Cloud-based computing provides more security than their own company data centers do, according to 75 percent of information technology professionals responding to the recently released Oracle and KPMG Cloud Theft report. The survey also found businesses are using an almost bewildering number of products to provide security.

 Forty percent of the 750 respondents reported the cloud is much more secure than their own data centers, double the percentage in 2018. Thirty-five percent rated the cloud as more secure. Fourteen percent believe the cloud is not as protected with 12 percent saying it is less secure; 2 percent much less secure.

Twelve percent reported the security levels are the same.

 The survey found widespread adoption of cloud technology with 76 percent utilizing infrastructure-as-a-service today; while 50 percent expect to move all data to the cloud in the next two years. Eighty percent are concerned their cloud service providers will become competitors in core markets. 

Multiple security products are used by most organizations, the survey: Sixty percent responded that they have more than 76 products. Seventy-eight percent employ more than 50 cybersecurity product while; 37 percent has more than 100.

As businesses turn to Zoom for videoconferencing, a new generation of security threats has emerged. Among them is ZoomBombing in which intruders invade sessions and disrupt them.

Among the disruptions are the sharing of porn videos by the unwelcome guests. One of the important ways to prevent problems is by use of passwords to allow participants into session.

Zoom itself advises the use of the Waiting Room feature via which a meeting host can control when participants join a meeting. That way the host can screen out participants not on the Zoom account or not signed in.

The company also says hosts should not give up control of the screen. They can utilize Advanced Screen Sharing choosing “Only Host” under “Who can share?”, along with locking Screen Share by default for all meetings under web settings.

Participants can also be managed by allowing only signed-in users to join while meetings can be locked to prevent anyone from joining, including those with a meeting ID and password, from joining after the meeting has started. Two-factor authentication can also be required.

Other controls that can help are these:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Disable “Allow Removed Participants to Rejoin” to keep miscreants from returning.                                                                                                                                                                                          Remove Unwanted or Disruptive Participants by clicking Remove under the Participants menu.                                                                                                                                                                       Disable Video                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Mute Participants                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Turn off file transfer to prevent unwanted content such as pictures or memes.                                                                                                                                                                                                           Turn off Annotation                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Disable Private Chat.

In addition, software security company Norton has another series of recommendations for videoconferencing more securely. These start with following a company’s policy, including making sure a device is secure if the user is bringing their own device.  Companies should provide training, ensure endpoints and networks are secure and capable of handling teleworkers’ devices and communication.

Norton says users must establish home network security be configuring firewalls and making sure routers are secure. They should also stay up-to-date with security patches. A secure-wi-fi with strong encryption should be used.

Norton also recommends participants change their video backgrounds so other members of video calls cannot see into their homes and to remember to turn off the webcast at the end of the call or at least cover it with something opaque, such as tape, paper or a sliding webcam cover.

A Virtual Private Network  also provides greater security because it masks IP addresses, location, and search history to prevent things like location tracking.

Cloud solutions have revolutionized the accounting industry in recent years. While the cloud may seem like a simple concept at first glance, few people fully understand the depth and range of the cloud options that are available today.

All cloud technologies serve the same basic function at their core: the delivery of computing resources over the internet. Beyond that, however, there are vast differences in today’s cloud offerings. Contrary to what many users envision, cloud computing is not simply one amorphous network where all users access all the data they need. Instead, there are a number of different kinds of cloud computing available, including public clouds, private clouds, community clouds, hybrid clouds and SaaS cloud solutions.

While it has been predicted that 83% of enterprise workloads will be in the cloud by 2020, how can you know which cloud solution is right for your firm? The answer lies in understanding the differences between the various cloud options in the industry and the specific business needs they’re best suited to meet.

Public Clouds                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  A public cloud is what many people think of when they envision the cloud. It’s a basic cloud computing model through which a cloud service provider offers resources like storage and applications to the public at large via the internet. Typically, the infrastructure of a public cloud is shared by many users from a large number of different firms or companies, each of which purchases a cloud subscription on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Because public clouds usually involve huge servers in numerous locations around the world, they offer users maximum scalability to meet their needs as companies grow or shrink. Their sheer size also means they provide high levels of flexibility and reliability, and because the user pays only for the resources actually employed and doesn’t need to hire IT staff, they’re typically a highly cost-effective cloud option.

The biggest drawback of public clouds is their inability to offer advanced security and privacy measures. Because many users are sharing a single infrastructure, public clouds are often unable to meet regulatory requirements. Public clouds are best suited for large data storage and processing, access through web browsers or for companies that have minimal security concerns.

Private Clouds                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Unlike public clouds, private clouds run on proprietary infrastructure that’s provisioned for exclusive use by a single organization. Usually, a firm will deploy its own platforms, software and applications and partner with a vendor that specializes in creating and managing private cloud environments or pay for cloud service on a fee-per-unit-time model. 

Private clouds tend to be very scalable to the user’s needs and shift the IT burden from the client to the private cloud vendor. One of their main advantages over public clouds is enhanced security and privacy. Because the cloud infrastructure is tailored to a single client, it usually sits behind a dedicated firewall and is accessed over an encrypted connection with multifactor authentication. The enhanced security and data encryption measures make compliance with privacy and security regulations possible.

Private clouds tend to be more expensive than public clouds and may take longer to set up. In addition, companies typically require internal IT staff to oversee deployment and maintenance, or they rely on their private cloud vendor which supplies management and maintenance of the private cloud.

Community Clouds                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Community clouds are a recent development and essentially a variation on private clouds that are shared by a specific, discrete business community. While multiple businesses share the infrastructure, each has its own private cloud space designed to meet the data privacy, security and compliance needs of the specific community the cloud is serving.

Community clouds are most popular among companies in industries that are subject to strict regulatory compliance requirements. They’re also beneficial for users working on joint projects within a defined business community that involve the sharing of applications and software specific to that community.

Hybrid Clouds                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Hybrid clouds are exactly what they sound like: a mix of private and public cloud infrastructure. They offer the best of both worlds, because sensitive data resides in the private cloud where the user can maintain high privacy and security standards, while work of a nonsensitive nature can be handled in the public cloud, which offers increased scalability and data storage at a lower cost. Hybrid clouds are ideal for firms that have a mix of sensitive operations and nonsensitive projects involving large amounts of data that are better stored in a public cloud infrastructure.

SaaS Cloud Solutions                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Software as a service is one of the newest subsets of cloud computing now being offered, and it’s a market that’s quickly growing. SaaS cloud services deliver software directly to the consumer over a cloud platform that’s entirely hosted and managed by a third-party vendor. In most instances, SaaS cloud solutions require no hardware installations or purchases, making it easy for users to get started even if they’ve not previously made the move to the cloud.

SaaS cloud solutions are highly cost-effective because, in addition to the user not having to purchase hardware, there’s no need to hire IT staff to manage a network of software, servers, firewalls, routers or anything else. All software support is provided by the vendor as part of the SaaS offering, meaning that applications are constantly maintained and updated with no effort from the user.

A SaaS subscription price often includes the ongoing technical support and program maintenance, but the user does not actually own any of the software to which it is subscribing. While SaaS solutions tend to be highly scalable and secure, they may be more limited than private clouds when it comes to customization and functionality. SaaS solutions may be ideal for firms that want a simple, seamless cloud computing experience with little hands-on maintenance responsibility.

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to choosing the right cloud technology. With the options available today, however, there is a right cloud solution for every firm. Determining what you need in terms of security, scalability, IT support and cost will help you choose the cloud solution that best benefits your individual firm.

Emburse has been formed by six companies that market expense and AP software. The companies that have combined are Abacus, Captio, Certify, Chrome River, Nexonia and Tallie, according to an announcement this month.

Emburse, which has 750 employees and 14,000 customers, is led by CEO Eric Friedrichsen, previously global head, commercial, SMB, and growth markets for Marketo from January 2019 through this month .The aggregation of vendors is designed to challenge SAP Concur. 

In a prepared statement, Friedrichsen said the six participants will be able to accelerate development through technology sharing while maintaining their individual software packages.

Before working at SAP Concur,  Friedrichsen was with SAP Concur from April 2008 through December 2016. From January 2017 through January 2019, he was with SAP as SVP and GM for mid-market and ecosystems, North America

 Where are we going in the mid-market? Or in general? The economy started out the year with record employment and has moved to record unemployment with the effects of shutdowns of the Covid-19 virus.  For resellers this year, how they are doing depends on where they are located and in what markets they are involved. Bob Scott’s Top 100 VARs for 2020 examines the issues in an era of extreme uncertainty and names 100 firms who are the big players in this market.

For resellers, the issue now is meeting user needs and making money, not worrying about whether software is in the cloud. Certainly, there are many thousands of on-premise mid-market accounting systems in use and a decent number are being sold. But the action is in the cloud and it is a matter of features, which is what users really care about. The issue is which product is better at handling nonprofits, which is good for businesses with inventory, which best suits professional services and which delve into highly specialized markets. In the fact, the thought did not even occur this year to count how many of the Top 100 2019 VARs carry cloud products. It was just assumed they all do. That is why this year’s theme is “The Cloud Rules”  If you are not in the cloud game, you are not really in the game.

2018 Report: Getting a Handle on the Cloud

Buyers and sellers are talking less and less about cloud software. The discussions increasingly center around how the software, which happens to be cloud based, helps companies solve business problems, not on the technology used. Read more how this is happening.

Sponsored by:

Report: Payroll Gets Easier: Running payroll, whether for a company to pay its own employees or to pay clients’ employees, has rarely been easy. But it is necessary, which is why the question of whether tax and accounting firms should offer services as a line of business has had some firms moving into the business and others moving out. Read more and find out where your firm falls.

Sponsored By:

Jeff Siegel is the owner of Siegel Solutions, an 11-person firm that provides outsourced bookkeeping solutions usingJeff Siegel is the owner of Siegel Solutions, an 11-person firm that provides outsourced bookkeeping solutions usingQuickBooks to over 300 clients. Jeff knows what it takes to grow a business: efficiency of scale, real-time insights thatbuild strong customer relationships, and a secure data environment. He gets all three from Right Networks.

In this ebook, we’ll examine:In this ebook, we’ll examine:

• Why DIY (Do-It-Yourself) accounting systems created forsmall businesses cause undue pain for both small businessowners and for accountants
• How the right cloud-based professional accounting systemcan not only eliminate that pain, but also open up newopportunities for accountants to better serve their clients

Steven Brewer, CPA is the President of Steven Brewer and Company, CPAs, located in Salem, IN. He talked to AccountantsWorld about how he’s grown his accounting practice without needing to increase his number of clients – and how those improvements have eased his tax season crunch.

BooXkeeping: How White Label Bookkeeping Services Provide Scalability to Your Firm When it comes to running a business the main thing that every business owner wants to do is sell their products or services, create brand awareness and generate profits that they can enjoy later in life. The last thing a business owner wants to do is to worry about bookkeeping, taxes, and the rest of time consuming accounting tasks needed to run a successful business, with limited resources and time, often the bookkeeping ends up being the last on the list of things that need to be completed.

There is a backlog of 4.7 million paper income tax  returns, according to this year’s report from the National Taxpayer Advocate. In addition about ten million pieces of mailed tax returns and correspondence is sitting in Internal Revenue Service trailers.

Those are some of the impacts of the shutdown of IRS service in the effort to halt the spread of the Covid-19 virus.  The IRS halted paper processing on May 16 and other service cuts means it  has sent “only a very limited volume of outgoing taxpayer correspondence.”

That includes more than million notices that could not be mailed due to closure of notice production centers between April 8 and May 31. The IRS has started mailing notices, but many of these will have printed deadlines that have been extended and the agency will insert information explaining the issue.

Those were among  highlights of the report from National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins in delivering her first annual report to Congress. Reduced assistance included a substantial decrease in Volunteer Income Tax Assistance, Tax Counseling for Elderly, and Low Income Taxpayer Clinic services. And with the National Distribution Center shut down, taxpayers cannot acquire pre-printed forms.

Those who submitted paper returns, those entitled to refunds may have a long wait because. the IRS does not know when it can process all returns in its mail facilities. Those with returns mistakenly flagged by processing filters are already experiencing lengthy delays in receiving refunds.

The Advocate’s report noted her unit has found filters, designed to detect identity theft and other types of refund fraud, have a false positive rate of 50 percent. Refund delays are significantly affecting low-income taxpayers who claim earned income tax credit or additional child tax credit.

H&R Block is offering pick service for tax documents in three cities. The service is being offered in Detroit, Mich.,  Pittsburgh, Pa., and San Diego, Calif., to clients who can schedule pickups with Block associates.

The service enables taxpayers to have returns prepared without the need to submit information online or visit a Block office. The company is offering pick-up service through the extended July 15 at no additional cost for those who schedule appointments with participating offices.

Customers may also schedule appointments or use drop-off services at an office, or use virtual and do-it-yourself online software and desktop products.

The delayed tax season and a goodwill write down for its Wave operations led H&R Block to a sharp drop in earnings and revenue for the year ended April 30. Net income dropped 53.9 percent to $369 million for fiscal 2020, compared to $799 million for fiscal 2019.

 Revenue dropped to $2.64 billion for the recently ended year, off 14.7 percent from $3.1 billion. Results took a hit from $106 million impairment charge for its Wave operations.

Wave had 40-percent revenue growth through mid-March, but than went flat in April and May. “We've taken measures to ensure we are limiting operating losses at Wave without sacrificing key investments in the business,” CEO Jeff Jones said during the company’s recent webcast for earnings for fiscal 2020. However, because Block expects Wave to be negatively impacted by the effect of the pandemic, it took the impairment charge.

The major question for Block is how much business will shift from the fourth quarter for a normal tax season into the first quarter ending July 31 with the extension of tax deadlines to July 15.

“While it's natural to expect all volume loss in Q4 of fiscal '20 to shift into the first quarter of fiscal '21, that may not necessarily be the case,” CFO Tony Bowen said during the webcast. Bowen said while more stores are open than usual, the company of is operating with just half its network with a substantial portion of stores open unable to provide face-to-face service to clients. Block does not know how this will impact its ability to retain clients and attract new ones.

It’s clear taxpayers are taking advantage of the extension. “We recently did a survey of about 10,000 consumers who have not yet filed and asked them why, and the answer was “Because we don't have to yet,’” Jones said.  “The second answer was around safety.”

Increases in self-prepared efiles reported by the Internal Revenue Service are artificially high, H&R Block said this month. The company said in reporting its results for the year ended April 30 that the DIY total has been pushed up by those seeking government assistance

Block made its analysis on results reported by the IRS for the season through June 5 which showed assisted efiles were down 15 percent and self-prepared efiles up 7 percent compared to the period ended June 7, 2019.

However, the IRS DIY totals include those who typically do not file but did so this year to receive stimulus payments.

“We believe the vast majority of these returns were completed through the IRS's fillable form site, which is inflating the number of DIY returns in the market,” CEO Jeff Jones said during the webcast for the fiscal 2020 results.

Excluding those returns leaves the DIY efiles down about 4 percent for the same period, Jones reported.

Numbers reported by the IRS for the season through June 12 show slight improvement from the prior week. There were 136,509,000 returns received through that period, a drop of 5.3 percent from 144,125,000 for the season through June 14, 2019. The 63,110,000 efiles submitted by tax professionals for the reported season were 13.8 percent lower than the 73,217,000 a. year earlier. Self-prepared efiles totaled 60,874,000, up 7.7 percent from 56,504,000.

Similarly, refunds remain behind last season’s pace. The IRS issued 92,162,000 through June 12, a decline of 11.8 percent from 104,452,000 year earlier.

The New Jersey Society of CPAs has named Theresa Hinton as operating officer. She replaces Ellen McSherry, who retire on May 31.

 Hinton, who was been with the society since March 2011, served  as its director of member engagement from January 2018.

COO from 1991 until her retirement, McSherry was reported as “instrumental in successfully restructuring the NJCPA’s governance structure and pipeline system for future NJCPA leaders and assisted in creating the Women’s Leadership Forum, an online forum for female NJCPA members to make mean­ingful connections.”

Baker Tilly Virchow Krause has named Christine Dahlhauser as managing partner for the firm’s Wisconsin market. She replaces Kevin Heppner, who is retiring after 33 years with the firm.

Dahlhauser joined Baker Tilly in 1991 and was most recently as manufacturing and distribution team leader in the Wisconsin market. Dahlhauser is responsible for leadership, management and strategic direction for the firm’s Wisconsin market, including client service delivery, fostering team member development

Blucora, which owns the TaxAct an Avantax Wealth Management businesses, has added several new executives and reorganized its business. The changes were announced recently by CEO Christopher Waters, who joined the company in January.

New arrivals include CFO Marc Mehlman, who succeeded interim CFO Mimi Carsley, who remains  as treasurer and SVP of FP&A and procurement.  Mehlman was with Thomson Reuters for nearly 15 years and was VP of the OneSource Tax business from August 2013 through December 2015. He was then managing director for OneSource Global Direct Tax and Statutory Reporting from January 2016 through August 2018 and GM of the company’s Large and Strategic Corporate Customer Segments from September 2018 through last month.

Todd Mackay, who joined the company in March 2014. has become President of Wealth Management. He was most recently of chief business operations and development officer for Blucora and has lead a majority of the operational elements of Avantax. Enrique Vasquez has moved into the new role of Managing Director of Practice Acquisition, after serving as president of wealth management since June.

TaxAct operations will be consolidated under president Curtis Campbell, who also becomes president of software in heading the tax preparation and software division. He will oversee all software development, including Avantax and its Tax Smart Investing platform.

Dilip Nagaraja has becomeachief technology officer, while Blucora plans to announce a  new chief information officer in a few weeks. Chief legal officer Ann Bruder is adding the role of corporate development and administrative officer and will oversee corporate development, corporate risk management, business continuity, security and real estate. Other new executives include Jody Diaz as chief human resources officer and Raj Doshi as chief growth and marketing officer.

Cherry Bekaert has hired Srikant Sastry as managing principal of Advisory Services. Sastry, who will be a member of the firm’s management teams, will lead a practice with a wide range of services.

He will be based in the firm’s Tyson, Va., office.

Sastry spent more than 15 years at Grant Thornton where he was national managing principal, Public Sector, from August 2011 through June 2015 and was national managing principal,  US Advisory Services until August 2019.

Software that enables small businesses to prepare and file sales tax returns will be introduced this year by Avalara. The sales-and-use tax software has announced plans for Avalara Returns for Small Business.

The upcoming  application integrates the feature set of TrustFile Online for a target market of emerging small businesses, which Avalara describes as those employing one to 19 individuals.. The small business returns software will to help those companies automate sales tax preparation and file returns with each state’s website.

Customers will be able to utilize the upcoming product to import transactions from all business systems to compile sales-and-use returns for every state return from a single dashboard. 

Avalara generally recommends Avalara Managed Returns for businesses with more employees.

The company is also introducing enhancements to TrustFile, including an economic nexus tracking map, support for more sales tax forms and a redesigned user interface.

Avalara has introduced Avalara Consumer Use, which is designed to help finance professionals assess their consumer use tax obligations.  The software company said this week the application assists in self-assessment for the entire use tax process, including user-defined rules, tax calculation, review, allocation, accrual, and documentation

Consumer Use can combine data from multiple systems into a single workflow in order to create an automated or semi-automated self-assessment of general ledger expense and use tax liability

The system also identifies overpaid or underpaid taxes on vendor invoices and creates reports for tax liability by jurisdiction. The application can import multiple transaction types, including purchase invoices, inventory usage and fixed asset movements

Consumer tax accruals can be integrated into the filing process in Avalara Returns.

“Social media is not about the exploitation of technology but service to community.” - Simon Mainwaring

Remember, a new leaderboard with updated rankings is generated every two weeks, so keep up the great work on social media and watch your ranking climb! Think you’ve got what it takes to make the Top 100? Join for free today!

“Social media is a much more personal approach to marketing than more traditional tactics like placing an advertisement in a local newspaper, and lends itself to a more human approach. You should always err on the side of professionalism, but sharing a few details about the person, or people, behind your company can give your brand more personality – something that works very successfully in the world of social media.”  

 Here are some highlights from the newest Top 100…