Are Your Finance Systems Secure?

Effective financial management processes will improve your business’s long term growth by optimizing how records are taken and payments are made etc. It also minimizes manual entries and ensures tax compliance by following best practices.

Good Financial Management System

Financial management systems represent all the software and processes that coordinate the flow of financial data in the workplace. When well done, all finance-related software are properly integrated into each other to boost productivity.

A good and effective financial management system keeps all expenses automatically amortized over the length of a project’s lifespan. This allows the finance department to schedule not only a payment structure, but plan towards future investments. It also makes it easy to monitor and manage different bank accounts and the funds passing through them. With increased automation and tech adoption, errors are minimized. The finance team is also more able to do an accurate audit trail, track liabilities, coordinate income and balance sheets, create a generally transparent payables and receivables schedule and make better financial decisions for the future.

How to Secure Your Finance Systems

The benefits of a secure finance system is overwhelmingly positive. Depending on how many different applications you use in your organisation, there are many ways of ensuring your finance systems are secure. Here are three things you should consider.

Security is The Foundation

You can achieve a secured financial system if you treat security as the basis upon which your IT architecture is founded. Security must not be just an added layer that can be easily switched on and off. Rather, every finance system that is rolled out or integrated into the entire network must satisfy basic security conditions that protect business financial data.

Start by instituting double-factor authentication, data encryption, and installing SSL encryption on all your financial systems. Also ensure that you employ the right finance personnel and train them regularly. Towards this end, it is important to assign responsibilities within your team. You should define your security management even if your team is full of hardcore finance experts. An entire hierarchy has to be established to know who is responsible for what and what should be done at any time in the normal functioning of the organisation. Building a security-conscious workforce is vital, and should be a part of your recruitment strategy.

Protect Your data

Data is the new currency, and securing it should be number one on your agenda. Whether it’s data on your own activities or those of your clients, ensuring finance data don’t get into the wrong hands is key to the success of your business.

To achieve this, you should install and configure the right antivirus and malware protection software to fend of malicious actors. At the same time, you should incorporate a working disaster recovery plan to ensure business continuity even when disaster strikes.

Also, ensure you use strong passwords on all sensitive data. Bank records and invoices should be protected with passwords that are changed regularly. Workers should have access to only the data they need to function optimally in the office. Insider threats are real, and so take steps to ensure that finance data are properly secured. Generally, all computers on your network need to be secured and protected with the right security protocols.

Integrate With Cloud Computing or Storage

What good is a financial system whose data is inaccessible when needed most? What happens when you have to draw on key financial data in the middle of a client presentation away from your premises? Cloud computing and storage is gaining prominence, and it is not just because of the convenience of accessing information 24/7. Rather, cloud computing allows you to run your financial and other ERP systems instantly from anywhere in the world.

More importantly, cloud-based storage ensures a world-class level of security for the servers holding your finance data. You can leverage the expertise and resources of a well-protected and well-oiled IT infrastructure without spending the money it takes to construct one. With regular backups, your finance software and data are always secure.

Check All Vendors

Vulnerabilities can develop not only in the core software that runs your finance systems, but in the third party vendors that help integrate different financial systems together. Integrations help create a viable working ‘whole’, but this should not come at the expense of security.

Make sure you are implementing all the patches that developers are issuing in order to keep your entire finance software secure. Better still, set all updates to run automatically, so that your business and finance systems are updated as soon as they are available. You should also integrate only what you need to operate optimally.

Conclusions

A secure finance system is easy to implement if the people in the work environment understand the importance of security. Besides implementing all the security updates on all your finance software, help your staff understand the need to be security conscious. Also, provide access on a need-to basis while protecting all endpoints on your network.