Accounting firms are gradually moving towards cloud migration. Technological advancements have made it easier to store data in the cloud. Moreover, it’s more sustainable and relatively cheaper to keep data in the cloud than other storage options.
However, cloud migration is an essential yet complex process. You might experience some mishaps along the way if you don’t properly plan for the cloud migration, leading to significant impacts on your enterprise. Typically, accounting firms have a lot of critical data, which should be kept secure before commencing the migration.
Ensuring the safety of data during cloud migration guarantees that your data would remain uncompromised, accessible, and flexible.
Here’s how you can achieve this.
1. Conduct an Inventory of Existing Systems
Assessing your existing IT infrastructure and assets is the first step in ensuring a successful cloud migration. Therefore, it’s crucial to have complete visibility and understanding of your current data—their sensitivity, risk profile, and size.
Accounting firms keep critical information, such as cash flow and other financial-related documents. Creating an accurate and complete inventory of such makes it easier for you to develop appropriate strategies for cloud migration. Moreover, it helps you to prioritize the data requiring more security and protection during the migration, and which applications you can seamlessly integrate with the cloud technology.
2. Research
Like any other investment, cloud migration requires you to invest your time and money in the process. Therefore, it’s crucial to perform your due diligence to ensure that your money and time won’t be wasted. Searching for the best cloud services can help you figure out the most appropriate one for your cloud migration requirements.
For instance, if you’re looking for Dallas based IT support services or those within your firm’s area of operation, you can check the compliance standards for the industry and ensure that your prospective provider adheres to such. Sufficient research makes you more confident and ready for your cloud migration.
3. Develop a Solid Plan
Your plan should include qualifying the apps and data to move, the cloud-based system to use, the timeline, who to handle the process, and how to best carry out the process. Creating a plan ensures that the cloud migration process is controlled and streamlined. By doing so, you’d know the necessary steps and in which order they should be taken, making it easier to backtrack and fix the errors that might occur during the cloud migration.
Developing a plan also helps you adjust the workflow of anyone affected by the migration and accommodate any possible downtime during the process.
4. Encrypt Sensitive Information
Data encryption is an excellent way of protecting your business from cyberattacks. Data in transit can be vulnerable to these attacks due to exposure to the Internet. Therefore, it’s critical to encrypt sensitive data during cloud migration. Most service providers have encryption options to protect your data once they upload them to their systems. However, you can also use network security controls and encrypted transport network protocols, like hypertext transfer protocol secure (HTTPS), to safeguard your data.
To ensure maximum data security, encrypting data while still on the device before it leaves your facility would be crucial.
5. Manage Access Control and Deduplication
Most firms manage their data by giving team members minimal privileges. Therefore, end-users only have access to the specific data they need to do their job. Due to the sensitivity of data in transit, granting data access only to authorized personnel on an as-needed basis would be crucial. Two-factor authentication would serve to enhance data security.
Deduping or deduplication refers to shrinking the data volume before cloud migration. This helps lessen data migration costs and enhances data security.
6. Add Layers of Protection
Data that aren’t in contact with Internet are prone to breaches. Your data can still be at risk despite the security measures your cloud service provider puts in place. Adding another layer of protection like a two-step verification process can let you use multiple devices to authenticate each login into the system. It can also notify you of any logins through an SMS or email. This method enables you to keep track of and monitor whoever accesses your applications and data. You can also add protection to your data by fortifying firewalls, installing VPNs, and securing wireless connections.
Why Accounting Firms Should Pursue Cloud Migration – Summary
With advancements in the field of technology, more and more organizations are moving towards cloud-based storage. Cloud storage can enable your business to operate more smoothly and flexibly. It’s important to note that the type of cloud migration you choose, the steps you take during the migration process, and the provider you work with will all determine the security of your data. Hopefully, the tips presented above can help you successfully conduct a cloud migration for your accounting firm, ensuring that not a single piece of data will be breached or stolen.
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