20 tips to keep your business Cyber Secure

NIKEC Solutions

Accountancy practice management software has come a long way. Today, features like automated billing and reconciliations are easily integrated into the day-to-day practice workflow of Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting UK customers.

Our employees work side by side with our customers to create and manage these solutions – driven by a deep understanding of their needs and addressing the rapid changes in their environment.

However, it’s often hard to look beyond improving performance in day-to-day operations. Amid Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic and other disruptions, accountancy practices and their clients are dealing with an unpredictable economic landscape. Future business planning can appear daunting.

However, technology can support accountancy practices (and their clients) in making informed business decisions, and planning for the future. In the first part of our Accountancy Practice Management for Future-Fit Growth series, we’ll explore how they can use technology to define and easily track Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Doing so gives practices closer control of performance tracking, and deeper insights that will inform strategic growth plans.
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Saving Time

For several decades, business technology platforms have enabled practices to track performance metrics that they have customised. This highlights areas that qualify for improvement and underpins strategic planning.

Contemporary technology, such as CCH KPI Monitoring, makes setting up KPIs faster and easier for accountancy practices than ever before. This is vital today. The current business landscape demands that firms assess and amend KPIs more frequently, based on fresh market variables. KPIs such as client retention rate and business time-to-recovery have become increasingly prominent performance indicators in the past year. If clunky technology makes KPI management difficult, practices have less time and insight to plan future growth.

Reducing Risk
CCH KPI Monitoring makes it far easier to track KPIs and report on them. This is fundamental in minimising risk. For example, if a KPI is set to track and escalate debt filtered by overdue dates, the ability to easily set alerts and automatically generate reports is critical to practice performance management.

Some practices are manually running monthly reports to measure KPIs. Others are running real-time reporting engines, a key feature of CCH KPI Monitoring. This latter solution allows practices to review essential data at any time – covering both performance management and compliance requirements. They can do so remotely or on-premise.

This means that firms can assess issues before they become problems, and thus act proactively. Real-time reporting is a true asset in building a future-fit practice.

The Proof is in the Practice
A number of Wolters Kluwer customers have been using CCH KPI Monitoring for several years now. Our customers look to us when they need to be right. Ryecroft Glenton has successfully integrated CCH KPI Monitoring with its own system. This consolidates information from several sources, including CCH Central and CCH Practice Management.

“We can use the year end date to trigger a sequence of reminders. Have we asked for the books? Have they been received? If a request to a client has been outstanding for a certain period, the partner will receive an alert via email. For limited companies, we can monitor the corporation tax and Companies House filing deadlines – as well as the different deadlines for pension schemes”

– Ian Smith, partner at Ryecroft Glenton

Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

“Apogee are not just aprinting company, theyconsult with us and go onto deliver a full end to endservice from concept toinstallation. They go aboveand beyond and we lookforward to continuing ourjourney with them”

Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

“Apogee are not just aprinting company, theyconsult with us and go onto deliver a full end to endservice from concept toinstallation. They go aboveand beyond and we lookforward to continuing ourjourney with them”

Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

“Apogee are not just aprinting company, theyconsult with us and go onto deliver a full end to endservice from concept toinstallation. They go aboveand beyond and we lookforward to continuing ourjourney with them”

Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

“Apogee are not just aprinting company, theyconsult with us and go onto deliver a full end to endservice from concept toinstallation. They go aboveand beyond and we lookforward to continuing ourjourney with them”

Accountancy Firms have always been a big target for cyber security threats as they hold sensitive client information, handle significant funds and are key enablers in commercial and business transactions.  Extensive data consumption from their clients means it’s essential for them to ensure the right technology is in place to protect and lock down that information from the increasing threat.

With the pandemic pushing firms across the globe to speed up their transition to the cloud and with the increase of those now working remotely, it in hand has increased the potential ways that a firm can be targeted. All these reasons and more, explain why so many Accountancy Firms are now looking to invest in solutions to enhance their cyber security.

You may now be asking yourself what solutions should I invest in to achieve this? Or what can I do right now to improve the security of my firm?  

Well… Nikec have created a FREE guide with 20 tips to get your firm on the right track to securing your firm and reducing the likelihood of an attack. Many of the tips are freebies that can be implemented straight away, but it’s important to allocate a budget for cyber security solutions too. Cyber attacks come in many forms and are very prevalent – It’s about balancing where the biggest risks or gaps are.  
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1. Educate your mind

Most cyber issues can be mitigated by your users. Education and ongoing training and awareness is key. This is for all your users, not just the IT team. There is technology out there that helps users, but they still need to be aware how to avoid accidental data breaches, spot phishing emails and how to improve their overall awareness on an ongoing basis. As part of this you should have a clear policy on how your users should report a potential cyber threat, data loss or phishing email. This needs to be blame free so people own up to mistakes and the business then learns from it.

2. Multi Factor Authentification (MFA)
MFA is when a user’s identity is confirmed using multiple credentials e.g., after logging in with your login/email you then get a code sent to your mobile or use an authentication fob or mobile app. It’s secure as only the user has all the information and ensures that even if usernames/passwords are compromised, attackers will not be able to gain access with these accounts.  

Be wary however and keep the MFA technology up to date as this is now becoming a common place to try and hack. Having MFA doesn’t mean you won’t ever be hacked, it just makes it harder for an attacker.

3. Passwords
All passwords should be changed regularly. Don’t use the same password for all applications and try not to mix personal passwords with work ones.  As a guide you should change passwords every 3 months and change shared passwords every time someone leaves that had access. When choosing a password, the longer you make it - the better. Many suggest using at least 12 characters with a mix of lower and upper case, numbers, and special characters OR to use passphrases (three random words) instead of passwords!Using a password manager for storing your passwords is also a good thing.

4. Wi-Fi
It’s still surprising how many firms have open Wi-Fi. You should always protect your Wi-Fi with a password that you change regularly. Also make sure you reset the admin Wi-Fi password at implementation, so many still leave the factory default in place.

5. Patching & software updates
Out of date software is a perfect target for attackers. Using cloud technology sometimes overcomes this issue but keep on top of all your technology and keep auto updates on where possible.

‍Enjoying the tips? Click here to read / download the full guide!

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Accountants in IT stimulating collaboration

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07506 861 417
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