned MSP in Colorado Springs

Matthew Harvey

Founder & CEO, Stepping Forward Technology
Our strategy is founder-led. You work with the person accountable for the outcome.
“Matt was in it for the good of the customer. Someone whose advice you don’t have to question.”
Lee Taylor, President, Trine Aerospace

Why financial firms in the Mountain West choose Stepping Forward

Here is the structural problem: a 40-person advisory or accounting firm needs executive-level security leadership and cannot hire it. Senior security talent commands coastal salaries, and a firm this size cannot justify the seat even when it can find the person.

Our model is the answer. A founder-led fractional CIO for strategy and a genuine full-time, in-house CISO for security leadership, so your firm gets the leadership tier of a much larger institution at a fraction of one salary.

We have served Colorado Springs businesses for 20 years, and financial firms including PhilanthroCorp, Petra Financial, and CF&O trust us with the systems and data their clients depend on.

Who this is for

We work best with financial services organizations from 15 to 500+ employees, with our sweet spot between 50 and 150: registered investment advisers and wealth management firms, estate and legacy planning firms, outsourced accounting and CFO services, and other firms entrusted with sensitive client financial data. If your firm has internal IT, our co-managed model supplies the security and strategy layers alongside your team.
15 to 500+ employees
Sweet spot 50 to 150
Handling FCI or CUI
Co-managed alongside internal IT

Frequently asked questions

Yes. We have built and delivered cybersecurity compliance evidence for SEC-regulated clients. Under the amended Regulation S-P, that evidence covers your technical safeguards, your incident response program, and your oversight of service providers. Your compliance officer and counsel own the policies and regulatory judgment; we make the technical controls real, verify them, and keep the evidence current so it is ready when an examiner asks.
We expect to be reviewed, and we make it straightforward. We provide the security documentation and control evidence your oversight procedures call for, and we work with your compliance team on the contractual expectations the rule requires, including how and when we would notify you of an incident. A provider that resists your oversight is telling you something.
In-house. Our full-time Chief Information Security Officer owns security strategy and advisory for our clients, holds a Masters in Cybersecurity, and is a Certified Ethical Hacker. Most IT providers our size outsource this or skip it entirely. The one function we outsource is penetration testing, because independent testing should be independent.
By making the answers already exist. Controls are anchored to an industry-standard framework, verified healthy, and documented as part of daily operations, with findings tracked in a remediation register. When the renewal or the custodian review arrives, you answer from current evidence instead of reconstructing your posture from memory.
Yes. Our co-managed model supplies what your team lacks, commonly the security operations layer, compliance readiness, and strategic guidance, while your internal staff keep day-to-day ownership. The division of labor is documented, and your documentation stays yours.
An all-inclusive monthly fee priced per user, with must-have separated from optional and project work quoted before it begins, so spending is predictable and defensible to your partners. Our pricing page publishes ranges and what drives them. Verified security costs more than assumed security; in this industry, it is the only kind worth paying for.
They are yours, and they leave with you promptly and professionally. Documentation is maintained in your firm’s name from day one. We consider exit-readiness a feature of a trustworthy provider, not a threat, and in a fiduciary business you should accept nothing less from any vendor.

Trust is your product. Make your technology worthy of it.

A short conversation is usually enough to place your level, size the gap, and tell you whether the work is a project or a program.
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Colorado Springs, Colorado
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Stabilize
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Empower
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