Security Threats to Small Business Accounting
Small business accounting becomes increasingly difficult for owner/operators to handle personally or delegate to untrained employees. As your business grows, accounting becomes more complex, and savvy business owners often consider hiring a professional accounting service instead of one or more employees to do the work. There are many advantages to doing so that include generating tax savings, ensuring that reports are filed correctly and on time and getting guaranteed service when an accountant or bookkeeper becomes incapacitated.
However, the biggest advantage of hiring professionals is their ability to identify and prevent common security threats. Hiring professional accountants and certified computer security specialists helps to prevent many common digital threats. When even the smallest hack or breach is discovered or suspected, take advantage of fraud alerts and business identity protections services. Remain security conscious, and make security practices an essential condition of employment for your staff. The following categories of threats are easily overlooked but easy to remedy with forethought and safe practices.
1. In-House Threats
Internal security risks include both deliberate and unintended breaches. Disgruntled workers can generate dangerous threats, especially members of your IT team. Rogue employees can sell confidential information or computer access to competitors, steal money through embezzlement and
Security risks are the currently existing risk that has changed the most in a negative way. Before, with internal analyst and coders, the risk of outsiders getting any proprietary knowledge was almost negligible. With outside consultants, this risk increases. Another issue in the subject of security is that now we have to open up our Intranet to the Consulting, Inc systems to allow better communication between project members and Consultants, Inc. personnel and for easier availability of data to Consultants, Inc personnel.
One of these consequences are the injection of a Trojan virus, which is a virus that is hidden to act like a legitimate program or file. Another consequence would be exposing the network to a worm, which could propagate throughout the network and cripple productivity by machine and network slowdowns; this is in addition to possibly injecting other viruses onto the system. Although these are possibilities of allowing outside resources access to the company network, user training, disabling resources, and even standalone virus scanners can prevent these unintentional
As a financial consultant, one must be able to assist a company by evaluating drawbacks and advising solutions. Consultants deliver an analysis of current practices of a business and offer suggestions that will help a business progress to the next level. A consultant’s duty for a business usually begins with an understanding of what clients wish to improve. This includes examining financial statements, business opponents, and the company’s practices. So making recommendations on an accounting system for a new business is a consultant’s forte. In a case where a business owner knows nothing about accounting, a consultant will create a business model and formulate a plan tailored to the client’s needs.
Modern organizations that utilize technology must now use their resources to protect themselves from malicious cybercrime activities. A “hacker” could illegally intrude into an organizations information network and use accounting software to mine information and steal assets at a relatively low risk of being caught.
Due to these potential threats that may impose on the companies, CPAs are able to encourage their employees to become more aware of these risks and to educate them so that they are able to prevent them in the future.
Accounting systems are important to the operation of a business. They system helps organize a lot of information that helps owners make necessary decisions regarding their companies. It also helps keep up with purchases and sales and other things such as stocks. The system helps make sure that a business can afford certain items. Keeping good records is a mandatory requirement of a successful business. If the records are off by a lot, or even a little, it can change the whole look of the business in regard to taxes, investors, and many other important aspects of business.
Talking about risk that you can have on your system could be a lot of things one thing that it could happened to your system it can be hacked very easily. Most computer have a very weak safe guards that would prevent attackers to get access to the system. The next thing that would put you at risk is a virus attacks, because the company that you are working for don’t want to spend the money out to update there anti-virus software. An risk that you may also have is that your company does not have a qualified IT technician at the place where you work. If this is true then the company system could fall out of the compliance policy for this company. The company could have so short coming this may include the lack of a policy guide. In additionally
The changes in trianing requirements continues to grow to face the new challenges that private security organizations face daily. A lot of the time when people talk about private security officer's they think of “rent a cop” are “moonlighting cops”. In order to changes these views that many people have on those who work in private security the standerd of professionalism has to be changed. This would inculde a more detailed background check into new personally, Increase training requrments, and higher educational requrments. Since the attacks of 9/11, the private security field has helped to rasie the nations defense againest other terrorists atttacks. The private security industry has been a key part in helping keep public infusturces safe.Private security organizations have also filled in many of the areas where public law enforcement can not due to lack of manpower. Some of the areas in which private security officers are used in are dams,the rail road industry, banks, and many others. One key area that they protect is computer systems. Technology has changed are every day live very much in the last ten year's.With the high rate of identy theft the role of protecting computer system today has become very
-Loss of brand recognition risk which can be brought about by staff not wearing the company uniform, as well as the alteration of the company’s processes and service expectations.
Companies and Corporations are also at risk from insider threats. A careless or disgruntled employee is capable of divulging confidential or secrete information, faster than any outside threat or hacker, if
There are two types of vulnerabilities we face at our company today, technical and administrative vulnerabilities. Technical vulnerabilities consist of improper configuration of software and hardware, a lack of advanced security software and vulnerable
One of the most important areas of your business is your accounting department. Not only does this department help to keep you compliant, but they also help to keep you profitable and prepared for the future. For this reason, making sure you have a strong accounting system is critical.
The first example is known as a cyberattacks, which is an offensive exploitation of computer systems, technology-dependent enterprises, and networks (Whittle, 2008). This type of attack uses malicious codes to change computer codes, dada, or logic which typically results in adverse consequences that can lead to cybercrimes. To mitigate this type of attack would be to monitor employees closely and pay attention to employees who may potentially abuse their positions. Managers could make the decision to use automatic safeguards and password management to help prevent such attack. Social engineering is another example of an internal information security risk. This is an attack that relies on human interaction and involves tricking others into breaking their normal security procedures. To mitigate this type of attack, managers should educate their employees not to provide their passwords over the phone or email. Information leaking is another internal information security risk. This is known to be one of the most popular types of risks, as it can be easy to leak information accidently. Digital cameras, cellphone and USB drives are examples of how information and be leaked from an organization since they are easily portable (Whittle, 2008). To prevent this sort of risk from happening, it has been suggested for employers to block access to web-based email and data storage
The internal threat is a primary issue as employees, statically, is the cause of security issues. The information available to the employees can commit various types of criminal acts from fraud, to insider trading, to breaking international laws. There can also be issues with disgruntled employees, potentially if the employee is only contracted or temporary. It is a common practice in large companies, especially international companies, to outsource and contract work. This can create issues with personnel if a contract is ended in an unexpected way. There is also an inherent temptation with the information available, especially considering various white collar crimes.
Worse still, the company could be exposed to control risk resulted from the internal control. The company excessive reliance on computer systems can easily lead to internal control issues. If a poorly controlled company, it stands a chance to