You can rest assured knowing that your clients files are safe and secure on our servers because your Vault and Client Portal data is encrypted 100% of the time.

While many Client Portal vendors use encryption to secure data in transit, CPASiteSolutions is the only provider to implement encryption where it resides most of the time, on the server hard drives and other storage media.

If this were easy to do, everyone would be doing it. Storing data in an encrypted format requires a lot of programming from extremely high level security experts. All the encryption and de-cryption places a heavy load on the server’s processors so significantly fewer accounts can be placed on each server.

It’s expensive, but worth it when you consider that encryption is considered the most effective method of securing personal and corporate information according to corporate and government security regulators. In fact, many data protection laws specifically list encryption as a “safe harbor” exception to notification rules, and some laws explicitly require the use of encryption.

Keeping You In Compliance

All CPAs and accountants must comply with the privacy laws governing the safe storage of personal and corporate financial information. A single violation of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act caries a fine up to $100,000. So your firm is in jepordy if it isn’t protected.

This new 100% file encryption gives you an extremely high level of protection and virtually eliminates the legal liability associated with data breaches. In fact, your Client Portal has very detailed Audit Trails that help prove that information hasn’t been leaked.

At CPASiteSolutions, we go overboard on security. Other Client Portal vendors provide 5 or 6 layers of security. We don’t stop there. We provide a full 14 layers of security to give you the most protection available.

You don’t need to do anything to get this new level of protection as long as you are using our “Vault” Secure File Exchange system.

If you’re using one of our older Secure File Exchange systems we strongly encourage you to upgrade now. There is no additional cost to upgrade. Yes, the upgrade is completely Free. So please call or email us and we’ll get you setup on our extremely secure “Vault” File Exchange System.

Your Firm and Client Portal has been upgraded this month. This completely new release is even easier to use and comes with the most advanced security features installed.

Sarbanes-Oxley and Gramm-Leach-Bliley Compliance

The laws governing websites for CPAs, accountants , and other financial services fall under unique privacy laws that other website owners don’t need to worry about. If you are transferring sensitive files into and out of a directory on your website, and you fall under the definition of a “financial service” (this includes, among other things, anyone who prepares taxes) you need to pay very special attention to online security.

If you don’t take good care of your client’s financial data online, you could be fined up to $100,000 for each violation of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. At that rate, it doesn’t take many violations to completely wipe you out.

At CPASiteSolutions are well aware of the responsibility you have to your clients, which is why our File Exchange System is continually updated. This is, after all, our responsibility to you. As a provider of websites to CPA and Accounting firms it is our job to keep you in compliance with the law, just as it is your job as an accountant to do the same for your clients.

That’s why we just spent more than $37,000 to develop a new portal system to protect you.

What is a Firm Portal?
The firm portal is your access to the secured area of your website. As a firm user you can not only share sensitive accounting documents safely and securely with your clients, you can also modify your website , transfer files into your root directory via FTP, and access your Email Marketing System .

The new portal was designed by a team of high level programmers and security experts. They went through every possible security threat and locked them all down so you can sleep comfortably at night.

In order to be compliant with the Sarbanes-Oxley and Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act you need to have an audit trail of every user that accesses sensitive data. You now have a complete log of every access to the portal to keep you in compliance.

The Activity Log is both searchable and downloadable. For example… you can quickly search the log to see the last time one of your clients logged into the Vault File Exchange System. And you also have the ability to export a list of every access into Excel. You may never need to use the Activity Log, but it’s nice to know that it’s there keeping you in compliance.

Password Policies

All of the best security in the world becomes useless if you use weak passwords. It’s your responsibility to ensure the security and confidentiality of your client’s information. So if you allow your firm members or clients to access sensitive financial information with weak (easily cracked) passwords, you are in violation of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.

That’s why we’ve implemented new password policies. You can choose how loose or tight you want your policy to be.

Here are the 3 levels…

Low : Average password strength (6 or more characters) required for all Firm and Client users.

Medium (Default): Strong passwords (8 or more characters with a symbol or digit) required for all Firm Users. But “Average” passwords required for Client Users (6 or more characters).

High : Strong passwords (8 or more characters with a symbol or digit) required for all Firm and Client Users.

The new password policy will be enforced the next time a user signs in. If the user’s password does not currently meet the policy, the user will be asked to change their password (to the stronger version) before logging in.

Firewall Friendly

The previous portal used “non-standard” high ports to enforce Secure Socket Layer (SSL) Security. The new portal uses standard ports for SSL security so you and your clients will not have firewall access issues.

Quickly Import Multiple Clients

The previous portal system required you to manually enter each of your clients. Now, that wasn’t too terrible if you only had to enter a few clients. But if you have hundreds of clients the process was mind-numbing and a waist of valuable time.

That’s why we built a client import system into the new portal. Now it only takes a few seconds to enter hundreds of clients.

Easy-To-Use Intuitive Design

The new portal interface uses simple Control Panel Icons instead of a complex menu system. So adding new users, changing access rights, or simply logging into an application is intuitive and easy.

I hope you like this new secure firm and client portal system we designed for you. If you have any suggestions, please leave a comment on this blog or call us.