| Merely because email has become a heavily trafficked messaging tool recently, it does not necessarily follow that email is safe. Many accountants are really using email incorrectly and putting their client's personal data at risk by posting it in emails. Care for your clients. Never assume that email is a protected way to convey sensitive data. An email will pass through a dozen or more servers before reaching it's destination. This arrangement makes email vulnerable to interception by what's called a "man in the middle" attack, and there's nothing you can do to prevent it. These third party servers are completely outside of your control and have no accountability even if they are poorly or even incompetently maintained. If even one of these servers has been compromised your message can be intercepted so you never know whose hands it can wind up in or who's hacking into your files.
Encryption can make it harder to open an email or attachment, but it does nothing to prevent it from being intercepted.
The Internet has become the keystone of most modern business communications, and this includes accounting firms. Accountants send hundreds of emails every week and most of these these messages don't include private files. The problem only rears up when these firms email information that's considered confidential. If the wrong people get hold of them documents like tax returns can seriously harm a client. Because accounting firms prepare taxes they are considered financial institutions. This actually makes emailing private information a crime. The federal law governing the security of financial is called the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. This law provides stiff financial penalties for accounting firms and other financial institutions that fail to adequately protect their client's data.
It is important to understand the difference between security and privacy if firms are to comply with mandates about client data protection. Privacy is about protecting your clients' identities. It's loosely tied to security in that it's often considered a subset of authorization, but privacy breaches usually involve a business deliberately selling client information to a direct marketing firm or similar third party. Where privacy is about keeping the door locked, security is about the lock itself. Security is the actual online authentication and authorization protocols that networks use to protect information and the audit system used to verify the overall system's effectiveness.
One great solution for exchanging documents is available through most of the best CPA websites. Almost all the major CPA website providers offer secure document portals.
Portals come in a variety of shapes and sizes, but they all have one thing in common. These great tools let you exchange files with clients quickly, easily, and safely. Unlike email a portal transfer encrypts the data and transfers directly from your server to the website's. This eliminates the chance of your file passing through any third party servers and keeps the chain of information accountable and under your immediate oversight.
In the interest in full disclosure, I sell CPA websites. Please don't dismiss this as a cynical back-handed sales attempt! I'm unquestionably not the only provider marketing these things. Actually, all the best CPA websites bundle in a secure information transfer system. Broadcasting your clients' sensitive personal information by email is actually rather irresponsible, and it's imperative that tax and accounting firms grasp this before their clients and amend their procedures accordingly.
Brian O'Connell is the President and founder of CPA Site Solutions, one of the country's most successful web design companies dedicated solely to providingfine CPA websites. His firm currently provides websites for more than 5000 CPA and accounting firms. |
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