Top 5 Cybersecurity Problems
for Financial Firms

You’ve heard it from peers, conferences, and your professional orgs:
You need a Written Information Security Program (WISP) to satisfy the Safeguards Rule and protect client data.

But questions remain:

• What goes in it?

• Who maintains it?

• How do we prove staff actually read and follow it?

How Cloudience Helps:

• WISP templates tailored to accounting & tax firms

• A WISP & training portal where staff can log in, read policies, and attest

• Automated tracking of who signed what and when

• Ongoing updates as regulations and threats evolve

The updated FTC Safeguards Rule requires covered financial institutions—which can include tax preparers and firms handling consumer financial data—to implement a defined set of safeguards: risk assessments, access controls, encryption, monitoring, testing, incident response, and more.

For many firms, the reaction is the same:

“We know ‘we’re supposed to do something’… but what exactly?”

How Cloudience Helps:

• Guided Safeguards Rule / GLBA compliance program

• A NIST Cybersecurity Framework crosswalk so you can see which controls are in place and which are missing

• Advanced endpoint protection with 24/7 monitoring under CloudCare

• CloudCare+ with human-led 24/7 threat hunting

• Patch management, backups, and logging to help tick the regulatory checkboxes—and meaningfully improve security

Every day, your firm:

• Logs into multiple client QuickBooks, Xero, and payroll environments

• Handles PII, tax records, banking details, payroll, and HR information

• Shares documents over email, Slack, and cloud storage

Remote and hybrid work make this even more complex. Many accounting firms adopted DIY remote setups without robust security controls, leaving home networks and personal devices as weak points.

How Cloudience Helps:

• Security awareness training tuned to accounting-specific attack patterns (invoice fraud, payroll change fraud, portal abuse)

• Ongoing micro-trainings on emerging threats (including AI-driven attacks)

• Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) to secure access to sensitive systems from anywhere

• Identity management and better onboarding/offboarding so old accounts don’t linger

• Guidance on proper data management: where client data lives, how it’s shared, and how it’s backed up

Every day, your firm:

• Logs into multiple client QuickBooks, Xero, and payroll environments

• Handles PII, tax records, banking details, payroll, and HR information

• Shares documents over email, Slack, and cloud storage

Attackers now use AI to:

• Write flawless phishing emails

• Mimic your tone, your clients’ language, even your firm’s branding

• Power realistic voice scams (“vishing”) pretending to be banks, clients, or internal leaders

Reports show social engineering attacks, including phishing and pretexting, continue to rise and remain a leading cause of breaches.

How Cloudience Helps:

• Advanced cloud email security with impersonation protection

• Phishing simulations so your team can safely practice spotting modern attacks

• Next-level, cinematic and gamified security awareness training—actually engaging, not death-by-PowerPoint

• Continuous improvement based on live threat patterns we see in the wild

Most firm owners and partners will say:

• “We’re not cybersecurity people.”

• “We don’t know what we don’t know.”

• “We’re not sure if our MSP really understands accounting-specific risk.”

At the same time, the rise of remote work and cloud tools has dramatically increased the attack surface and complexity for small and mid-sized businesses.

How Cloudience Helps:

• We work primarily with accounting, tax, and finance-adjacent firms

• We support both Google Workspace and Microsoft 365

• We document your approval structures, escalation paths, and recurring fixes

• Our team actually knows your people by name, so they’re less likely to fall for fake “IT” calls or scams

• We give you clear roadmaps, not just tickets