Security and Privacy Procedures

Your security and privacy are very important to everyone at Comco Tax. We want to outline the various policies and procedures which are implemented to protect your confidential information.

Employee Mandates

We require all employees to be aware of security and privacy and sign a non-disclosure agreement. All new employees are screened with a background check.

Remote Work Arrangement

Our employees work remotely 1 to 3 days per week. We have policies about client privacy and confidentiality that extend remotely. For example, all remote employees must have a space with a door to allow for safe and private client conversations either on the telephone or videoconferencing. We also do not allow anyone other than the employee to use the remote computer.

Speakerphone

All employees are equipped with cordless headsets to allow them to continue working with two hands while being on hold or speaking with a client. Speakerphone is strongly discouraged for the sake of hands-free efficiency. If speakerphone is used, we will always announce that you are in speakerphone and name the listening participants.

Printers

We have three printer copiers for all sensitive and tax document printing located in the tax admin areas. Printers are routinely monitored by the tax admins, and all employees are required to retrieve printouts immediately after printing. On our Closing Checklist, the last tax admin for the day must file any printouts or shred them.

Paperless

Comco Tax Solutions is generally a paperless work environment. Workflow management and document interaction is primarily electronic. Each workstation is equipped with three monitors to allow for efficient use of electronic documents. It is very uncommon for tax documents to be printed which adds to our security and privacy initiatives.

Content Control

We implement our firewall device with content monitoring. All inbound internet traffic is compared to allowed content and most of it is disallowed. There is simply too much malware and other undesirable content associated with Facebook, Instagram and other social media outlets and shopping websites.

Email Washer

All emails sent to Comco go through a mail washer program to compare the sender to known spammers and authors of malware and viruses. The mail washer also denies certain file types for attachments. As a result, all ZIP and EXE files are excluded. Zipping or compressing large files is not necessary since our client portal can handle files of all sizes.

Emailed Tax Returns

Tax returns, and similar high security files, are uploaded to your client portal for safe retrieval. If you need a copy emailed to you (or others) we do that through an encrypted email.

Email Etiquette

Our Employee Handbook has very specific email policies and procedures including the ones above. We will never send personal information such as social security numbers, dates of birth, or passwords through email. The only exception is the initial password we set for your Client Portal which you’ll be forced to change after your first login.

Client Portal

We use a secure share file system to securely to upload files to us, and for us to upload files to you. They use 256-bit encryption and market themselves to firms specifically in the financial and accounting industries. Your Client Portal acts like cloud storage with one exception- all files are synchronized with our local file servers. This allows us to efficiently process your uploaded files and to back up your data locally.

Online Digital Forms

Comco has selected Formstack as our third-party provider of secure digital forms. They are best in class for ease of use, but they are also best in class for security. All sensitive information is encrypted and is never emailed. All Comco employees must enter a unique password to retrieve forms with sensitive information (such as SSN, driver's license and banking information).

Credit Card Payments

Credit card numbers and associated information is encouraged to be entered directly into our Pay Simple credit card processing web portal. If there is a technological reason to record this information on paper, it is immediately shredded after being entered into our payment processing system. We also accept PayPal payments as well.

Please contact us with additional questions or concerns. We wanted to briefly explain the several policies and procedures to protect your security and privacy. Thanks!