Keep Client Documents Secure

During tax season, practitioners exchange documents with clients every day. These documents contain a treasure trove for identity thieves, so it is vital that practitioners help to make these exchanges secure.

Email attachments that are not encrypted with a password are extremely vulnerable to interception by identity thieves.  Practitioners must remind clients not to send sensitive information through such emails.

Many clients are not familiar with the process of adding passwords to a pdf file. Therefore, practitioners can provide a secure portal to allow clients to upload and send scans or pictures of sensitive tax information and documents. The secure portal uses encryption to protect files that are uploaded to and downloaded from it.

Such portals also allow practitioners to easily and securely send information, pdfs of tax returns and related items to clients.

Secure portals are often available as part of the purchase of annual tax software.  For example, Intuit offers a secure portal as part of the purchase of the ProSeries and Lacerte packages.

If a practitioner does not have a secure portal available as part of the purchase of tax software, there are stand-alone secure portal providers, such as CCH Axcess Portal and Secure File Pro.