Security Tips for QuickBooks Users

Either we use QuickBooks online, offline or hosted, data security has always been concern. People usually follow the conventional style of security steps to protect the data from any possible threats but sometimes it doesn't become enough. So, we must have to think about taking all major steps which reduce those threats so that we are always confident about our data security. There can be variety of security risks depending upon the kind of QuickBooks usage we have available with us. The risks can be of stolen passwords, missing cheque reports to even company file missing, but all data are quite important and we need to protect our data at any cost. Here below, I would explain in brief about some major risks and their remedy as per usage. 1- QuickBooks Offline: ->Audit Trail Report - The audit trail report is probably one of the lesser known/used reports in the QuickBooks inte al but is very important for proper monitoring control. The audit trail report lists any accounting activities during the selected date range for which any additions, deletions or changes have been made. This report when monitored by management or the auditor can find any events where transactions have been posted and deleted or modified overcoming one of the most significant risks in using QuickBooks. ->Vendor List Review - The Vendor list gives information about the people or companies, from whom you buy materials and services, can be banks and tax agencies. Management should analyze this list on a monthly basis to make sure that fictitious vendors have not been added. ->User Access Privileges - You just can’t leave user list unmonitored, if it goes, you are gone. Many organizations believe they need a multi-user license to take advantage of the user access privileges functions. But user access privileges can be established in a single user environment allowing multiple users controlled access to QuickBooks so long as only one user is accessing the file at a time. And we should try to avoid common use ames and passwords; this will lead to data misinterpretation by unknown person. 2- QuickBooks Online: ->Stolen Passwords - Using QuickBooks is very convenient but as everything lies on the remote server, once the passwords are stolen, all gone. To avoid this, we must use QuickBooks online from safer computers and devices. We must choose complex passwords to save yourself from any upcoming crisis. -> Virus Attacks - We must make sure that the devices are well firewall, Anti-virus and Anti-Spyware protected. This will save us from any kind of attacks or data theft. 3- Hosted QuickBooks: -> Data Loss: In hosted QuickBooks, we keep all our data on hosted server and if we lose the server, we lose everything. To avoid this, we must take regular backups at our local place or a place different from hosting provider. We must choose a provider having strong existence record. -> Information Theft: We should always keep our QuickBooks company file password protected so that the important information's in QuickBooks is not compromised. For some reasons, if we need to share the password with hosting provider, we must change it once their purpose is completed. -> Virus Attacks: We must make sure that the server we have been using is having advance security practices. It will help to avoid all kinds of data risks at remote QuickBooks Hosting server. So, depending upon the method of QuickBooks usage, we have respective security challenges to address those conce s. We must carry out latest security practices while using QuickBooks. We also should be very aggressive towards gathering information about latest risks and their remedies.