Accounting firms struggle to meet FTC multi-factor authentication rules because current systems tie codes to a single phone number, forcing teams to share devices. A new line-management feature will let any authorized staff member receive MFA codes from anywhere, addressing a major compliance headache for firms managing hundreds of passwords.
Chapters
Firms have a problem today, which is you— we all know we have to have MFA on everything. Goes back to FTC guidelines. You have to have multi-factor authentication on everything. Well, how do you run multi-factor authentication for a client's bank account that allows you to tether it to one phone number? Phone number needs to be shared across the team.
It's a frustrating mess. Problem.
People are leaving 10, so they're leaving MFA off. So we're about to release our feature, which is going to have line management. You can give one line for the firm, all your MFA comes in there. Right? And so now the team can manage it with— and you can be working in New York, Boston, and Santa Fe, and it doesn't matter. You don't have to call each other saying, ah, this code's coming in. Who has that line?
Or traveling in Europe.
That's right, traveling in Europe. There you go.
We have this game all the time every morning because I'm on the East Coast. So a lot of times my phone number, and they're like, what's the phone number? What's the phone? Did you get the code? Where did the code go? That's my first question. Where am I finding this code? It's so frustrating. So that's number one. I think that's such a big, big, big problem we all face. So that'd be great to have that.
They're all barriers to FTCC compliance. They're all barriers to 557 compliance. When people put out these rules, you have to do these things. There are practical issues which have stopped the profession from being able to move forward with grace. You can try to hack things together, which is stick it all on Lynda's phone and we'll all call Lynda.
It ignores the human cost.
I honestly feel like the way I've felt strongly is we've invested in a product that protects both of us. And that's what we do. That's, that's how we start our process. But I feel the fatigue. I feel the fatigue in just passwords alone and trying to remember somebody who asked me on my staff, hey, was that you that signed up for that, Sarah? How do I log into that? Oh my God. I mean, I've got 800 passwords right now. I gotta sift through all of them, right? And if they're coded right, that's the other thing with the password protection stuff. You gotta sift through to figure out what labeling did you do for that client way back when.
And it's part of business now. It's just part of doing business. Part of business. That's why we have Practice Protect. So we have that layer of security. So we have all these things in place to protect. I don't want any passwords getting taken. by somebody or a staff member leaving, taking up— just can't. So we have to have the lockdown systems.
