Money is the root cause of top cybercrimes, and finance and small business accounting firms’ deals with money daily. Therefore, financial data security is one of the major concerns of this industry.
Regardless of the size of a company, data security is not a subject to overlook. In this article, we will learn about financial data security, its importance, and how to protect data.
What is data security?
Data security is the protective measure of a company to prevent unauthorised access to computers, databases and websites for data breaching. Cyber threats can be unauthorised access or corruption of data due to malware or third party service.
Some of the threats to financial data are:
● Transfer of malware viruses
● Hackers are using malware to access your systems and control them remotely
● Cybercrime and IP threat
● Advanced and sophisticated attacks using AI and machine learning
● Third-party services issues
● Internal data security issues.
Why do companies need financial data security?
Financial data is any information related to an account or transaction like customer account numbers, sales data, purchase history, and credit information. It also contains the assets and liabilities of a company.
Manage reputation
Financial data security is essential to safeguard data, as losing information can directly result in a financial loss that impacts the company’s reputation. You can hire a small business accountants to help you deal with data security.
Company size doesn’t matter for cyberattacks.
Small Financial companies may assume they are not under hackers’ target. However, the scenario is not the same; hackers don’t know the company’s size and prefer easy targets.
Though large financial companies can handle the financial burden caused due to a cyberattack, they shouldn’t ignore the importance of data security.
Company assets include your data.
Owners and accountants or other finance and accounting professionals can use company data for revenue optimisation, risk mitigation, and business performance. The financial data can bring benefits in future and is an important company asset, which means it must remain confidential and secured.
Comply by regulations
The financial company holds the most sensitive information and therefore is among the top targets for security attacks. These firms must comply with regulations, laws and guidelines to avoid legal problems or reputational damage. Financial companies losing or mishandling data may pay a hefty fine under the General Data Protection Regulation.
Hackers can automate
You need to pay attention to data security as hackers can automate cyberattacks, like bot attacks. Hackers can consistently initiate a cyberattack in bot attacks and complete the process without lifting a finger on their computers. They are good at diverting the attention of your security team, and therefore you must have a robust data security solution.
Your company is constantly updating technologies. With newer versions, there are new capabilities; however, they call out for new potential security threats. You need to stay prepared to protect your data, train your staff to look for threats, and learn ways to handle them.
How can you protect financial data?
Here’s how you can protect the financial data of your company.
Know your threats
A company may face threats like hacking, ransomware and phishing scams. However, internal threats and errors can also impact company data. Understand your threats and implement actual accounting practices and tools for data management.
Train your staff
Educate your team on the growing cyber threats and risk of financial data breaching. Additionally, train them on how to prevent ransomware attacks.
Implement data security core features
● Natural event protection: You can secure data through the cloud and backups to prevent data losses due to a natural disaster or physical distraction.
● External threat protection: You can use a secure and robust Application Programming Interface to ensure financial data security when connecting with other applications.
● Internal threat protection: It must be a more intensive layer of defence when a threat breaks past firewalls or encryptions. You can use passwords, two-factor authentication, permissions, approvals, user hierarchy, validation rules, and others.
Meet a professional of Experlu to help you understand more about financial data security and how to implement them in your current business scenario.
Conclusion
Data security for any company is a crucial issue to consider. It can affect a company’s reputation and loss of clients to competitors. Furthermore, with the introduction of GDPR, companies failing to meet the data security standards can face penalties.
Therefore, it’s high time you consider enhancing the data security measures in your company or look for a professional to help you find the appropriate solutions.