The following article was compiled by Alyssa Ritchie.

October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month. Here are some useful tips from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Stop.Think.Connect.™ Campaign.

• When in doubt, throw it out.  Stop and think before you open attachments or click links in emails.
• Back it up.  Make electronic and physical backups.
• Guard your devices.  Never leave your laptop or mobile devices unattended in a public place.
• Secure your accounts.  Use passwords that are at least eight characters long and a mix of letters, numbers, and characters.
• Report anything suspicious. If you experience unusual problems with your computer or device, report it to your IT department.

For information and useful cybersecurity tips, please visit www.dhs.gov/stopthinkconnect.

Dan Sterling

Mid Atlantic is excited to welcome Daniel Sterling as its new Executive Vice President of Mid Atlantic Operations.  He will be responsible for all brokerage, advisory, custody, and trust operations groups within the company.  In this capacity, Dan will oversee mutual fund brokerage, ACATS, asset movement and controls, custody operations, and trust and brokerage customer support operations.

Mr. Sterling began his career in 1994 as Assistant Vice President of Operations Control at Barings Securities, where his duties included financial analysis and development of policies and procedures for global cash reconciliation.  In 2002 he became Vice President of Asset Servicing, Physical Operations at BNY Mellon (then known as Bank of New York) in which he was responsible for overall direction of the U.S. settlements related to trade processing, tri-party repos, time deposits, precious metals safekeeping, and all aspects of physical custody of certificated securities.

At BNY Mellon, Dan was appointed Managing Director Investment Services, Global Operations, U.S. Settlements from 2008-2016.  In this role, he addressed U.S. settlement compliance issues, approved risk mitigation plans, developed operational standards, and elevated departmental presence through exemplary customer service and problem resolution.  He was a subject matter expert in the areas of trading, settlement, and custody for DTC, FRB, money market and mutual funds, time deposits, repos and various other securities.

Mr. Sterling received a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

Recently, we caught up with Dan to learn a little more about him and his new position with Mid Atlantic:

• How did you first come to learn about Mid Atlantic Capital Group?
  Working with BNY Mellon, my Settlement team was looking at Pershing as an internal solution to executing and settling mutual fund trades and moving away from a third party vendor. After having some discussions between Pershing and BNYM, we expanded the meeting to add representatives from Mid Atlantic as we discussed our options. I met both Tim Friday and Nick Ventura in those meetings.
• What do you find most appealing about your decision to join the Mid Atlantic family?
  Mid Atlantic does have a family feel to it, there’s an energy that is both refreshing and exciting.  The individuals I’ve met throughout have been great, either in meetings, one to one at their desks, or at the water cooler. The teams seem genuinely excited about the successes we’ve had and are looking forward to more growth in the weeks and months ahead. I feel blessed to have been adopted into this family and am eager to provide all the support that I’m able.
• How would you envision success in your new role as Executive Vice President of Operations?
  Scalability and Control. We need to deliver exceptional service by developing processing models which can handle the growth of the business without dramatically expanding head-count. We also need to be able to adequately demonstrate that our processing risks have been properly identified and mitigated, that the oversight/review process is thorough and meaningful and that we, as a team, continue to have confidence in the numbers that are being reported.
• “In my free time…”
  I bike, mostly on the Montour trail or GAP. I recently bought a kayak, but haven’t been too adventurous with it yet. I belong to the Amateur Astronomers Assoc. of Pittsburgh and do a bit of star-gazing from their observatory in Mingo State Park. And I read a lot, mostly history and biographical books. A life goal of mine is to read at least one biographical book on every US president; I’ve covered 15 so far.