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Checklist For 2021 Tax Season 

How CPA’s Can Get Maximum Productivity During Tax Season

Tax Season can be a roller coaster ride for every tax preparer. So, it's essential to start preparing early than being caught off-guard by a sudden surge of client demands during the busy time.

Before that, the tax preparer or professional's most important task is to create a well-balanced work routine to keep themselves and their team organized.

Infographic: Ransomware Beginners Guide

In this infographic, you'll get to know what ransomware is, facts and figures about ransomware, how it works, and how you can prevent it. Also, know what to do if you are a victim of ransomware.

How DaaS Solves Business Challenges

Traditionally, businesses use local workstations. Local workstations are less flexible and secure. To be a step ahead, companies should start using DaaS (Desktop-as-a-service).

Desktop as a Service (DaaS) is a cloud-based computing service where an external third-party organization hosts the back-end infrastructure of a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). Source

In this infographic, you'll get to know about modern business challenges and how DaaS solves them.

Improve Your Accounting Skills Infographic

The accounting department in an organization plays an essential role. A person working as an accountant must have a broad skill set to manage daily tasks.

An accountant helps in managing the finances but is also required to interpret the data of the company. They are also required to keep track of the change of accounting policies and more.

Tip To Identify Poor Accounting Practices

A growing business needs solid accounting practices as poor accounting practices can become the reason for its failure.

Your firm is working hard to make profits, but it will become challenging to reach your goals if one ignores the cost opportunity.

Most of the poor accounting practices can be easily identified and corrected in time.

Here are eight tips that will help you to identify your mistakes and save your business from sinking.

Every money-making individual needs to manage the finances. Managing the finances get even more important when transactions are large, and business accounting is involved.

For meeting the tax requirements, accounting data has to be in the right form. To achieve this, many individuals take help of accounting software.

An investor can end up losing money weather they are experienced or new to the industry. Making a good investment can be tricky one should know the market trend and must aware of vital factors.

With careful planning, patience, and knowing the market, even newcomers can make suitable investments.

Top Technology Trends For Accounting Professional [Infographic]

With the advancement in technology, different professions also have experienced their share of impact. And accounting is no exception.

To keep up with these advancements, accounting professionals are also becoming more tech-savvy.

You can see the massive transformation of accounting firms from paper-based accounting to completely digital methods - they have moved from manual data entry to automated processes.

To survive in a competitive market, startups should cut down costs and streamline business processes. They should move their on-premise business solutions to the cloud to reduce their hardware maintenance and replacement cost - save time, avoid errors, and make better financial decisions.

Data is something that needs a robust security model for perfect management. Even a minor breach in the cloud storage system will badly affect a company’s reputation and have disastrous financial effects.

When a business uses a cloud infrastructure, it is most likely to include a data center for storage. The data center is a dedicated storage space housing computers and networking components to gather, store, backup, and process data remotely.

Data Center Physical Security - A Priority or Compulsion

As most of you would have guessed, cloud hosting companies have to ensure the best data center physical security to avoid security breaches. Any suspicious person getting access to the data center means the entire operation is stalled, and the reputation of the company is at stake.

Just think how severe it would be the consequences if someone is having unauthorized access to a data center with a server of an accounting or legal firm.

What is Data Center Physical Security?

Physical security is always considered a key aspect of data center security. Since the data center is accountable for making available the services, a cloud hosting provider often has to come up with different ways to add to its physical security.

The data center’s physical security is the set of rules/practices followed within the data center building in order to avoid any physical harm to the systems keeping the data.

Those practices must be carefully designed to deal with everything starting from industrial espionage and cyberattacks (such as Ransomware) to environmental disasters.

Data Center Physical Security - There is no Escape

Cloud infrastructure comes with data centers that are always under the threat of physical attacks. Physical invasion can happen anytime under the disguise of a technician or cleaning staff. Employee deceit or mistakes are too common. Environmental disasters can cause debacle; so can heat/cooling-related problems.

Cloud hosting providers must secure their data centers from a wide variety of physical risks, and ensure that their IT managed service providers do it effectively.

This is very crucial, with business data getting expanded more and more, putting pressure on the cloud. This data is physically stored in a data center establishment. Those in charge of securing the data center facility should evaluate the risk of physical attacks from within and outside. There are certain areas where they need to deploy high-security measures.

1. Data storage facility

2. Server/computer room

3. Networking unit

Data Center Physical Security - Multiple Layers

Cloud infrastructure has simply contributed to the urge for data centers to offer a 100 percent uptime and safe trade operations. Since the data center faces the most unexpected risks in the form of theft, sabotage, and unauthorized access to data, protecting its physical resources become more crucial.

The most tactical way to attain optimal physical security in the data center is to plan and control it layer-wise. Layering adds value to the data center’s physical protection arrangement, making the entire system unaffected even with the collapse of one or more elements.

These layers are also implemented to put off nasty or even accidental data breaches by in-house employees.

The four layers of data center physical security are:

1. Perimeter security

2. Facility controls

3. Computer room access controls

4. Cabinet access controls

Covering all these layers means complete and included protection starting from the data center’s perimeter to its cabinets.

Data Center Physical Security - Applicable Standards

While planning the data center’s physical security or working on the enhancement of existing locations, there are many standards and legal necessities applicable to protect crucial or confidential data on the cloud. In many cases, there could be fines charged for nonconformity, so the 3rd party provider must follow the most common data center security standards.

Here is a list of some relevant standards and legal obligations.

1. SSAE 18 (SOC1/SOC2) - It is the latest standard that has superseded SSAE16 and applies to SOC 1. The SOC 1 is a Type 1 audit report focused on a cloud hosting service provider’s controls and processes that could affect the client’s ICFAR (internal control over their financial reporting). The SOC 2 or Type 2 is a separate audit report that checks on controls at a cloud service provider about security, accessibility, processing reliability, confidentiality, and safety of a system.

2. SSAE 16 - It is a familiar auditing report or standard created by the AICPA that has replaced the SAS70 standard. SSAE 16 shows how adequate and effective are internal controls for hosting or processing data of customers.

3. ANSI/TIA-942 - It recommends how to protect data center belongings with improved physical security (video surveillance, access control, fire prevention) and monitoring of people's activities/actions.

4. Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, and PCI-DSS - These are additional standards and legislations in favor of certain access controls for data center locations.

Top Measures for Data Center’s Physical Security

Data infrastructure security continues to be a big concern for businesses all over the world, and with a shift to the cloud platform, customers have now started to give it a high priority.

To minimize the possibility of physical attacks on data centers, the following measures could be considered:

CCTV recordings and entry logs: locations & all access points with a minimum of 3 months of video preservation.

24×7 video surveillance

On-premise security guards

NOC (Network operations center) monitoring services and team on deployment

Anti-pass-back/ Anti-tailgating feature in turnstile system. Permitting only one person to enter after authentication.

Single access point for employees into a co-location data center facility.

Control traffic through custom managed data halls, cages, and suites.

Added access control and security like fencing around private cages

Three-factor authentication (3FA) with passwords, access cards, and PINs

SSAE 18/16 standard compliance

Check on energy issues (heating/cooling effect, power grid failure)

Checking the hardware design and provenance in a cloud

Lowering insider attacks by monitoring authorized users’ activities and safely keep their work credentials

Fire prevention protocol/training with the use of dry-pipe sprinkler in the danger zone

Natural disaster-free or risk-free locations for data center

Conclusion

More businesses are now moving their ever-growing data workloads to cloud-hosted servers and infrastructure. There is always the danger of data centers undergoing physical attacks. Matching the service providers with all the measures mentioned above is very necessary.

Best Collaboration Tools For Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 is one of the best communication-centric platforms that helps users to work efficiently in teams. With the wide variety of tools and application integration access for team collaboration and communication, it boosts one's performance.

Changing tax laws can be confusing during the tax season. It is best to hire a professional tax preparer.

According to IRS, half of the taxpayers hire a professional tax preparer. However, hiring a tax professional is not an easy task. It would help if you were careful before selecting your tax preparer, trusting him or her with your most personal information. 

So asking these questions beforehand would be worth the time and effort to ensure that someone with the desired experience and skill level is hired. 

In a startup, employee strength is small, and their work responsibilities are more. Such working order can lead to chaos if adequate measures are not taken care of to manage time. 

Delivering products quicker than the competitor in a limited time is a crucial part of any growing startup. Apart from this, additional pressure from investors and because of limited resources add importance to saving time.

With all these challenges, maintaining the quality of the products and services can put owners in a tricky situation. 

Businesses small or large, all of them aim to make more profits from their products or services. One of the common ways to achieve this is by cost-cutting. This is sometimes achieved by degrading the quality, creating a negative impact on the business.

The accounting department in every business is the leading financial manager who plays a significant role in cost-cutting. They can come up with ways to use modern technologies and business practices efficiently and come up with solutions that can help bring down the investment and deliver the same quality.