Victimized tax pros tips on data security.
Below are recommendations provided by tax professionals who were victims of data theft, according to the IRS who interviewed them.
Cyber insurance for data breaches. Review your liability and property coverage as it typically is available as a rider. Ensure that your liability coverage is high enough to cover all expenses incurred from data breaches. There are some insurers who will provide professional help if a breach occurs. They will identify the cause of the breach, assist in notifying clients, fixing the breach, and putting sufficient protection in place to prevent other breaches.
Each client account should be password protected. According to tax pros that have lived through a breach, having additional protection is worth it. Generally, accounting and tax software allow password protection for each account, but often tax pros find this a hassle and don’t use the feature.
Virtual private network. There are two ways you can connect to your office externally; remote software and VPN, the more secure way is VPN.
Ensure all software is up-to-date. Unfortunately, data thieves come up with new ways to find flaws in software and create new methods to breach networks. Installing updates as soon as they become available is key as software publishers issue updates once they learn of any flaws. Look at setting your software to do automatic updates.