Practice Development News

Protecting Your Business Assets

July 2008

In this issue

How Protected Is Your Data?
Disaster Recovery Planning
November is the Perfect Time to Visit Arizona
CPAASP is Awesome

Quick Links

CpaAsp Website

Solutions

Road Map

Financial Professionals

GrooveComputing

Tools to Help You Communicate with Clients and Peers

e-Accounting has developed a series of useful and informational fact sheets to help you educate clients and peers about the benefits of working in a managed IT environment. From online accounting solutions to Virtual Desktops, we have documents that you can use when discussing the different technologies.

See our different fact sheets

View Past Issues of the Practice Development News

View issues of the Practice Development News dating all the way back to 2002. As you can tell, we've been at this for a while.

The Midwest's Premier Event for Finance and Business Professionals

See it, use it, learn about it.

Visit e-Accounting at the Business & Technology Solutions Show on August 19 & 20, 2008 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, IL

Learn More

Environmentally Responsible Computing

Green is Good

How Does It Work?

As part of our sponsorship of the 2008 Accounting Software Consultants Conference, CPAASP e-Accounting presented a webinar where we discussed our solution and demonstrated how it works.

View the recorded webinar, and see for yourself exactly how e-Accounting hosted applications work, and how you can apply them to your business.

View the presentation here

How Protected Is Your Data?

IT professionals only half-jokingly divide computer users into two camps: Those who have lost data, and those who will.

Of 185 business people surveyed last year by online backup provider Carbonite, 69 percent of respondents said they had experienced data loss due to accidental deletion, disk or system failure, viruses, fire, lightning strike or some other disaster.

Security breaches and incidents of data loss have become increasingly more devastating and expensive, not to mention public. If you have any doubt about this, you can simply Google "computer security threats". The results will speak for themselves. The threat is growing and, unfortunately, changing just as rapidly as new technologies to protect us are brought to market.

SYMANTEC chief executive John Thompson says that traditional computer security methods are struggling to protect companies against new and emerging threats. "Companies need to move towards a risk-based preventative security model to block attackers that have moved from targeting a network or device to the information itself. Classifying data will be critical. That way you'll have insight into what sensitive information you have, where it's stored, and how it's being used," he said.

With increasing online capability and more on-demand application services available, businesses may view moving to an online working model as a means to mitigate their security concerns. And a move to a new online working model may be the best time for a business to take inventory of their information assets in order to fully understand the costs of managing it as a whole.

A hosted desktop application model may be the answer for many businesses. While the service is Internet-accessed and offers all the benefits of a Web-based application (such as always-on access, data backups, etc.), all the business applications and their associated data are contained within the single hosting infrastructure, reducing or eliminating the distribution of data on different systems and providing the organization with a simple method of protecting all the business data, whether used by local or remote users.

Virtual Desktops - secure, managed applications and data

Disaster Recovery Planning

Do you have a disaster recovery plan? Are you prepared to smoothly continue business when flood, famine, pestilence or earthquake knock out your infrastructure? If you are, then good for you. Chances are you are one of the few that will come through the next major disaster in your area with your business intact. Truth is most of your competitors are not as well prepared as they should be.

A business can survive many things, even in today's perilous economy, but the one thing no business will survive is a major loss of data. Coupled with interruption of services , employees who cannot get to work, and perhaps even the physical destruction of your workplace, the loss of data can mean the end of all you have spent years building.

A good disaster recovery/business continuity plan need not be complex. A simple phone tree coupled with a clear set of emergency duties for each key employee is a good start. Having a plan to secure data by the simple removal of workstations and critical files (given time) is essential. Assigning someone to update your website can reassure nervous customers, especially if you have arranged alternate phone numbers.

Second only to making certain that your employees are safe and informed is ensuring that your data is recoverable. In a very real sense, your data is your business. InsynQ can help here by providing the hosted environment that keeps your data safely away from your physical location, backed up and secure without the high-cost of alternatives such as a hot-site. With InsynQ's hosted services, your employees can access your business's data from any PC connected to the internet, without having to re-establish access to workstations or your work site, so that instead of losing valuable days in recovery, your business can continue without interruption or inconvenience to your customers.

Michael Ehart
CISSP, MCSA, Certified HIPAA Security
Specialist, CHA, CHP, A+, Net+, Security+
Systems Engineer
InsynQ Inc., Your Internet Utility Company.tm

November is the Perfect Time to Visit Arizona

Arizona is lovely in the fall. It's not too hot, but warm enough to enjoy a full range of outdoor activities. There are some pretty interesting indoor activities there, as well. For example: The Accounting Software Consulting Conference. This is a 3-day event plus a one day (optional) Pre-Conference "In-Depth Technical Sessions" day. The conference will empower accountants, consultants, and power users with the knowledge and essential tools necessary to be successful in the accounting software consulting market.

InsynQ e-Accounting (www.CpaAsp.com) has been a proud sponsor of this event for several years. Visit our booth at the conference and see for yourself how our online solutions can help you work closer with clients, reduce the headaches of technology management, and get more out of each and every client engagement. e-Accounting's philosophy is to work smarter, not harder.

So come to Arizona in November, and see how easy it can be to put on your comfy slippers, kick your feet up, and work when and where it's right for you. Besides, unless you live in Arizona, you'll probably want those warm bunnies when you get home.

Get Conference Information

CPAASP is Awesome

Here's what The Sleeter Group has to say about CPAASP e-Accounting Solutions:

"InsynQ paved the road to adoption of online accounting applications by being one of the first Application Service Providers (ASPs). The company has been offering hosted accounting and business applications for over 10 years... InsynQ offers application hosting for all QuickBooks versions, including Pro, Premier and Enterprise edition. In addition, InsynQ is also licensed to host Microsoft products, ACT! from Sage, and a number of other applications. Features of the Virtual Desktop service include the ability to have a variety of applications hosted, providing the integration and functionality you get when running those applications in a native Windows environment.

Accountants, bookkeepers and their clients are all able to work online simultaneously, whether they run Windows, Linux or Mac OS. InsynQ offers a broad range of hosting services for accounting, productivity, time & billing, tax preparation, messaging, document management, and other line-of-business and specialty applications. Optional services include e-mail filtering and virus scanning, data encryption solutions, and Internet-based file sharing and backup."

Read the 2008 Awesome Winner Descriptions Here

practice development news | 2008