Secure Portal

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#1
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357
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15-Oct-2017 12:16pm
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California
Is there a requirement that we must provide a secure portal for the clients to provide tax information to us through the internet?

If we ask a client to just email a tax statement to us, would there possibly be adverse consequence down the road?
 

#2
zl28  
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2065
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usa
just advise them to password protect it...and if they opt not to...any detriments that occur is a problem for them, not you.
 

#3
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357
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15-Oct-2017 12:16pm
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California
Thank you.

I am looking for a free service for file exchange that is more safe than email.

Is dropbox considered a secure portal?
 

#4
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8151
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The Office
SecureFilePro by Drake is $9.95 a month for the basic version (250 MB). They give a free one month trial.
 

#5
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Northern MI and Coastal SC
Free and secure do not generally mix well. Dropbox has had data breaches in the past and lost some credibility. Personally, I do not like their platform.

For encrypted e-mail and encrypted file exchange, I use ShareFile (CitrixFiles). It is a bit expensive at $75/mo, but I like knowing Citrix is behind it. The Outlook plug-in is really handy for sending and receiving encrypted e-mails through the system. You can also add portal access to your website, and there are desktop and mobile apps for accessing folders/files.

I use Google Drive for file storage. Local copies are encrypted; Google uses encryption. My backups are encrypted. In other words, I cannot eliminate risk, but I have taken substantial strides to mitigate it.
 

#6
Preppie  
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Virginia
I used dropbox for a while, but recently switched because:
1. Some clients were storing non-tax files in the folder we were sharing for tax files.
2. Some clients were deleting files I was planning on keeping.
Essentially, it was too difficult to police client use of it. (I also had a few who had read about the data breaches and wrinkled their nose at it.)

Switched to Canopy. It's fine. Not inspiring, but good enough for what I need.
 

#7
makbo  
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In The Counting House
I've found after using a portal with most of my clients for the last seven years (SecureDrawer from EFileCabinet), two very important features are an audit log that you can access as administrator (to see who and when for logins and file access/uploads/deletions), and email notifications to let those you wish to know that a new file has been uploaded (configurable for other actions as well, such as downloads).

Once I grab a file uploaded by client, I delete it from portal (to recycle bin, which I empty annually, right before tax season). So the only files there ongoing are the ones I've uploaded, that client has not deleted, which is basically their final return copy for each year.

You can't easily manage your email attachments and achieve these same things.

I did once have a client who decided to just share his password to my portal with his mortgage broker, once I found out I told him that I could simply create a login for the broker (with signed consent). My privacy policy states that I use this third party portal, I most definitely want my client to understand they are also a user of the 3rd party service and so are subject to all their terms and conditions as well. More targets in case of a lawsuit!
 

#8
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1246
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Upstate, NY
Check out Liscio. I was skeptical but decided to try it a few months ago. I have not rolled it out to all my client just yet but have been giving clients access as they have needed to share info with me. The response is overwhelmingly positive. Super easy to use and they have a mobile app for the younger crowd that just wants to take a pic with their phone. I am excited to get it to my entire base. Absolutely zero phone calls on “how do I ?”.....just send a link and in 10 seconds the client is setup.

Not cheap, but a small bump in my prep fees will cover the costs. PM me for ore info. I believe I get a small referral spiff if I bring in others and you get something in return as well.
 

#9
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3
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18-Jul-2018 3:54pm
Location:
Indiana
Preppie wrote:Switched to Canopy. It's fine. Not inspiring, but good enough for what I need.



How in depth do you use canopy. I just drank their Kool Aid after their demo and demo pricing. It looks nice, I just feel for the price it should be a little more than what it is.
 

#10
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kbairtax wrote:Check out Liscio. I was skeptical but decided to try it a few months ago. I have not rolled it out to all my client just yet but have been giving clients access as they have needed to share info with me. The response is overwhelmingly positive. Super easy to use and they have a mobile app for the younger crowd that just wants to take a pic with their phone. I am excited to get it to my entire base. Absolutely zero phone calls on “how do I ?”.....just send a link and in 10 seconds the client is setup.

Not cheap, but a small bump in my prep fees will cover the costs. PM me for ore info. I believe I get a small referral spiff if I bring in others and you get something in return as well.


What's the pricing structure with Liscio kbairtax? I'm using SecureFilePro by Drake right now, but will be upgrading my digital file storage from Drake Docs to Caseware next month. Thinking about changing/upgrading the secure portal too if the price is right for what I get.

SecureFilePro works...but I'm not a huge fan. Sometimes it can take 24-48 hours for a client to get the welcome email after I push the button, and email notifications about uploads/downloads sometimes don't happen.

I watched some YouTube videos on Liscio and it looks nice.

casper13 wrote:
Preppie wrote:Switched to Canopy. It's fine. Not inspiring, but good enough for what I need.



How in depth do you use canopy. I just drank their Kool Aid after their demo and demo pricing. It looks nice, I just feel for the price it should be a little more than what it is.


Canopy is super aggressive if they get your info. I did a free webinar hosted by them earlier this year, and they called me once a week until I finally picked up the phone and told them that I wasn't interested and to stop calling.
 

#11
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21-May-2018 7:50am
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Northern MI and Coastal SC
All good points made above. I was skeptical of ShareFile initially, but have really grown to like it between the encrypted e-mail functionality AND secure file exchange. You have a lot of controls, including notifications of uploads/downloads (handy when you have clients that claim they did not receive), automatic retention/purging, etc. I implemented it in early 2018 and virtually all of my tax clients are now on the system with no issues.
 

#12
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886
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26-Feb-2016 10:14pm
Location:
Oakland CA
The Citrix ShareFile breach of last week was worse than I realized. Found this in my junk mail today, dated last Sunday:

Citrix said they forced every one of their users to reset their pw's.

"We are writing to notify you of a security incident on the Citrix ShareFile service (aka Citrix Content Collaboration) that affected users on your Citrix ShareFile account. We recently became aware of suspicious activity associated with certain user accounts. Based on our investigation to date, we believe that an unauthorized party used credentials obtained from third-party sources to attempt to access and obtain information from certain Citrix ShareFile user accounts.

We believe these attempts were successful for some Citrix ShareFile user accounts associated with your organization. There is no indication that this issue resulted from a compromise of our systems."


Not very informative. I'm guessing there was a successful phishing expedition that got some of my clients to provide their login's. I find that highly unlikely.

But I'm considering forcing my clients to use two factor authentication. Might or might not have helped.
 

#13
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886
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26-Feb-2016 10:14pm
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Oakland CA
So far no complaints about two factor authentication.
 

#14
Preppie  
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316
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6-May-2015 6:23am
Location:
Virginia
casper13 wrote:How in depth do you use canopy. I just drank their Kool Aid after their demo and demo pricing. It looks nice, I just feel for the price it should be a little more than what it is.

I tried to love it, but I couldn't. The CRM features are OK for client info, but the task management is unusable, IMO. I've contacted tech support twice about email integration, and I get a "Hmmmm.... that's interesting...we'll look into that" response. And, frankly, it honks me off they want another $500 for white labeling the client portal. Likewise when I click on the link to get more info on my license and it thanks me for my inquiry and lets me know a sales rep will be calling me within 24 hours.

I am using the practice management version. There is another version for representation/resolution, but I haven't used it.
 

#15
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886
Joined:
26-Feb-2016 10:14pm
Location:
Oakland CA
Using ShareFIle as portal is definitely not an integrated solution despite their alliances with various vendors. One of their more expensive subscriptions includes a workflow checklist for you to use to ask clients for documents and track them. I tried it a few times and got frustrated that you couldn't change sequence of documents requested/tasks around after you first "published" it. Inflexible.

And on it's folders unless you have the most expensive license, you can't give clients viewing only access without giving them at least download access. Don't think you can give them the right to just delete their own uploads. e.g. if they upload the wrong document. Don't think clients can edit notes either, but might be wrong.

Because it's not integrated with email automatically, clients aren't sure whether to send a doc via email or upload to ShareFile. Train them to email us to let us know if they've uploaded a time sensitive doc.

Still ShareFile works fine as basic portal. No complaints from clients anymore after initial hump.
 


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