Chapter 1. Welcome
Security 2016 has been designed to integrate with your existing Sage HandiSoft programs to provide the following benefits for your practice:
Manage program updates
Define user permissions for Sage HandiSoft programs
Monitor and record activities within the Sage HandiSoft software suite
Security 2016 features
Defining user permissions
The Sage HandiSoft programs access client records that contain sensitive and highly confidential information about your clients’ financial affairs. If you have a number of users running the different Sage HandiSoft programs it would be advantageous to be able to exercise control over who is allowed to run the different Sage HandiSoft programs, and what they are allowed to do with your clients’ data. Security 2016 provides this control by enabling you to set up and manage a security system based on users and groups.
Security 2016 enables you to allocate individual user names and passwords to the personnel in your firm. You can then group your users into different user groups. For each user group you can set what Sage HandiSoft programs members of that group are allowed to run, and actions that they are permitted to do when running those programs. For each group, you can even set up a list of clients whose records members of that group are not allowed to access.
Example: Accounting firm, ABC Accounting has staff that are allocated to specific clients only.
ABC Accounting can use Security 2016 to assign the staff members to user groups that do not allow them to access records of clients for whom they are not responsible. ABC Accounting can also restrict some groups to only view the client records and not change anything. In this way they can ensure that client confidentiality is not breached and that inexperienced staff members do not inadvertently remove important records.
How does it all work? Security 2016 runs in conjunction with the Sage HandiSoft programs.
The programs can run without Security 2016, and provide some level of security via their preset
Operator and Supervisor logins. If Security 2016 is installed and enabled, the Sage HandiSoft
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Chapter 1. Welcome Security 2016
programs will detect this and register all the possible actions that users can do with them.
Security 2016 uses this information for setting up group permissions in a security database.
When users attempt to run any Sage HandiSoft program that has registered its actions with
Security 2016, they will be prompted to enter their user name and valid password. The program will then access the security database to check whether the user is permitted to run it, and what actions they are allowed to perform.
Figure 1: Security 2016 module interactions
After installing Security 2016 for the first time, each of the Sage HandiSoft modules must be run at least once so that they can register their user actions in the Security database. Once these actions are registered, you can use the Security 2016 Users and Groups functions to set up users and user groups with permissions to perform those actions.
Monitoring and recording user activities
Security 2016 logs all the actions performed by the users on the Sage HandiSoft programs, and its Activity Monitor displays who is currently running what program. Each action performed by a user results in an event message that Security 2016 adds to a log file. You can access this event log file via the Security 2016 Log Viewer to see who did certain actions and at what time.
You can also use Security 2016 to generate reports on user activity.
Security 2016 also enables you to send notifications to users who are running Sage HandiSoft programs. This is particularly useful if you want to shut down a program to install a newer version. You can request current users to exit the program and also lock it to prevent others running it.
Managing software updates
You can use the Security 2016 Download Manager to keep track of any software updates that are available for download at the Sage HandiSoft Internet site. If an update is available, the
Security 2016 Download Manager will automatically connect to the Sage HandiSoft site and facilitate the download.
Security 2016 is predominantly used and maintained by a system administrator or somebody within your practice who is responsible for the on-going maintenance and update of your computer network.
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