We've heard a lot lately about the risks associated with using artificial intelligence models in business and professional work, but what about the risks of not using AI?
Accounting firms are facing new challenges as the industry rapidly changes. Companies are considering implementing AI technology to improve efficiency, accuracy, and production capacity. But that doesn't mean they don't express reservations.a
To successfully implement an AI strategy, companies must first identify the areas where AI could be most beneficial, but AI may not hit the spot right away. Many companies use their security and compliance environment as the starting point for their AI efforts. Initial deployments will be minimal, with machine learning algorithms that identify sensitive information to edit, and may evolve to be sophisticated enough to identify complex cybersecurity threats. Regardless of AI’s ultimate role in the accounting process, protecting business and customer information is one area where AI can make a big difference.
Understanding risk: with or without AI
Among the concerns about the use of AI in accounting are the potential risks to data security and privacy. If successfully integrated, AI models have the potential to gain access to sensitive financial and personal information of customers. Additionally, companies are beginning to understand the ethical dilemmas associated with AI, such as bias. An AI model is only as good as the data used to train it. A poorly trained model can introduce errors and biases, leading to inaccurate results that can have serious consequences.
When using AI, it is important that companies have the resources to understand the intricacies of their AI strategies and models, and ensure appropriate transparency to users about inputs and outputs. Additionally, companies must ensure that these models help them comply with existing security and privacy protocols and regulations.
Companies that resist adopting AI risk falling behind in terms of accuracy and efficiency, but from a cybersecurity perspective, the risks of not leveraging AI are far greater. Cyber attacks on accounting firms are
Digital transformation, the growth of cloud environments, and the increased use of automated systems have changed the way information is managed. Employees regularly create, share, process, store, and manage countless documents containing sensitive information. As more information is exchanged digitally, cybersecurity is becoming increasingly important, especially in identity management, as more and more cyberattacks target user identities through phishing and other methods of compromising user credentials. All of these factors make it increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to maintain security through manual processes.
For example, accounting firms have high turnover rates, with many employees leaving after only a few years of service. Companies also hire large numbers of new graduates every year. Keeping track of active user identities on the network and ensuring that these new users are properly trained on solid security policies can be difficult for accounting firms with so many people coming and going. There may be cases.
AI also has the ability to monitor unusual online activity.
Strengthen cybersecurity with AI
AI’s ability to gather and quickly analyze vast amounts of information can significantly strengthen an organization’s cybersecurity posture by automating threat detection, analysis, and response.
Analyze activity across your enterprise, from network traffic to system logs to user activity. A key feature of AI is the ability to detect patterns, which is useful when applied to accounting procedures, but also to recognize malicious activity, such as external attacks or anomalous activity by authorized users. It is also essential.
Traditional threat detection systems can recognize attacks with known signatures, such as those contained in MITER.
An advanced knowledge work automation platform provides accounting firms with AI-powered information management of sensitive and restricted information, reducing the risk of manual errors and employee oversight.
AI also plays a key role in the fight against phishing.
To avoid these risks, many companies are creating their own portals for information exchange. However, people are still transmitting personal financial information and must ensure they apply appropriate security measures.
AI can add an important layer of security to these exchanges. For example, you can detect if an attachment has information that needs to be edited. You can then automatically assign levels of security, or permissions and access privileges, to those documents.
AI algorithms leverage natural language processing to improve email security by identifying unusual patterns, anomalous requests, and suspicious use of mimicked writing styles that can indicate an email is a scam. Understand and analyze the language being used.
Cybersecurity risks are more expensive than ever and are expected to continue to increase. Companies that embrace AI and take action can reduce these risks through technology and improve their ability to better monitor these threats.
Backed by employees who understand how to properly operationalize AI, AI can enhance the cybersecurity of accounting firms while removing the burden on employees to manually monitor the security environment. Businesses have an opportunity to use AI to make large-scale digital transformations, but it's important to understand the capabilities and benefits AI offers and how to effectively use it to perform some of your mission-critical tasks. Only if you really understand.
