Securing Your Financial Information
Understanding Software Features
That Can Protect You

In this information age that we live in, sometimes the less information someone knows, the better. This is especially true when it comes to your financial information. There is not a contractor alive that would want their salary information broadcast to their employees or their cash flow information sent to their competitors.

Yet this information, to some degree or another, can and does get to those who shouldn't necessarily have it. This information leak can cause immense organizational damage and leave you trying to pickup the pieces.

The good news is that in many cases, this kind of information leak is completely preventable. There are measures you can take, while not having to enlist the expensive services of a technical guru.

By and large, most construction specific accounting and management software has some available security measures that you can take advantage of. These features, if set up properly, can help you curtail costly information leaks.

There are varying levels of security available in today's software. For broad protection, module and menu level security are sufficient. For more demanding environments, functionality level and field level security should be implemented.

Module level security is simply the ability to restrict user access by module. This means, for example, that someone entering payroll can be restricted from accessing accounts payable functions within your software. This type of security is effective for broad protection, but lacks the ability to mirror the security needs of many companies.

Menu level security, while not available in some software packages, can more effectively protect sensitive data. This type of security enables you to restrict access to specific menu items from within your software. Someone may have access to the payroll module, for example, and have the ability to enter timecards, but not the ability to print payroll checks.

Functionality level security takes protection of your data to the next level. This type of security allows you to tell your software whether a user can do things like edit or delete records and print or preview reports. In the same payroll example, you could allow someone to access employee records, but not be able to delete records. This type of security shines in protecting you from accidental data loss as well as information leaks.

While functionality level security may be harder to find in construction specific accounting and management software, field level security is a rarity. Yet this security can be the most important part of a layered security system. Field level security allows you to specify who has access to each piece of information contained in your system. In an employee's file for example, you can specify who has access to pay rate or contact information. This type of security excels at protecting sensitive data, while allowing users to still work with other data they need in the same areas of the software.

Your software should have some or most of these features. By spending a few minutes to setup varying degrees of access for users in your software, you can prevent much of the risk in leaking important company information. By using these different types of security levels within user profiles, you can layer the protection of your data. After setting up these different user security profiles, you should change passwords often. If you spend the time to set security profiles up, spend the small amount of time it takes to maintain them.