As the leader of an accounting firm, how certain are you that you’ll never receive a letter like the following (which accurately reflects the sentiments of a real small business owner about his service provider’s accounting security and organizational capabilities)—or that none of your current clients harbor similar thoughts silently?

The first email was sent way back in 1969 and … email hasn’t changed much since.

Business data has become as valuable as gold. Natural disasters, employee negligence, systems hacks—these are all situations that threaten this valuable resource.

Security has become paramount in today’s digital world, especially in business. One wrong move and sensitive data could be stolen or leaked, putting your company at risk of experiencing reputational harm, losing its competitive edge, and even facing financial damages.

As I'm sure you well know, processing payroll for clients is not always straight forward. Waiting for clients to send over their payroll instructions in a timely manner can be frustrating, at best. No one likes chasing people, having to manually send reminders, or taking the time to contact them by phone.

If you and your team are constantly fishing for documents in a sea of email chains, it’s time to modernise your approach to file sharing. Storing important documents on individual hard drives and sending them as attachments via email or basic file transfer services is an outdated and inefficient method of document sharing.

In a perfect business world, only those authorised to access certain systems would be able to—without an intermediary. However, reality demands there be some sort of mechanism for the system to validate a login. Enter the password, a collection of characters that only one person—or a select few—knows.

Ask any accounting professional about their top concerns and undoubtedly security will be near the top of the list. This shouldn’t be surprising given the sensitive nature of the information they consume and share every day.

Every day, accounting firms across the globe deal with extremely sensitive, confidential data for companies large and small. This data holds a lot of power, especially when it gets into the wrong hands, such as hackers and other bad actors. Is it any wonder why cyber security and accounting go hand in hand?

Your Link“We now live in a business landscape where information and technology have become critical to enterprises all over the world,” says Magda Chelly, public speaker, author, former CISO, and cybersecurity expert.