IT Support by Industry
IT Support for Accounting Firms
You hold the financial records, tax credentials and identity documents of every client on your books. That makes a small practice a very attractive target — and makes the fortnight you cannot afford downtime entirely predictable.
An attacker who compromises one business gets one business. An attacker who compromises their accountant gets all of them: bank details, IRD access, identity documents collected for AML purposes, and a mailbox full of relationships that trust incoming email from your address.
That last point is the one firms underestimate. A compromised mailbox at an accounting practice is used to send convincing invoices and payment-detail changes to clients, from a genuine address, referencing real work. The damage lands on your clients and the reputational cost lands on you.
Add statutory deadlines to that and availability stops being a convenience issue. An outage in the week before a filing deadline is a different category of problem from an outage in December.
What matters here
How we help accounting firms
Cloud ledgers moved the risk, they did not remove it
Xero, MYOB and the rest took the server out of the cupboard, which was a genuine improvement. What they did not do is remove the risk — they concentrated it into a login. Whoever controls the email address controls the password reset, which controls the ledger. So the work sits around identity: multi-factor authentication everywhere, no shared logins to client files, proper offboarding, and monitoring of Microsoft 365 sign-ins so a compromised account is caught early rather than when a client rings about a strange invoice.
Deadlines make availability a security issue
Most industries have busy periods. Yours has statutory ones. In practice that means scheduling disruptive work around your calendar rather than ours, being more conservative with changes as deadlines approach, and knowing which systems must not be touched in a given fortnight. If you tell us the two weeks nothing may change, nothing changes.
AML/CFT records you must keep are records you must protect
Practices captured by the AML/CFT Act have to collect and retain customer due diligence records, including identity documents. That obligation creates a store of exactly the material identity thieves want, held for years. We make sure it sits somewhere with proper access control, encryption and a retention period you have actually decided on — not a shared folder the whole office can browse — and that you could demonstrate who had access if asked.
Protecting tax agent access
myIR and IRD gateway access is high value and deserves the strongest authentication available, named individual accounts rather than a shared login, and prompt removal when staff leave. The MDR service also watches for the sign-in patterns that indicate a credential is being used by someone else.
In practice
What we put in place for a practice
- 24/7 monitored detection and response across devices, identity and Microsoft 365, backed by Bitdefender's SOC
- Multi-factor authentication on email, cloud ledgers and myIR access
- Named accounts rather than shared logins, removed promptly when someone leaves
- Access-controlled, encrypted storage for AML identity documents, with a real retention period
- Backup of local files, email and practice management, tested by restoring
- A change calendar that respects your filing deadlines
Questions
Common questions from accounting firms
Is Xero secure enough on its own?
Can you help protect myIR and IRD gateway access?
How should we store client identity documents for AML?
What happens if a staff member's email is compromised?
Do you work around our busy season?
We are three people and a bookkeeper. Is this proportionate?
What our clients say
Reviewed by the businesses we look after
Ash, Ronesh and the rest of the team have been looking after my company's IT requirements for nearly 10 years now. They're great at interpreting our needs and coming up with cost-effective solutions and are excellent to deal with.
Great work! Timely, friendly, and always highly professional. Ash and the Anvil team have been supporting and serving our business for many years now and continue to provide excellent service all round.
We have been working with Anvil for several years now. They are responsive, efficient, knowledgeable, and are constantly looking to improve themselves and their services. We've gone through a couple of major projects together and they went smoothly without a hitch!
I absolutely recommend Anvil Solutions. I have been thrilled with the practical changes and safety measures Anvil have added to my business. Much loved supplier!
Outstanding services from this company — no matter who you select. These guys jump to at very short notice, are unflappable and can handle just about any IT challenge (and we have sprung a few on them!)
Ashley is a very personable, dedicated and professional — it has been a pleasure working with him sorting out our AV requirements and getting it deployed across our 9 offices.
Ash and his team at Anvil are by far the best IT company we have come across over the years. Great people to work with, they are thorough in getting the best solution to suit your business and quick to take care of things.
Super impressed with the knowledgeable and immediate outcome-led service!
We have been using Anvil Solutions for a few years now and their customer service, level of understanding of our business and product knowledge is excellent. Ash is always one step ahead of us when it comes to new projects.
Ash and his team are always professional and helpful. They find solutions to problems, and give you options where they can. They provide a great service and are on hand to give advice whenever it's needed.
Anvil Solutions have provided us with a terrific IT solutions service, and I have total confidence in them. The staff are friendly, helpful and experts in their fields. I highly recommend them. Thanks Anvil.
We have utilised the services of Anvil Solutions to manage our IT needs — MS365 accounts, hardware, network, anti-virus, etc. They provide a timely and efficient response to acute situations, regularly send health check reports and supply advice for actions we may need to take to keep our system up to date and secure.
The team at Anvil Solutions are always responsive to my needs as a small business owner and I don't think I could run my business without them. Vinodh is really approachable and doesn't mind when I have to ask silly tech questions!
I have used Anvil for 7 years now and cannot rate them highly enough. They are attentive, reliable, courteous, on time, excellent at what they do and cost effective. They are the only IT guys I would consider using.
Read our authenticated ratings for Anvil Solutions on NoCowboys.
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