This post was originally published on Finextra (Security)
Emerging threats for accounting firms have steadily risen over the years, with more and more business emails being compromised, leading to an annual loss of around $2.4 billion. Just a few months back, an accounting service based in Maine suffered a huge data breach that compromised personal information of over 1.1 million individuals.
Unfortunately, accountants for small and medium-sized businesses are attractive targets for hackers for obvious reasons—the treasure trove of information they have at their disposal and the lack of the same level of security as larger companies. So, it’s more important than ever to be aware of the cyber threats out there, particularly in the area of social engineering.
Let’s examine how accounting firms can implement measures to protect data and comply with regulations against this ever-growing threat of social engineering.
The Cybersecurity Landscape in Accounting
One of the big problems in accounting is that there is a real lack of understanding about the importance of cybersecurity, hence the troubling numbers mentioned in the intro. A lot of smaller accountancy firms simply don’t invest in this area, so they don’t have the necessary basic measures in place, such as encryption, multi-factor authentication, and regular data backups. Additionally, this
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