I just returned from Los Angeles where the 2009 California Accounting & Business Show & Conference was held at the Hilton at LAX. The show was well attended, mostly by tax and accounting professionals who ran their own businesses or were part of small firms.

Being in the technology business, we sometimes take for granted that most businesses, especially professionals like CPAs, would utilize the latest technologies to maximize resources and provide high levels of client service. As the accounting show demonstrated, this is not the case. We came across individuals who still held client papers "in 9 file cabinets" and asked clients to come to the office to receive tax paperwork. While some strived to "go paperless", others were routinely sending hard copies to clients by courier.

In the area of security and data privacy, many were not even aware of CA SB 1386 which governs how businesses store and transfer client sensitive records. Some thought they were being compliant simply by password protecting pdfs. Others did not know that sending attachments by email was "unencrypted."

It was gratifying and humbling to educate and help these businesses understand the requirements of CA SB 1386, and consult on whether their current file transfer methods were compliant. I am happy to say that most of the tax professionals I spoke with did care about the security of their client files. The overriding obstacle has been finding a solution that was easy to use. From a psychological standpoint, adopting a new technology can be intimidating to businesses that don't have IT staff to make the transition. From a practical standpoint, a solution that is not easy to use on a daily and routine basis, will not be used on a daily and routine basis. This resulting gap brings them back out-of-compliance.

After describing and demonstrating LeapFILE as an email-based, ad hoc file transfer solution that provides end-to-end encryption without a change of behavior, I could sense wonderment as well as relief.

This is what the promise of techology is supposed to be. Solving a problem, easily.