Better Data Security For Accountants: Your How-To Guide

Cyber security is important in every industry - but this is especially true in finance, where one mistake can cost your clients - and you - big time.

Financial loss, a bad reputation, and even legal consequences - these can be the results of neglecting data security.

So here’s how to improve yours and avoid data breaches ??

Risk Assessment

Any cyber security starts with a good risk assessment.

You’ll need to evaluate your current data security for any gaps or weak points that might cause trouble later.

This will mean identifying your assets, determining which threats are most likely to affect your business, and estimating the impact if that happens.

You need this information for the other steps, so make sure you take the time to do it properly.

Access Controls

The easiest way to keep data safe is to limit who can access it. If you’re not already, you should consider using a zero-trust policy—to put it simply, trust no one by default and expect everyone to verify themselves.

Then add role-based access controls (RBAC) to make sure no one’s accessing information they don’t need. They shouldn't be able to see it if it’s not necessary for their role.

Add some good old-fashioned multi-factor authentication (MFA) for good measure, and that’s a solid start.?

Encryption

Encryption is a good way to make sure that, even if someone gets a hold of your data, they won’t be able to use it for anything.

It turns data into gibberish so that anyone who doesn’t have the encryption key won’t be able to tell what they’re looking at.

Network and Endpoint Security

Protecting data is a good first step - but it’s not enough on its own. To be truly safe, you also need to protect everything else that comes into contact with the data. That means using:

??Next-generation firewalls

??Antivirus and anti-malware

??Virtual private networks (VPNs)

??Endpoint detection and response (EDR)

On top of all that, make sure systems and software are regularly updated.

Staff Education

All the above will be useless if your staff don’t understand why it matters—especially the access controls, which rely on their participation.

Make sure you teach your employees about why cyber security is important, how to spot scams and cyber attacks, and what they should do.

Encourage them to report anything suspicious.

Incident Response Plan

Try as you might, you can never completely stop cyber threats.

Have a plan for what you will do, who is responsible, and when they should act if a data breach happens.

Keep it somewhere visible to all staff.?

No business is invulnerable - but by following the advice above, you can lower your chances of being the next high-profile data breach victim on the news.

Let’s stay safe out there.

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