As Fred tries to enter the building, he is told that there has been a chemical spill in the building. Nobody will be allowed into the building for at least three days and that the electricity is off indefinitely. It is not good.

It becomes apparent to Fred that your firm's telephone system and computer network are down. You are effectively out of business.

As Fred is returning to his car, he notices that the local news crews have just pulled into the parking lot. They are looking for someone to talk to and they want to include Fred in their breaking news report!

What would Fred do? How would your firm respond? Would there be a controlled response or chaos? Would your firm still be in business twelve months after this disaster?

Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings for CPA firms have been slowly emerging from the shadows, and are now front and center for many categories. Although the risks of any solution should be understood and evaluated before deploying any solution in a production environment, many CPA firms do not understand how the points of potential failure associated with SaaS applications are fundamentally different than the typical points of failure associated with traditional, on-premises applications.

As the tax and accounting profession continues its transition to SaaS (Software as a Service), client data continues its move outside the walls of firms and into the “cloud.” All firms should be concerned about data security and compliance regarding their client’s data. Even though the power, convenience, and cost-effectiveness of SaaS applications is widely accepted, professional standards call for healthy skepticism when it comes to safeguarding client data.

This is nothing new as data security has been a long-time concern within the tax and accounting profession—oftentimes slowing the adoption of SaaS among less well-informed firms. The reality is that data security is reliant not only on the application itself, but also on the vendor’s internal controls for handling the data. Fully aware of the profession’s concerns, many leading SaaS vendors have taken significant steps to ensure security of client data and help firms comply with rapidly changing ethical, legislative, and regulatory mandates.

I just boarded a plane and discovered that the airline now offers wireless Internet on certain flights.   What a concept!  Just think, I can check email, browse the Web and access all of my web applications.

The flight attendants announce that wireless internet access will be available once we hit 10,000 feet.  So, of course, the geek side of the brain says, “Fire up the laptop and find out what this service is all about.”  I was the first in my row to click the Configure WiFi button and connect to the wireless network.