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3 Top Accounting Data Security Tips

24th Oct 2016
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As the digital world continues to grow rapidly the issue of cybercrime and hacking is growing along with it. All sorts of companies and websites are becoming targets and victims of hackers, even big companies like Sony and Yahoo have been affected, thousands of customer’s details had been compromised and internal private communication leaked. In an industry where the security of data is paramount, you should consider taking a few extra steps to ensure your data is well protected. Here are 3 tips to help you to step up your data security for your accounting business…

Carry out a Review

It is often hard to know where to start, the best thing to do is to look over your current set up and assess what protocols and procedures you have in place at the moment to put together an overview of your data security arrangement. Find an external company to do this for you, they will measure your security performance and will be able to point out any weaknesses or breaches you have in your current structure. As well as pointing out these flaws they will also provide you with recommendations to improve your security, you might not be able to implement all of their suggestions due to time and budget restraints but you can draw up a plan for further improvement from their assessment.

Physical Security

We live in a world where hacking and cybercrime is unfortunately prominent and we constantly see stories on the news of large companies falling victim to elusive and anonymous hackers. With all of the coverage there is of all of these breaches you would assume that this is how most data is compromised, but that isn’t the case, a study by PwC UK actually found that only 16% of security breaches are the result of an external hacker, whereas 47% are the fault of an employee.

Your data could be heavily encrypted and be impossible to be reached by hackers but the data could still be vulnerable physically, if your employees are not properly trained to use the computer systems correctly or if your office isn’t secure. You should consider implementing a visitor badge system to keep track of who comes and goes in the office, a card key system to make sure only those authorised can enter, make sure your office has secure locks and all devices are secured to desks or locked away in secure cabinets and that no sensitive information is left out on desks or whiteboards.

Disaster Recovery Plan

Data loss is a very big risk when it comes to security breaches, it only takes one malicious virus or a hacker to infect your computer system and cause a major loss or corruption of data, and this is something anyone can be vulnerable to at any time. In your current state would you be able to recover or recreate all of the files and data that you would potentially lose in such an attack? Having an automated backup and a data recovery solution is essential for business continuity following a cyberattack that caused a data loss.

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