Director of Firm Technology Strategy at Right Networks Roman Kepczyk joins me to discuss the common cybersecurity risks accounting firms face, the dangers of ransomware, and how we can stay secure when working online from home.
Roman Kepczyk is Director of Firm Technology Strategy at Right Networks, where he focuses on helping firms throughout North America use information technology by educating and directing owners towards today’s optimized CPA firm production processes.
Roman is also a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, AICPA Certified Information Technology Professional, and CGMA. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Accounting Automation:
- Common issues firms have with their cybersecurity.
- Cybersecurity risks for accountants.
- Misconceptions firms make around their cybersecurity.
- How to make a secure password.
- The dangers of ransomware and double extortion attacks.
- How to enhance user account security.
- The cyber risks of staff working from home.
- The security of mobile hotspots compared to public wifi networks.
- How to increase the cybersecurity in your accounting firm.
- Red flags for scam emails.
Resources:
Connecting with Roman Kepczyk:
Connecting with the host:
- Sean Boyce on LinkedIn
Quotables:
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- 10:33 – “Today, the only way to protect your firm is to have a unique password and it’s so easy to reset it that we don’t even consider giving passwords out to anybody. That’s just best practice, it’s the only way to honestly protect your credentials.”
- 22:01 – “We honestly recommended that firms verify the setup of their remote workers, use the multi-factor authentication, the manage workstation so that anytime somebody tried to connect to the firm’s network resources or infrastructure it always had the latest version of Windows, it had the latest anti-virus network updates, the VPN was verified and then we also had the multi-factor authentication to make sure it was me on my computer.”
- 24:20 – “Today, pretty much any of the phones whether it’s iPhone or Android phone in the last three or four years has a mobile hotspot capability and that internet connection is the most secure for connecting consistently as opposed to one day being in a clients office and asking their IT person to connect, the next day being in a Starbucks and trying to connect to that wifi and the next day in the office on the wifi. It’s better to have a consistent, standardized way that you’ve been trained on that has been verified by your IT department so you can connect securely all the time.