IT for fiduciaries who move beneficiaries' money and answer to bank examiners

Trust Companies IT Services

A trust company is trusted with other people's money for decades, and a single forged distribution request or compromised trust officer mailbox can break that trust in an afternoon.

Talk to Us About Trust Companies IT 888.792.8080

SOC 2 Aligned

Responsive Support

20+ Years Experience

At a glance

Your work runs on a trust accounting system, custody and settlement connections, document vaults holding trust instruments and estate papers, and trust officers who talk directly with beneficiaries, attorneys and family offices.

Examiners from your chartering agency review your information security program, vendor oversight and incident readiness.

We run IT and security for independent trust companies, bank trust departments and private family trust companies, with documentation that stands up to an IT exam. We serve fiduciaries in Texas and nationwide.

IT that keeps distributions verified, trust records intact, examiners satisfied.

Verified distributions, protected trust instruments and an information security program that matches what's actually running.

Inside a fiduciary's day

Where a trust company is exposed

Trust work is personal and long-term. Officers know beneficiaries by name, administer accounts across generations, and act on instructions from attorneys, accountants and family members. That human closeness is the strength of the business and the opening attackers use. Add a bank-style exam program, and IT has to be both careful and well documented.

01 · The pressure

Distributions, settlements and long memories

On a normal day, trust officers approve distributions to beneficiaries, settle estates, coordinate with outside counsel and CPAs, and review investment activity. Operations reconciles the trust accounting system with custodians and processes wires. Document vaults hold trust agreements, wills, deeds and correspondence that may be needed decades from now. If the trust accounting system is unavailable at month-end or a document repository is encrypted by ransomware, statements slip, distributions stall, and beneficiaries notice immediately.

Distributions beneficiaries depend on
Trust accounting reconciled with custodians
Trust instruments kept accessible for decades

02 · How it breaks

Forged instructions and impersonated beneficiaries

The common incident isn't a technical breach of the trust accounting system. It's a convincing email from a beneficiary, attorney or co-trustee asking for a distribution to a new account, sent from a compromised or lookalike address. Elderly grantors get targeted by scammers who then contact the trust company. An officer's mailbox is phished, and the attacker reads years of family correspondence before acting. Vendors with remote access to the trust system, and shared logins in operations, widen the gap.

Distribution requests from lookalike addresses
Officer mailboxes full of family correspondence
Vendor remote access into trust accounting

03 · What we change

Verified instructions and a documented program

We put phishing-resistant MFA on every account, starting with trust officers and operations, and flag lookalike domains and new senders. We help you formalize a verification step for distribution and banking changes: call a known number and record it. Trust accounting and document systems get role-based access, logging and immutable backups. Vendor access runs through logged, time-limited sessions. Then we write it down in an information security program and risk assessment aligned to the FFIEC handbook.

Callback verification on every new payee
Role-based access and logging on trust systems
A written program aligned to the FFIEC handbook

04 · The after

Beneficiaries protected and exams uneventful

Once that's in place, a fake distribution request gets caught by procedure, not luck. Officers spend time with beneficiaries instead of second-guessing emails. When examiners arrive, your information security program, risk assessment, vendor reviews, access reviews and test results are current and consistent with each other. Your board gets a clear report. And trust instruments from decades ago are still there, intact and searchable, when an attorney asks for them.

Fraud attempts stopped by a known procedure
Exam documentation current and consistent
Board reporting on security in plain language

Systems we keep running

SEI Trust 3000
InnoTrust
Accutech
Microsoft 365
DocuSign
NetDocuments

Rules we help you meet

Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA)
Interagency Guidelines Establishing Information Security Standards
FFIEC IT Examination Handbook
Computer-Security Incident Notification Rule (banking organizations)
Bank Secrecy Act
12 CFR Part 9 (OCC fiduciary activities)

What We Offer

Comprehensive solutions tailored for Houston-area businesses

Distribution and Payee Change Controls

We combine email security, lookalike domain detection and alerts on suspicious mailbox rules with a documented callback procedure for any new payee or banking change. We help you build the procedure into your workflow so verification is recorded alongside the distribution, giving auditors and examiners a clear trail.

Information Security Program and Risk Assessment

Trust companies are expected to maintain a written information security program grounded in a risk assessment and reported to the board. We help draft and maintain it, aligned to the Interagency Guidelines and the FFIEC IT Examination Handbook, so it reflects your actual controls rather than a generic template.

Trust Accounting System Support

Your trust accounting platform is the system of record for every account. Whether it's hosted by the vendor or on your infrastructure, we manage the workstations, network access, identity integration and secure connectivity to it, and work with the vendor on upgrades and issues so month-end processing isn't interrupted.

Long-Term Document Vault Protection

Trust instruments, wills, deeds and correspondence need to stay intact and retrievable for decades. We set up document management with role-based access, versioning, retention policies and immutable backups, and we migrate old file shares into it so nothing important lives on a single aging server.

Vendor Oversight and Access Control

Trust companies depend on vendors for accounting, custody, statements and hosting. We help you inventory them, collect and review their security reports, and track findings. Vendors that need remote access get logged, time-limited sessions instead of always-on tools. Each review is filed where an examiner can find it, along with the follow-up you asked the vendor for.

Incident Response and Notification Readiness

Banking organizations face tight timelines to notify their primary regulator of significant computer-security incidents. We build and test an incident response plan with clear roles, escalation paths and evidence handling, so your team can make decisions quickly. Counsel and management make the notification calls. Practice makes the first hour calmer.

Why Choose LayerLogix?

Serving businesses throughout the Greater Houston area including Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Atlanta, Nationwide.

Fewer Fraudulent Distributions

A recorded verification step, backed by email security that flags impersonation, stops most payee-change fraud before money moves. Beneficiaries keep their funds, and the company avoids the reimbursement, investigation and reputational damage that follow a misdirected distribution.

IT Exams That Go Smoothly

When the information security program, risk assessment, vendor reviews and testing records are current and match reality, IT exams become a review instead of a scramble. Examiners see a program that management understands and actually operates.

Records Available When Attorneys Ask

Estate disputes and beneficiary questions can surface many years later. Versioned, backed-up document vaults mean you can produce the original trust instrument and related correspondence quickly, without searching an old server or a former employee's mailbox.

Clear Reporting to Your Board

Boards are expected to oversee information security. We give management a plain-language summary of risks, incidents, test results and progress that directors can actually use, so oversight is real and documented in the minutes. Directors ask better questions.

Our Process

We meet with your president, chief fiduciary officer and operations lead to map distributions, settlements, document handling, vendors and exam history.

We assess identity, email security, trust system access, document storage, vendor access and backups, and compare them to the FFIEC handbook expectations.

We close the highest-risk gaps first, typically MFA, payee verification and vendor remote access, then move to logging and backups.

We draft or update your information security program, risk assessment and incident response plan with management, ready for board approval.

We run a tabletop exercise around a forged distribution request and a ransomware event, then record the results and follow-ups.

We support the company during business hours with after-hours emergency response for active incidents, and report regularly to management and the board.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you help us prepare for an IT exam?▼

Yes. We review your information security program, risk assessment, policies, vendor management records, access reviews, backup tests and incident response plan against the FFIEC IT Examination Handbook and your examiner's prior findings. Then we close the gaps, both in documentation and in the actual controls, because examiners notice when the two don't match. During the exam, we can help answer technical questions and gather evidence. We don't represent you to the regulator; management and your counsel do that, with us supporting the technical side.

How do we stop fraudulent distribution requests?▼

With layered controls. Email security flags lookalike domains, spoofed senders and first-time correspondents, and we alert on mailbox forwarding rules that attackers create after getting into an account. The most important control is procedural: any new payee or banking change requires a callback to a phone number already on file, never one from the request itself, and the callback gets recorded with the transaction. We help you build that into your workflow and train officers to treat urgency and secrecy as warning signs.

Do you work with our trust accounting vendor?▼

Yes. Whether your trust accounting system is hosted by the vendor or runs on your own servers, we handle the parts on your side: workstations, network connectivity, user accounts and MFA, secure remote access and backups if it's on-premises. We coordinate with the vendor's support and implementation teams on upgrades, integrations and troubleshooting. We also help collect their security reports as part of your vendor oversight program, so you can show examiners you've reviewed them.

What's the incident notification rule for banking organizations?▼

Federal banking regulators have a rule requiring banking organizations to notify their primary regulator promptly after determining a significant computer-security incident has occurred, and requiring certain service providers to notify their bank customers. Whether and how it applies to your charter is a question for your counsel. Our part is making sure you can detect incidents, understand their scope quickly and gather the facts your management and counsel need to decide. We build that into your incident response plan and test it.

How do you protect decades of trust documents?▼

We move them into a document management system with role-based access, version history and retention settings, then back it up to immutable, off-site storage that ransomware can't change. We migrate old file shares and scanned archives carefully, checking that folders and permissions come across correctly. We also make sure search works, because a document you can't find is almost as bad as one you've lost. Retention decisions themselves come from your policies and counsel; we configure the system to follow them.

We're a private family trust company. Do we need all of this?▼

The scale is different, but the risks are similar. Family trust companies often hold significant wealth with very small staffs, which makes impersonation and payment fraud especially dangerous. Depending on your charter and state, you may also face regulatory examination. We scale the program to your size: strong identity and email security, payee verification, protected document storage, sensible vendor oversight and a written program that fits on a reasonable number of pages. Your counsel can confirm which regulatory requirements apply to your structure.

Do you provide Trust Companies IT Services in Houston and nearby areas?▼

Yes. LayerLogix is based in the Greater Houston area and delivers trust companies IT services to businesses across Houston and the surrounding communities, including The Woodlands, Spring, Katy, Sugar Land, Conroe, Cypress, and Pearland. For most Houston-area clients we can be on-site the same day when something needs hands-on attention, and our help desk is available during business hours, with after-hours emergency support. Call 713-571-2390 to check coverage for your specific address.

What does Trust Companies IT Services cost for a Houston business?▼

Pricing depends on your size and what you need, so we do not publish a one-size-fits-all number — but Houston businesses generally pay a flat, predictable monthly fee rather than surprise hourly bills. We start with a free, no-obligation assessment of your current setup, then give you a clear quote in plain English with no hidden costs. That way you know exactly what you are getting and what it costs before you commit.

Ready to Get Started?

Contact LayerLogix today for a free consultation. We serve businesses throughout Houston, Dallas, Austin, and the surrounding Greater Houston area.

Schedule Free Consultation Call 888.792.8080