Ten technologies that impact your firm and your clients.

The AICPA's annual list of the top ten technologies helps CPA firms identify the technologies that will have the greatest effect on them and their clients, find ways to exploit these technologies, and uncover solutions to associated problems.

The media, including the business media, publish top ten lists of all kinds every year-end. One of the lists most useful for CPA firms is the AICPA's Top Ten Technologies list. For more than 20 years, the Institute's Top Ten Technologies program has served to educate AICPA members in public accounting, business and industry, government, and education--and perhaps their clients as well. The rationale behind the list is that CPAs, because they are closely involved in the intricate information flow processes in their client companies, are the logical choice for helping clients in determining the technologies that will have the most impact on their companies and will be most useful to them, and recommending suitable solutions to associated problems.

Effective use of information technology also provides competitive advantage to CPA firms and their clients and improves profitability.

Most of the top ten technologies appeared in previous AICPA top ten technologies lists. Information security, for example, leads the list for the third consecutive year. The following are the 2005 top ten technologies:

  1. Information security. The hardware, software, processes, and procedures in place to protect an organization's information systems from internal and external threats are all part of information security. The objective of information security techniques is to ensure that unauthorized individuals cannot access data in a computer. Such intrusion can result not only in inappropriate distribution or use of private or critical information, but also in costs associated with loss of time and efficiency. In AICPA's Top Technologies 2004 (AICPA: New York, 2004), issued by the AICPA Information Technology Section, authors Scott H. Cytron and Anne A. Stanton offer the following guidance for addressing information security issues: "Remember to check at least the following three items within your technical information security system:

    1. An antivirus suite solution is implemented, including malware blocking.

    2. A firewall solution is implemented.

    3. A patch management procedure is in place."

    The publication AICPA's Top Technologies 2004 also lists Web sites of organizations and product vendors that may help in your effort to...

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