If you keep your eyes on the news, it can feel like there’s a cybersecurity data breach announcement every week. When working with sensitive data, like employee benefit plan information, you don’t want to find yourself amid an accounting and cybersecurity data leak.
That’s why it’s of the utmost importance that when it’s time for your employee benefit plan audit, you work with a firm that protects sensitive data like it’s their own. In this post, we’ll cover some of the biggest cybersecurity risks and explain how accounting firms tackle those challenges to give you peace of mind.
What Are the Biggest Cybersecurity Risks for Benefit Plan Data?
Your employees trust you with their most sensitive information, like social security numbers, home addresses, and banking information. Often, this information is critical to enrolling them in payroll and employee benefit plans.
Unfortunately, cybercriminals know this and use various techniques to access sensitive data or employee benefit plan funds. One of the most concerning ways cybercriminals uncover sensitive information is through ransomware and weak third-party vendor systems.
Ransomware attacks happen when cybercriminals encrypt code into the data infrastructure. Typically, this results in criminals accessing private information and locking administrations out of the system.
Weak third-party vendor systems are also a cause for concern. If third-party systems are not up to industry standards or don’t offer multi-factor authentication, your employee benefit plan data can become an easy target.
How Do Accounting Firms Protect Sensitive Data During Audits?
Not all hope is lost, though, and you shouldn’t have to worry about the threat of a cybersecurity attack during benefit plan audits. When you work with a trusted firm that goes above and beyond to protect sensitive data during audits, you can rest assured that your employees and their data are safe.
Accounting firms that focus on cybersecurity place a high priority on implementing the best practices to ensure security. Those best practices include:
- Encrypting data to reduce the chance of an attack.
- Vetting third-party data systems to ensure they’re secure and up to industry standards.
- Using multi-factor authentication to log into data-sensitive systems.
These best practices help ward off cyber attacks, and firms that focus on accounting and cybersecurity trends and new best practices position themselves to stay ahead of criminal activity.
What Steps Does Assurance Dimensions Take to Secure My Data?
At Assurance Dimensions, protecting your sensitive data is our highest priority. Scott Mattson, CPA, Partner at Assurance Dimensions, said it best. He said, “Our commitment to end-to-end encryption and SOC compliance reflects our promise to safeguard client information and maintain the highest standards of data integrity. Which is why we use tools like Suralink to ensure sensitive data is protected at every step of the audit process.”
Here’s what we do (and have done!) to ensure your data integrity:
- Thoroughly vetted Suralink’s secure client engagement platform. This platform encrypts document sharing and storage, making it harder for cybercriminals to access important plan information.
- Implemented end-to-end encryption for emails.
- Strict adherence to SOC compliance to ensure secure handling of sensitive data.
- Stay on top of accounting and cybersecurity trends to ensure we’re one step ahead of malicious attacks and as secure as possible.
Benefits of Partnering with a Cybersecure Audit Firm
When it comes to accounting and cybersecurity, you need to trust your accounting firm to take the necessary precautions to protect your sensitive information. Data protection is often part of regulatory compliance to which accounting firms must adhere. If your firm is committed to meeting regulatory requirements regarding cybersecurity, you can trust they’re also handling other aspects of your audit by the books, too.
At Assurance Dimensions, protecting your sensitive data during any audit is our top concern. You can trust us to keep your employee benefit plan data safe. Contact us today to learn more about our remote auditing services and 401k plan audits.